Things that go bump in the day!

*Bump! * I felt something crash into me as I was righting myself and clearing my mask. Thinking I had accidentally come up against some coral, I turned around and looked into the eyes of a bold damselfish! It was a fairly big specimen (around 15cm) and it was giving me a glare like it had the right of way and slowly swam away. If fishes could talk, I swear it would have gone ‘tsk tsk’ like some heartland aunty.

With vis being quite decent, schools of juvenile damsels, wrasses can be seen congregating around the coral. Numerous pairs of copper banded angelfish can be seen flitting around the various outcroppings. There was even an inquisitive one that hung around me for a while checking me out on the left then the right before it lost interest and swam away.


Honeyhead damsel

Camouflaged dusky colored gobies stand at guard, perched motionless outside their holes before an inquisitive diver approaches too near and sends them darting back to their holes in a cloud of slit. A pair of cardinal fish hides in the shade of kelp from the current, their dorsal fins erect. For their case, they allowed me to get close. Apparently they would rather deal with a nosy diver than fight the strong current!

Before you reckoned that all I saw was fish, there’s a whole abundance of different species of coral that were seen too. Impromptu pop quizzes on coral given by the dive guide ensured that we learnt how to identify some of the more common ones that populate Hantu. Tubeworms with their pompous plumage (feeding feelers) out were also spotted dotting the coral.

I’ll like to extend thanks to Jeff, Joshua and Debby for a good dive. And I’ll see the rest of you others (Yiru, MeiBao, Weiming and Choonyee) at the next Hantu dive!