What a great day it was out at sea today! Absolutely favourable sun and water conditions. Vis was a good 4-5 meters and it was bright as day even at 16m - stunning!
Thanks to the gorgeous weather, we managed to catch up with a whole bunch of old friends this weekend: Yellow emperor, sea grass filefish, swimming crab, honey head damsels, yellowfin angelfish, false clown anemonefish, rabbit fish (startling school!), marine worms, absolutely stunning sea slugs, paradise whiptails (we were very happy to see them again cos it's been awhile - they usually hang out on the sandflats where its dark), squirrelfish, copper banded angelfish (we NEVER get enough of them, they're absolutely facinating to watch - feeding off the coral crops for polyps and always in their pretty pairs), icon stars, blotched goatfish, blue spotted ray, false scorpionfish, sergent majors, sandperch, frillfin gobies, diamond wrasses, scaly damsel and heaps of other damsel species... it was incredible!
Since the vis was good, we took advantage of it my venturing into the "seafan garden" round SW point to the southern stretch of Hantu. We didn't manage to explore the appropriate depths where the huge gorgonians sprout, due to time, but we knew when we're near the area where the seafans grow, continuously flushed by currents, as we approached the area we observed an increasing number of sea whips and seafans. It was beautiful.
Some of our enthusiastic divers also took a swim to the shore and visited the mangroves, and spotted schooling halfbeaks! Excellent!
An absolutely huge and stunning crop of Montipora.sp along Hantu's southern stretch