Diving Thoughts

A 65 year old diver is suffering from leg and internal injuries after being hit by a boat while diving on Flinders Reef on 29th June. His condition is described as serious but stable. There’s a story in the Brisbane Times.

We get quite a lot of boat traffic near the sites we dive in Hong Kong, and many of them are very cavalier about driving fast around dive boats. It seems that a lot of them don’t know what an ‘A’ Flag is. In fact there was an incident a couple of years ago where a diver was found dead with serious head injuries and there was speculation that he had been struck by a boat when surfacing.

It shows the importance of deploying a dSMB before you surface in areas where there are boats, but it’s not the easiest skill to master. The first time I tried was on a dive off Komodo and the reel jammed. Remembering my training, I let it go and started cursing myself. When it got to the surface, the tension came off the line and somehow the reel must have unjammed itself. The first thing I knew about it was when the reel came back down and hit me on the head! Deploying a dSMB is a vital skill that needs regular practice.

An interesting dive on the north-east corner of Waglan Island last Sunday. June has been the wettest month in Hong Kong since records began 125 years ago. So I suppose it’s not surprising that so much water has washed down the Pearl River and into the waters around Hong Kong. Waglan Island is an island south-east of Hong Kong island and when we arrived, the visibility looked pretty bad. Jumping in just confirmed the worst, there was practically no visibility at all in the top and I had to use a buddy line to make sure I didn’t lose my buddy. This looked like being a very short dive. However after about 5 metres we’d managed to get below the “crust”, and the visibility improved. It was still only around 2 meters, but a lot better than I’d been expecting. It was a bit dark though, so a good job we both had torches. There was a surprising amount to see. The slope drops away quite steeply, but it’s an interesting topography with some large boulders and pinnacles. There was a lot of soft coral, some nice whips, crabs, schools of anthias and damsels, plus quite a few nice nudibranchs. There were also quite a few octopi around.

It’s bizarre how much of an effect the run-off has and it did look particularly bad, with a variety of plants and bits of debris floating in it, including a surprisingly large number of plastic sandals. Fortunately we didn’t spot any of their owners. It’s ertainly not the best dive I’ve done in Hong Kong, but a lot better than I’d been expecting when I went in.

The World Wildlife Fund would like to thanks everyone who signed their “Save Our Seas” petition. They collected about 60,000 signatures which makes it the biggest ever environmental petition in Hong Kong. They have submitted the signatures to the Chief Executive and Executive Council and are calling for the Government’s immediate action to protect our marine environment. Sadly a bit too late for Hong Kong’s Whale Shark.

Anyway you can see details of their campaign at WWF’s website.

Are Ocean Park impacted by high food prices, and feeding their exhibits to the barracuda? We shouldn’t joke about it, but one of five very rare Chinese Sturgeon died on Monday 23 June. It was found on Saturday with injuries consistent with those caused by barracuda. Five of these fish were presented to Ocean Park by China’s National Aquatic Wildlife Conservation Association last month, and had only been released into the Atoll Reef aquarium four days earlier. The remaining four sturgeon have been temporarily removed while Ocean Park staff make plans to relocate the 8 barracuda to a separate facility. There is a story in Tuesday’s SCMP (24 June), and the photo on the right was taken from SCMP’s website.

Dave Shaw was a Hong Kong based pilot for Cathay Pacific, but also a very keen diver. He took up diving in 1999 and was interested in the opportunities to explore, ideally where no-one else has been. This led to his fascination with deep cave dives.

In October 2004 he and Don Shirley dived in Bushman’s Hole, a cave on the edge of the Kalahari. Dave Shaw reached the cave floor at 270 metres and found the body of Deon Dreyer who had disappeared on a dive there 10 years earlier. After that dive Dave was determined to go back and recover the body, which he attempted in January 2005. Sadly he died on the dive, although both bodies were recovered 4 days later as the support team were removing the line from the cave.

This book is called Raising the Dead and is written by American cave diver, Phillip Finch. You can order it from Amazon. I’m hoping to get a copy before too long, but to whet your appetites, there are a couple of extracts on the Daily Telegraph’s website:

• Extract: Raising the Dead
• Ghost of the Abyss: the story of Don Shirley and Dave Shaw

There’s a good article on Diver’s website about the Mikhail Lermontov. This is a big Russian passenger liner that sank between the North and South islands in New Zealand. It is rare to have such a large wreck so easily accessible. You can do dives of different complexity on it, making it suitable for those new to wreck diving as well as those with much more experience.

In what may be controversial, the New Zealand divers who dive it regularly do not use lines when they penetrate it. Their argument is that they are often leaving a different way from how they got in. They have spent many years exploring the wreck and have many many  dives on it, so they do know it exceptionally well.

I am hoping to get down to New Zealand at Christmas, and if time permits will try and get a dive in on this wreck.

For anyone interested in nudibranchs, there are some great photos on National Geographic’s website. They were shot by David Doubilet and some of the photos will certainly be controversial. Rather than taking them in their natural habitat, he took down a portable background, photographed the nudibranchs, then put them back where he had found them. You can find out more on his video. The result is some striking photographs that show how colourful nudibranchs can be. There is also an interesting debate on the ethics of moving sea creatures to take a photo on Wetpixel’s forum. People are divided as to whether there is ever any excuse for touching or moving sea life. Some argue that there isn’t, no matter who it is taking the photos, whereas others feel that David Doubilet understands what he is doing and can do this without harming the creatures. An important point is that if people who are unfamiliar with the beauty of marine life see these pictures, it may give them a better understanding of the marine world, and perhaps an incentive to help protect it.

On Friday a cannon was recovered from an Elizabethan warship off Alderney in the Channel Islands. The ship is believed to have sunk in 1592, 4 years after Elizabeth’s navy had beaten the Spanish Armada. What makes this particularly interesting is the comparison with the Mary Rose which sank less than 50 years earlier. Henry VIII’s Mary Rose had a range of different types of weapons on board, but from what they have found from the Alderney wreck the guns are much more standard. Archaeologists are speculating that it indicates that the navy was getting much more professional.

There had been a delay of several days in raising the cannon after the very sad death of Peter Le Sauteur, a diver from Jersey, who had been working on a survey of the wreck.

The BBC has more details on their website, and you can visit the website for the Alderney Elizabethan Wreck.

The body of the diver who went missing on the Repulse has been recovered. It seems he was found tangled in fishing line near the propellors.

My condolences to his family and friends.

Sadly it appears that the whale shark that was found in Hong Kong waters on Friday, was found dead on Sunday. The fish was caught on Friday at 11am, taken to Aberdeen at 1pm and only released at 4:30pm (after hawker, Mark Gon, paid the fisherman HKD20,000 to release it). There’s a good chance that the stress of being caught contributed to its death.

If Hong Kong had rules against catching such vulnerable species, there’s a good chance that this one would have been released considerably sooner, increasing its survival chances. Unfortunately that is not the case and Hong Kong’s regulations are outdated and inadequate.

If you are an SCMP subscriber they have an article here.

Five divers who went missing diving in the waters around Komodo were found on Saturday after spending 2 nights on a deserted part of Rinca island in Indonesia. They were all OK, albeit dehydrated. The group consisted of 3 Brits, a Frenchman and a Swede. They were diving From ReefSeekers’ boat at Tatawa Island on Thursday, but spent 9 hours adrift in which time they were swept 20 miles away.

I’m hoping to go to Komodo in September, which is an area notorious for strong currents, which is something we will need to be aware of. I was last there in 2002 and had some excellent dives.

Anyway that’s obviously great news, and now I suppose we can look forward to a mass of rumours on the forums to say that they must have planned it!

Now here’s a surprise. On Friday 6 June a trawler caught a 5 metre whale shark in the waters off Ocean Park in Hong Kong. He took it to Aberdeen fish market and called the Agriculture Fisheries and Conservation Department and Ocean Park. Their officials tried to persuade him to release it, which he refused to do until a Mark Gon, seafood hawker, apparently paid him HKD 20,000. Let’s hope that doesn’t encourage other Hong Kong fishermen to go out en masse to try and find it in the hope of a similar pay-day.

In what seems a ridiculous over-reaction, SCMP reported that the Leisure and Cultural Services Department would cancel all activities at the 2 water sports centres in Stanley on Saturday. And shark warning flags were raised at 10 beaches in the south of Hong Kong.

Anyway it goes to show that there is more to Hong Kong waters than you might expect.