Odysseys of George

At last the monsoon is over. I can already smell the cool salt breeze of sea water. I can imagine the beaches the coconut trees and the calmness of the island.

It is the first dive for the year, and it for me is more like a refresher to check out my dive equipment which had just been recently serviced. Also, I was anxious to see how my strobes and underwater camera behaved after being dry for almost 6 months.

The location : Salang, Tioman Island.
The Dive center: Fishermen Divers

We set off about close to midnight with another 2 friends who were going to do their Advance Open Water Course. Our journey would take us along the North South Highway to Air Hitam exit. From there, we head towards Kluang town and proceed through winding roads of Felda Nitar reaching Mersing at about 3.30 in the morning. The ferry was at 5am thus allowing us to take some power nap.

The interior of the ferry was so very cold. Shivering and cursing the cold, we reached Salang at 7am. My body met my soul and heart which seem to have reached the island a few days earlier.

6 dives in 3 days 2 nights. The visibility was acceptable approximately 15 to 20m and weather conditions were good. The dive guide wasn’t so great but the best dive was the last dive at Salang Jetty. It has never failed to excite me.

Armed with my trusted G7 and Ikelite casing and 2 YS110 Sea n Sea strobes, I present some pictures I took from some of the dive site namely Tiger reef, Batu Malang ( Unfortunate Rock), Chebeh Island, Labas, Roger Wreck and finally Salang Jetty.

Come 24th November, I together with another 11 divers will be going to this remote paradise, a divers haven. It is regarded as the mother of all dive sites and is situated at the furthest point of the Indonesian archipelago. So why paradise — because it is the richest marine biodiversity in the world!

To give an idea of where and how remote this place is this is a map showing the location:

Raja Ampat* means “the four ‘kings’”, a name dating back to the 15th century, when the Sultanate of Tidore – one of the muslim sultanates in the original Maluku west of Halmahera – appointed four local “rajas” in Misool, Salawati, Batanta and Waigeo.

Even earlier, Seramese traders from small islands off the eastern tip of Seram had established trade settlements, sosolot, throughout the region, exchanging cloth, beads, and other products from western Indonesia for trepang, plumes, forest products and slaves from Papua. There where also a strong ties to the island of Biak east of the Bird’s Head Peninsula.

Rock paintings found in caves in Misool and in on the west coast of the Birds Head, as well as bronze artifacts, show that trade with other parts of Asia was already established 2 – 3 000 years ago.

Going further back, it should be noted that just 10 000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, most of what is currently sea in this area was still land, roughly corresponding to the lighter blue parts in the Raja Ampat Map. This means that most of the early coastal settlements in this area are now submerged, and will require underwater archeology to be found and explored.( Ref: http://travels.patrik.com/ra/)

Biodiversity Features in Raja Ampat
and the greater Bird’s Head Seascape

1,356 species of reef fish in the Bird’s Head Seascape
1,223 species of reef fish in Raja Ampat
25 species of endemic reef fish found only in the Birds Head Seascape
600 species of hard coral recorded in the Bird’s Head Seascape
75% of all known coral species in the world
10 times the number of hard coral species found in the entire Caribbean
57 species of Mantis Shrimp in the Birds Head Seascape
13 species of Marine Mammals in the Bird’s Head Seascape
5 species of endangered sea turtles in the Bird’s Head Seascape

The dive sites:

Go here to know more about the dive sites

*An archipelago is a chain or cluster of islands that is formed tectonically.

This is a latest by Scubazoo, a promo video for the book Adrift, Tales of Ocean Fragility. The book Adrift is looking to educate the general public about conservation through new methods.

What do you think of this video?

Well, it was all planned months before. The MUW ( Malaysian Underwater) decided to have its yearly official dive trip.

The day arrived and we gathered, all rushing to leave the office quickly as we had to reach Mersing by 11.30pm. Our destination , Aur Islands, the southern most islands on the our east coast.

We reached Mersing relatively early and was divided to two groups. Each group had to be taken by a small boat from the Mersing jetty to the boat that was anchored at the mouth of the river as the sea level were too low for the boats to come into the jetty area. It was 0030hours and we were hoping our to the bigger boat with the waves getting stronger. The boat ride there was ok for me as I slept off despite the swells of the sea. We reached Pantai Sebukang, Aur Island at 4am and the boat had difficulty docking as the sea level was low and the waves were strong. My boat managed to dock and we had to quickly climb the wooden ladder onto the jetty leaving our heavier luggage behind. The other group had to anchor out in the sea for another 3 hours before being able to dock at the jetty, which by then I had my sleep! The rest I will let the pictures do the talking.

A little about Aur Island.
Pulau Aur is located around around 70 kilometers off the coast of Mersing, south of Tioman Island. The five kilometer long island is blessed with larger, pristine coral formations due to its greater distance from the mainland. It is also often visited by some big pelagics such as mantas and whale sharks. There are several surrounding islands and the deep water channels between them attract all manner of marine life. (from AsiaDive)

Aur was once a war hub. In 1803, whilst the Napoleonic War was raging in Europe, a sea battle was brewing in the South China Sea. The Emperor of France and his advisors decided that it was time to infiltrate and dislodge the British from their trade stronghold with the Chinese. With this, France sent a fleet of 5 warships under the command of Admiral Linois to Pulau Aur. By early January 1804, Admiral Linois’ fleet had safely parked themselves at Aur. Admiral Linois laid in wait for the fleet from China to arrive in hope of a surprise attack which would put the French in a favourable position to confiscate the lucrative cargo. When the China-British fleet sailed into Aur on February 14th, Admiral Linois was himself taken by surprise by the three ‘warships’ accompanying the fleet. Uncertain of the strength of the British warships, the Admiral went ahead with couple of disastrous attacks and eventually retreated to Batavia (Jakarta) in defeat. Captain Nathaniel Dance sailed back to England and was showered with rewards especially from the insurers of the fleet and rightly so as the cargoes had at that time an estimated value of 8 million pounds! Emperor Bonaparte suffered an embarrassing defeat and just to add salt to his wound, it was his British sources that first broke the news to him. ( Excerpts from JourneyMalaysia)

Enjoy!

PS: if cannot view the pictures, please let me know.

Wah! It has been a long time! The last dive I did was in May. There was 5 of us and the destination was Fisherman’s Dive Center at Pantai Salang, Tioman. It was a good break with good friends but my underwater pictures did not turn out well — I have been having problems since I started using the strobes. Need more practice, I gather. I have decided to display my pictures as slide show – a better difference I think, do you?

Many divers are introduced to this complication of diving during their basic open water course. However, many still are unsure of what decompression illness is all about, even those at much higher levels in their diving career. To make things worse, many medical personnel are also unprepared to handle such cases due to its rarity or assumed rarity of presentation. This assumption is however incorrect as more and more indulge into the sport of scuba diving.

Decompression illness is a disorder caused by bubbles forming in body tissues or in the blood where they should never be.

The source?

The first source is bubble formation from nitrogen that has been dissolved in tissues during the dive. This is otherwise known as DCS (Decompression Sickness)

– During descent and diving, air is breathed at increased pressure, and therefore more of the nitrogen molecules from the air can dissolve into the blood. The nitrogen enters the blood in the lung capillary bed, and is distributed to the tissues via the arteries where, nitrogen leaves the blood and diffuses into tissues.

– The deeper the dive, the faster the nitrogen is taken up from the air we breathe, and the longer the dive, the more time it has to accumulate in the tissues.

– During the ascent, pressure falls and less nitrogen can remain dissolved in the tissues and therefore, the nitrogen diffuses out of tissues and into the venous blood of the organs, back to the lungs for elimination. Ideally, this elimination process occurs fast enough to dissipate the nitrogen molecules without bubble formation.

– However, different tissues in the body have differing rates of elimination depending on their blood supply. Those with very good blood supply tend to accumulate and dissipate nitrogen fast and are called “fast” tissues. “Slower” tissues such as tendons are often not a problem after a short dive, even if it is deep, because they don’t have enough time to accumulate significant quantities of nitrogen but they become more important during long dives, or repetitive dives, when nitrogen can build up over a long time. Then there are the intermediates or “medium” tissues such as the nerves and spinal cord, where the accumulation is fast but the dissipation is slow especially if the bottom time is long or ascent is slightly faster.

– When nitrogen is not dissipated fast enough, the pressure of dissolved nitrogen will exceed the ambient (surrounding) pressure at some point during the ascent and the molecules of dissolved nitrogen will form bubbles.

– Bubbles formed in the blood (usually the venous system) are mainly filtered as it passes the lungs and rarely enters the arterial circulation except in foetus and some with a vascular heart anomaly (patent foramen ovale).

The second potential source of bubbles in DCI is the introduction of air bubbles to the arterial circulation because of lung overexpansion. This is better known as Arterial Gas Embolism(AGE)

– This has nothing to do with dissolved nitrogen, or time and depth for that matter. Indeed, this problem can arise during ascent from depths as shallow as 1 – 2 metres. The most important rule in scuba diving is “to breathe normally at all times; never hold your breath”. This is because any air trapped in the lungs during an ascent (by holding the breath for example), will expand as pressure decreases. If there is sufficient over-expansion of the lung it may rupture some of the small airways and the associated blood vessels. Such damage is referred to as pulmonary barotrauma.

– This barotrauma causes introduction of air bubbles to the lung capillary circulation which are then circulated throughout the body as air embolus. Bubbles arriving in the circulation of the brain may cause stroke-like symptoms. These arterial bubbles are therefore considered very dangerous.

Embolus = foreign particles that float and travel freely in the blood e.g air, clots
Arteries = blood vessels that carry blood from the heart to the rest of the body
Veins = blood vessels that carry blood from the body back to the heart

Taken from various reading.
( To be continued )