Jarak Diving Trip

Just came back from a dive trip last weekend. I went to this remote island not many people know of. It is call Jarak Island, a far away island about 40km west of Pangkor Island. It is a popular fishing spot, as for diving, only people who is desperate like me would want to go diving there. Again I went to my favourite live onboard Kaleebso with my brother-in-law and 5 other friends. As the island is mere rock, uninhabited and overgrown with lush bushes and trees, the only possible way to dive there is to live onboard a dive boat as there is no resort on the island. Well, diving in the west coast, some said there's nothing much to see, bad visibility, and strong current and all sort of comments. But, since I am the adventurous type, I don't mind trying out new dive spot.

It was a good trip overall, the diving was fun, and water visibility was good, we were fortunate last weekend, as water visibility was usually not clear and murky. We managed to make a total of 7 dives, including 1 night dive. The night dive was special, as only my brother-in-law and I dived at night before, we brought along the rest who are all first timer. So, I took the liberty to give briefing and some instructions, just like a pro. Surprisingly no one panic and it went well. We saw beautiful red tooth trigger fish, titan trigger fish, honey comb moray eel, giant moray eel, moorish idol, lion fish, nudibranch, coral crab, flying fish, lizard fish, blue ring angel fish, red snapper, grouper, Spanish Mackerels, sail fish, barracuda, jacks, squid, octopus, parrot fish, butterfly fish, rabbit fish and many others in day dive. As for night dive, macro life and crustaceans that normally don't see during daytime make their presence felt through clicking and crunching noises as they go about looking for food. Shining our dive lights onto the reef structure, marine life came into view. Shrimps, crabs, fish, sea urchin and other appear out of the darkness as well as day time fish that sleep between the rocks and corals.

The fun part for me in this trip was fishing. I was not the one who fish, but as a spectator watching the boat captain (Khay Lee) and Peter fishing. They net quite a lot of flying fish to use as baits. I still wasn't that excited about fishing at that moment. After dinner, they started night fishing at about 10pm. It started by Peter and Khay Lee and I was still relaxing on the top deck after dinner. They were making a lot of noises on the dive deck, sounded like they were very busy, so I went down to find out what was going on. Wow, a big fish was hopping or jumping or flipping or whatever you called it all over the dive deck. They've caught a really big spanish mackerels (tenggiri in malay), the size slightly bigger than my fins, almost a meter long. I was so excited just watching beside them, and my brother-in-law quickly took his camera and took picture with Khay Lee and the fish. Needless to say, the fish ended up in our lunch table the next day. The lights on the boat attracted many fish to swim near to us including Sail Fish, they came really close to the surface in a group of 4, it was amazing watching them swimming in formation, but it was not long, they disappeared into the water in just few seconds. Everybody was excited to see them. As the night progress, they caught another 12 barracuda and many other pelagic. It was a very fruitful night and everyone was happy.

So, in this trip, we just eat, sleep, dive, eat, sleep, watch dvd, chat and more diving and sleeping, sound boring, exciting, maybe it is not everyone forte.

Photos coming soon.