On May 24th I jumped on a plane to Phuket (in the south) with a few fellow divers, and upon arriving there we were taken to the local port where our live-aboard boat was waiting to whisk us away into the Andaman Sea. There I hoped we would witness the wonders of unspoilt reefs, underwater colour palettes beyond my widest imaginings and lots and lots of sharks!
Our destination was a group of fairly spread out islands called The Similans. The boat travelled overnight that first night to get us there, and upon awaking at 7am I was greeted by a beautiful sunny morning; glorious golden sunlight rippled blindingly along the surface of the vibrant blue water, which was calm now. Last night had been a little rough – I had been rolling around in bed with the swell of the waves! Lucky I don’t get seasick!
I went upstairs to the middle deck and had a cup of tea with everyone. I was still half asleep. (Anyone who has ever had to see me at 7.00am would vouch for the fact that I am most certainly not a morning person!) However, sleepy eyed or not, I plodded onto the wet deck and peeled myself yawningly in my wetsuit, managed to attach my weight belt without dropping it on my toe, and got upright with my BCD (jacket) and tank on without falling over. Amazing. My giant stride entry into the sea was more of a giant roll, however, in the moment of hitting that gorgeously refreshing water, my senses were suddenly awakened and, floating at the surface I blinked at my surroundings as if I had just woken up! My dive buddy, Crowley (a Similans Veteran) smiled and said, “look down.”
I dunked my mask into the water, and immediately choked on a mouthful of seawater as I gasped in utter awe at the scene below me. Letting out an excited shriek which was half bubbles half sound, I turned back to Crowley with a huge grin, “OH MY GOD! Have you seen that…I can’t believe…WOW…that’s AMAZING…seriously, WOW!”
“Shall we?” He signalled to descend.
I emptied the air out of my BCD, put in my regulator and slipped below the surface. The scene below me was laid out like something from my dreams. As if looking through glass, I could see directly to the bottom, which was about 31 metres deep. Large shoals of tiny silvery fish swam through mid-water, and brighter species were further down, darting in between rocks and hiding in soft coral beds. Looking up at the surface, the sunlight appeared to explode on the surface, so bright that I had to look away, but the clear water allowed the light to reflect straight down to the white sand bottom with illumination that clarified every tiny detail of the marine life surrounding me. Tiny shrimp no bigger than my finger could be seen scuttling around on hard coral. Majestically coloured angel fish swam around in pairs as if involved in some ritual of courtship, and the striped squirrel fish kept close together under a rock, wide-eyed and swimming frantically but, (comically) going nowhere. We even saw a number of prickly-looking lion fish, which have a multitude of fins that look like black and red and white butterfly wings, and are extremely venomous. Needless to say, we kept a polite distance from those particular residents.
As we moved through the site, some divers gathered around a rock set apart from the rest, and as I swam over I saw a giant moray eel gaping out from his cave. Head stuck up, eyes roving round, and displaying his razor sharp teeth every few seconds, this was not one of the friendlier locals. I could see that the length of his body coiled through the entire rock…and at a guess he was well over a metre long! We took photos and then left him to his breakfast hunting.
Upon surfacing 47 minutes later we were all chattering in delight, and I practically leapt out of the water, feeling energised and impatient for the next dive. I followed my nose upstairs and saw breakfast laid out: eggs, sausages, toast and fruit. Having worked up such an appetite with my early exercise I tucked in and spent the next 2 hours relaxing with a book, before jumping in the water again for our next dive.
The first dive of the following day (Elephant Head Rock)was undoubtedly the peak of my entire adventure so far. I had been following our dive leader through a system of swim-throughs (areas where rocks had fallen or hollowed out to create short tunnels), and as I swam out of one tunnel formation, the dive leader turned around to get my attention, giving the underwater sign for ‘shark’. My heart immediately started beating more rapidly in excitement, and I finned faster to catch up with him in case the shark disappeared. As I came to the edge of a large, flat granite rock, and peeked around the wall to my left, I caught my first glimpse of the shark – a creature that I have dreamed of seeing in the wild since I was a child. It was a white tip reef shark, probably only 2 metres in length, and swimming a few metres away at the same depth as me. I was struck by how fluid and graceful it was; lead grey in colour, tight and sleek and muscular, with a flat hard line for a mouth like a grimace, and an almost two-dimensional cold dead stare, giving it a look of being in a bad mood. Yet, I have never seen anything look so grumpy* and so beautiful at the same time!
*(To give him credit, I’m sure he wasn’t grumpy, that’s just an example of my need as a human to personify other animals with human characteristics in order to better relate to them as individuals!)
That dive we saw 3 more white tip reef sharks, and I was heartbroken when we had to begin our descent. I watched them on the way back up and saw them circling far below and I thought, “Bye for now, but I’ll be seeing you again…”
(And I definitely will. This is only the beginning of my shark-chasing days!)
The days meandered along in a relaxed manner: 4 dives a day, meals in between, and nights spent at leisure, listening to music, drinking beer, playing cards, not to mention our late night guitar sessions spent on the upper-deck under an infinite starry sky. It was an incredibly spiritual experience to sit up there under the heavens, knowing that we were somewhere in the middle of the ocean, miles away from any civilisation.
Next stop is Borneo, and Malaysia. Watch this space!
