Dayang and Mersing - Diving and Stargazing

Hello Hello!

A Chronicle of my trip to Pulau Dayang and Mersing
- Diving and Star Gazing
21st - 25th May 2004

Loretta and I had planned this trip for a long while. She badly needed a break from her job; it was starting to get tedious and I think she needed to get her bearings again. The dates were chosen because I wanted to do some stargazing and comet watching. Two comets were visible to the naked eye, which is a rare occurance, and they were at their brightest at those dates and with no glaring moon in the way. Let me just say now that I didn't catch one glimpse of them throughout my whole trip. :)

We met up at Novena Square. I had KFC for dinner and waited till they left (late) in the vans to travel up to Mersing. Reached there close to midnight and boarded a speedboat that transfered us to the diveboat. On the way with the lights off, I could see the blue bioluminescent flashes in water as the boat cut through. It has been many many years since I saw those light and it reminded me of the times when I was young and out in the night with my dad on the boat.

When we got on the boat, the first thing I did was to hit the deck and check out the night sky. It was excellent - the constellations scorpius, sagitarius, crux and centaurus in full glory. And the Milky Way! I came in excitedly and told Loretta and Dax: " The milky way! Its just 'There'!"

On our last trip in Tioman, Dax and I spent a night out on the rocks gazing at Scorpius as well. It took me a long time to realise that the cloud that suspiciously had not moved for the past few hours was the milky way. That night, with that 'cloud' stretching as one great band across the sky, there was no mistaking it. It was smack in your eye, you didn't even have to let your eyes adjust to the darkness. A glorious sight, the central bulge of the galactic centre, dust lanes like rivers, star clouds, it was all there.

So with the binoculars, I started showing them the highlights that I knew by heart: Ptolemy's cluster M7, the butterfly cluster M6, the scorpius jewel box, the great omega centuari globular cluster. But when I gazed into the sagittarius region, I was lost. Star clouds, fuzzy patches, more fuzzy patches, star clusters everywhere. So we just sat down and soaked up the sights until the boat started moving off, at which we went in to bunk down.

The boat ride to Dayang was quite horrible. We sat in a spot that was (as we found out too late) right in the blast wave of the air conditioning. Loretta and I were not able to sleep, and spent the time tossing. Think Dax slept pretty well though. When we reached the island about 4 am, I discovered with chagrin that our 12-person bunk did not have blankets. I had just assumed that they would have them. So having to make do with my jacket, I tried to get as best a sleep I could. That’s when the snoring from the bed beside us started…

Saturday Morning


Overall, the dives were pleasant. There was no current and diving was easy. But visibility was poor and overall the diving remained unremarkable. Did find the odd nudibranch or two… there was this one with green body markings and bright florescent orange gills. Quite a beautiful find I must say. There was also this species of angelfish – brown with a white band – that was triangular in shape and had triangular jagged dorsals. It was really like a staircase running down the top of its head. It was the first time I saw such a fish so I was really intrigued, especially since all the other fishes are decidedly less angular than this one was. I caught another pair of them is a different dive.



Due to the bad night, Loretta began feeling unwell and decided to sit out the third dive in the late afternoon. I remained with her as I was beginning to get bored with the diving anyway. We spent some time resting but also made out way to the corner of the beach in front of our dorms. The sand is beautiful soft white – one can imagine no better. The little ‘lagoon’ by the corner was nestled between boulders, shielded from the main beach, and the water was crystal clear in the sunshine. Like our own private pool, we soaked up the sun, sand and sea until Dax joined us after his dive.



Saturday Evening


For me, despite the earlier dives being a little disappointing, the one dive that made it all worthwhile was the night dive. It was still bright when we hit the water. Once in, we were surrounded by a passing shoal of fish. As the seas dimmed, the fish were still swimming around in large groups and schools were ‘sliced apart’ easily by our torchlight beams as they avoided the blinding light. It’s always exciting to spot things that other people don’t, or to see things for the first time. That’s the allure of the night dive for me. There’s always the chance of seeing something new and exciting at every turn of the torch. Spotted first was a little scorpion fish trying to blend into the rocks. We got up really close and it remained real still – not convinced that it had been found out. Also, we saw crabs hiding in some crevices. Of an edible size, red and encrusted, this was the first time that I had seen crabs underwater.

Next was a giant red sea slug, as big as my hand, a beautiful deep translucent red, lacking the flowery gills of the smaller nudibranches. Kenneth had pointed it out to me, and revealed later that this was also the first time he had seen something like this. If not for him, I would have missed it completely – a simple dark patch on the side of a rock. Also spotted was a small turtle. Turtles are very exciting because their shell camouflage is so good that you sometimes don’t see them until they are right below you. This one ‘appeared’ only two metres away from me as my light illuminated it. We watched as it slowly and sluggishly swam away. A medium sized lobster shrimp was caught waving its feelers out in the current from its hiding place. They were about 30 centimetres long, waving animatedly to and fro. I wonder what the waving was for…

Poking around some chambers under overhanging coral, I spotted something that struck me as curious. I could only see it through a very small hole. It was large, floating in the cave, certainly not rock, and seemingly part of something larger. Could be part of a very large fish, I thought. Curiosity piqued, and convinced that it wasn’t something embarrassingly simple like rock or algae, I motioned Kenneth to take a look as well. It was greyish in colour and translucent, and looked exactly like how the body of a large squid would look. There was a roughly tubular shape with a tapered end, and a distinct ‘fin’ on the side where a squid’s swimming arm is. The only problem was that it was missing a head, and squids don’t float solitarily in some rock chamber. Some kind of large egg case or egg mass was another possibility that crossed my mind. Staring intently for a few more moments, my eyes caught a momentary flap of the ‘fin’. The current had pushed slightly, and the ‘fin’ shifted just enough to allow my eyes to assimilate a three dimensional image of the object. My brain clicked in realisation. Quickly, I waved Kenneth onwards in embarrassment. It was a plastic bag! Transparent, covered in grime, corner folded over, fortuitously floating in a dark chamber, ready to trap any unsuspecting diver that wandered its way in its dark and deceiving game.

We continued into shallow water. With our lights switched off, bioluminescent flashes could be seen sparkling here and there as you waved your hand through the water. Levelling off and surfacing after 40 minutes.

Saturday Night
Sunday night was one to remember because it was the night that Kenneth was introduced to the night sky. Failing to spot Fiona Xie in the Diver’s Lodge across the channel, we went to our little ‘private’ lagoon to stargaze. The Milky Way was visible though not as clear as the night before. Going through the familiar objects with Kenneth, I felt great pride as Loretta began explaining Scorpius and the Milky Way to him. I set up the 10x binoculars ($40 from Carrefour) on a tripod beside my telescope and we spent many enjoyable minutes comparing the views of the same object through the binos and the scope. I showed Kenneth Jupiter, which elicited a Wow!, and answered his questions about astronomy. I believe his diving trips will never be quite the same again.

Sunday Morning
One highlight from the two dives we did on Sunday morning that I must put down is the case of the pensive puffer. Loretta had spotted it sitting on its belly on the sandy floor. “I’m just a coral! Please think I’m a coral!” it was surely thinking as we approached. It lay still, unmoving, but its huge eyes went round and round looking at me and Loretta! It was hilarious I tell you! Imagine, I was staring it in the eye while it was going “ladidadida… I’m just a little rock, please stop staring at me and think I’m just a little rock”, its eyes looking worriedly in every which way. It kept it up even when we pointed it out to another diver. Soon their whole group was swarming over the poor fellow. I don’t blame it – a puffer can’t swim fast and couldn’t swim away. It was just that its expression was definitely one to remember!

Sunday Afternoon
Before long, our little diving adventure was soon over. On the boat ride back, I did manage to see flying fish that leaped out of the water and flew an amazing distance, but we were soon in Mersing town ordering a Ramly. It was here that Loretta and I split ways with Dax. He caught the hell driver van back to Singapore while we caught a techno blasting lady’s taxi up to Tg. Resang where a group of amateur astronomer friends were staying…

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