Merry Fishmas Scuba Fans! Check out my underwater themed Christmas cards and send them to all your ocean loving friends!

- Get them here at Divesnaps.com

Read the original article here: Scuba Themed Christmas Cards

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1. Merry Christmas from the Philippines
2. Week 16: Surviving Christmas away from home
3. Scuba Diving at Playas del Coco

At Cara a Cara, you descend a line to approximately 20-25 meters to a coral ridge that shelters you from the current. Thankfully, the day the 8 of us went there was no current, so we were able to swim freely with the sharks when they weren’t feeding. The dive master brings down a sealed bucket with a fish head in it. The sharks will swim around you until the bucket is opened at which point, they fight for the fish, then quickly disappear back into the blue. Total dive time was approximately 40 minutes and we saw somewhere between 10 and 14 (Caribbean) grey reef sharks..

Read the original article here: Shark Dive Video – Roatan, Honduras

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Pretty much all of the dive shops or resorts on the island can book the Shark Dive for you, but if you’re short on time it might be a good idea to book this in advance, especially if you’re coming in high season, or on a cruise ship day. We purposely booked on a non-cruise ship day, and got really lucky as our group of 6 were the only ones scheduled for that day.

We arrived at Waihuka Dive Center on a beautiful sunny morning. We’d had quite a bit of rain over the previous few weeks, so the clear skies and calm waters only added to our excitement. After a few quick introductions we set up our gear and headed inside for a detailed briefing of the upcoming dive. The staff at Waihuka are professional yet friendly, and take their time to explain everything so you know exactly what to expect..

The dive site, Cara a Cara, which translates to ‘face to face’, is just a quick 10 minute boat ride from Waihuka’s shop in Coxen Hole. Usually there is quite a bit of current so a line is used to help you descend down to a sandy patch at the edge of the reef at about 18m (60ft), which backs on to a coral wall . The day we arrived however, we had near perfect conditions and no current at all, so we back-rolled in and descended without the line.

As we neared the sandy patch there were already several sharks swimming about. We all lined up, kneeling with our backs to the wall, snapping pictures as the sharks swam in front of us. After about 5 minutes the divemaster gave us the signal that we could swim freely among the sharks. In total there were about 12-14 Caribbean reef sharks swimming right up and around us, each about 2m to 3m long. It was amazing to see them swimming so calmly among us, and I could hardly believe how close they came, often within a foot or two before veering off in another direction.

After about 10 minutes or so of swimming among the sharks, the divemaster called us all back over to the wall, and the pulled the pin on the bucket of fish heads he brought down with him. This set the sharks into a feeding frenzy as they each tried to get in for a bite. One was so intent on getting a little snack that the bucket got stuck on his head. With in seconds it was all over and the bucket was empty. The lucky few who managed to get a bite darted off happily while a few others stuck around in hopes of more. As the sharks started to disperse we spent a few more minutes swimming around with them while the divemaster and Alex searched around the bucket looking for lost teeth. I was too busy getting in a few last minute pictures, but Alex managed to find two teeth and was nice enough to share with me.

As we ascended up towards the surface it was smiles all around. Our safety stop was filled with big expressions and enthusiastic double OKs, and as soon as we broke the surface, multiple cries of “Oh my god! That was awesome!” filled the boat. We all climbed back on board grinning from ear to ear enjoying the sunny ride back to Coxen Hole.

Read the original article here: Roatan Shark Dive with Waihuka Dive Center

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1. Shark Dive Video – Roatan, Honduras
2. Learning to Dive in the Philippines
3. 2 weeks vacationing and diving in Belize

The first cenote we dove was called ‘The Pit’. An hour drive from Playa del Carmen towards Tulum and then down a rough dirt road into the jungle, you arrive and quickly put on your gear to hide from the mosquitoes. There’s a 2 minute walk to the lip of the cenote which is about 10-15m across, then prepare yourself for an 8 meter drop to the water below. If I were to do this site again, I’d insist on having my gear lowered down by the pulley system, or I’d even throw my gear down separately. Kelly got a nice bruise from a regulator to the nose, and when I jumped in the crotch strap on my BCD was none too kind.

Once you’re in and gear checks are complete you rapidly descend down to 35m where there’s a cloud of hydrogen sulphide separating the freshwater and saltwater halocline. The cloud is created from rotted vegetation and smells of sulpher as you pass through it. At 40m you’re supposed to be below the cloud but it was unbelievably thick with nearly zero visibility on that day, so we weren’t able to find the human bones and pottery shards that are supposed to be laying along the bottom of a crevice.

Just to add some excitement to our near blind adventure, it was then that I realized I was ‘narced’ for the first time. Nitrogen Narcosis is vaguely like being drunk underwater with a feeling of elation, impairment, and numbness. Narcosis generally occurs when diving deeper than 30m and is caused by the increased solubility of the gas you’re breathing at greater depths. There’s no real danger to divers who are narced as long as they’re aware of the situation. Ascending to lesser depths reverses the condition, so I made a ‘drinky-drinky’ motion to Kelly, letting her know I was a little tipsy and we started to climb back above the acid cloud. Still, it was an interesting minute or two trying to determine which way was up and out in near zero visibility while my head spun round and round. :)

Emerging from the cloud, looking up, you’ll see the most amazing rays of sunshine filtering down from above. We rejoined our group and did a multi-tiered ascent, exploring the various cave pockets, tree roots, and stalactites. After a safety stop, we surfaced, attached our gear to the pulley, then climbed up a section of the wall, back to the lip of the cenote. Whew! That one was quite the adventure.

Our next dive was just a few minutes back along the dirt road at Dos Ojos (Two Eyes). While The Pit is exactly that, a big pit… Dos Ojos is a huge series of interconnected cave systems. Popular with both snorklers, cenote divers, and cave divers there’s a well marked rope system that leads cenote divers through the caves. It’s a significantly shallower dive at around 8-12m as you swim between stalagmites and stalactites, peering back into the dark caves with your flashlight and wondering what might live outside the reaches of it’s beam. It’s spooky, but amazingly beautiful at the same time. Watching the sun filter down as you enter a cavern that opens up above. Swimming through openings carved into the rock over thousands and thousands of years by the slowly moving waters. There’s even these low pitched echoes thrumming through the water. My guess was it was cars passing above us and the sound coming down through the stone. After 45 minutes we were back at the entry point and my teeth were chattering. That freshwater gets cold! I highly recommend a 5mm+ wetsuit if you’ve got one.

A few weeks later we decided to do another day of cenote dives. Our first dive took us to Cenote Angelita (Little Angel), just outside of Tulum. Similar to The Pit, it is a wide, deep, sinkhole descending down to 2 shelves. One at 60m and another at around 35m. After a short walk from the truck, there’s a small jump of a couple meters into the water. We dove down on the side going down to 35m, descending through the hydrogen sulphide cloud. This time we were able to get below and look up at the swirling mists above. And even from above the cloud, there’s an amazingly spooky view of root systems on a little island surrounded by clouds.

Our next dive was at Grand Cenote. Similar to Dos Ojos, it was shallow and through many interconnected cave systems. Good buoyancy and fin control is necessary on these types of dives. One of the other divers was kicking up a lot of silt and we had to wait for it to settle so we could see where we were going. At one point we got into a nice bowl cavern and turned off all our lights, just watching the natural light play in the water.

All in all, we had 4 great dives and I’d highly recommend cenote diving around Tulum, Mexico. They were feature dives for each of us and a really nice change of pace with stunning views to be experienced and captured.

So, if you’re not claustrophobic and are diving Cozumel. Take a day off the reef and head towards Tulum for an underground experience you won’t soon forget. Pack your warmest wetsuit. Don’t forget your torch. Keep an eye out for freshwater cave monsters… and I’m sure you’ll be glad you visited Mexico’s cenotes.

Read the original article here: Cenote Diving, Tulum, Mexico

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When we arrived in Placencia, we didn’t realize it was coming into low season and rainy season. For most of our 2 weeks, it’s rained a little on some days and a lot on others. We’re also often the only people in the beachfront resort hotel we’re staying in. So we’ve had a staff of 10+ taking care of us each day as we lounge by the pool when the weather cooperates.

We’re staying a 2 minute drive out from the village in Placencia. It’s quiet, and a bit removed from even the slow pace of town. There’s little to do but sit on beach chairs watching the pelicans flying by, or going for a swim in the pool. Our tans have vastly improved.

Last Friday we went for a day of diving with Seahorse Divers around Laughing Bird Caye. 30 minutes away by speedboat; we dropped off some snorklers at the Caye, then proceeded out to Pompion Caye Wall. It’s was a steep and deep wall dive down to 30m and the wall continues down into the blue. We saw 3 large moray eels, a couple big lobsters and crabs, and a few barracudas. We also saw a huge eagle ray cruising below us while doing our safety stop.

During the quick trip back to Laughing Bird Caye for lunch some dolphins showed up to play in our wake. The boat was stopped and we grabbed fins and masks and jumped into the water. They weren’t shy in the least, swimming right below us and circling us as we free dove down a few meters to get closer. For about 10 minutes we chased them around the boat while they made their clicking chatter noises and played amongst us. Swimming with wild dolphins has been on our wish list for a long time and it really made the day memorable.

After lunch the boat took us around the other side of Laughing Bird Caye and we dove the sloping reef and sandy patches. Visibility had worsened considerably to the point where it looked like it was snowing underwater. We found a few arrow crabs, cleaner shrimp, and a toad fish which I’ve never seen before.

A week of laying in the sun and running from the clouds later, we came back to Seahorse to do the whale shark dive. A few days before the full moon and until the quarter moon each May the snappers spawn which draws the whale sharks to Placencia to feed. We rode over some choppy waves for an hour to Gladden Spit, checked in with the rangers and then jumped into the blue searching for schools of snapper and hopefully a whale shark! We dropped down to about 20m and swam our asses off… against current, trying to keep up with the schools of fish. We saw snappers spawning below us, but no whale sharks drifting up from the blue.

We surfaced and headed into the shallows for lunch. We had a bite to eat, a little snorkel around the sandy patches, and then a call came over the radio that they had spotted a whale shark on the surface. We sped out to the site and jumped into the water with our masks and fins. 10m away was a 3-4m whale shark with four or five remoras tagging along. It was only there for a minute and we swam frantically to keep up with it in on the choppy surface before it dove back down into the blue.

We did our last dive hoping to meet up with the whale shark, but it wasn’t meant to be. We saw schools of horse eyed jacks, and some big barracudas and trigger fish were swimming along with us, but apparently we’d only snorkel with one of the giants that day.

We headed home elated, but still shy of our goal of seeing a fully grown whale shark at depth. Halfway there, one of our engines ran out of gas and we had to hang out in the shelter of a nearby group of mangroves while we waited for some additional fuel to be driven out to us, rather than risk the possibility of losing the other engine in the rougher waters. An hour later we were home, happy, and exhausted.

We’re hanging out in Belize for a couple more days before heading up to Belize City to fly over to Mexico. You know, it’s whale shark season in Mexico from June till September. ;)

Read the original article here: 2 weeks vacationing and diving in Belize

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2. Week 47: Diving Sipadan and Mabul
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We got on the local bus to Liberia at 9am which meanders in and out of each town on the way to it’s destination; picking up and dropping off school children, workers, and food and drink vendors as it goes. Liberia is approximately an hour away from Tamarindo by car, but the local bus takes anywhere from 1.5 hours to 2.5 hours to get there. We got off the bus before Liberia at the turn off to Playas del Coco (shortly after Filadelfia) and switched buses. Our next bus came along within 45 minutes and we continued on through Sardinal. Within a half hour, we had completed our 3.5 hour journey arriving at Coco.

First off, we stopped in at Deep Blue Diving and arranged for 2 local dives the next morning to check out the area. They quickly took care of the paperwork and fitted us with gear. At $100 USD per person for two local dives and gear rental, it’s more expensive than most of the Asia dive rates we’re familiar with, but seems to be the norm in Costa Rica. Though they did arrange a discount rate for us with the hotel where they do their pool training (La Puerta del Sol) and were kind enough to drive us and our bags there in the shop truck.

After a brain wracking check-in; due to us forgetting our passports at the house in Tamarindo, we wandered into town searching for lunch. Kelly and I have pretty much figured out our go-to dishes for a typical local menu. Kelly will opt for a chicken burrito, while I lean towards a casado con pollo (A typical Costa Rican meal with rice, black or red beans, salad, a chicken fillet, and a fried plantain or banana). Accompanied with a couple Pilsen beers, we quickly recovered from the earlier trek, but headed back to the hotel to beat the 36°C midday heat.

La Puerta del Sol has a large salt water pool where we worked on our sunburns for a while, after which we scoped out the sports bar for the upcoming Super Bowl game. Chatting with a few expats and tourists, we found the scene was quite different from Tamarindo. While Tamarindo is a laid back little surf town and most of the people there are backpackers and surfers traveling on the cheap, Playas del Coco has an older expat and family vacation feel with larger resorts, souvenir tables and shops leading to the beach, and golf carts roaming the streets. Kelly and I stuck around for another round, then sat down at a local pizzeria for dinner before an early turn in to prepare for out set of dives the next day.

Waking up the next morning, we prepped, had a bite to eat, and headed to the beach for our 8AM departure. Upon arrival, we found that we were the only divers going out that day which is a bit of a blessing and a curse. We hate diving in large groups because of the underwater traffic. All those fins can kick up a lot of sand into Kelly’s photos, but at the same time we view diving as one of the few social activities that gets us out of the house and we’ve been home bound a lot with work lately. Deep Blue ferried us out to the dive boat, which had a great dive setup with lots of room and a rear jump deck. Our gear was already assembled and waiting; another thing I’m slightly torn about. I like the service, but I prefer to set up my own gear just to give it a once over and make sure everything is working and done right.

Fifteen minutes later we were at our first site called ‘Punta Argentina’. We geared up, did a safety check and jumped in, where I found that my regulator had a slow leak. I’ve found it’s a pretty common occurrence with rental gear and not a big deal, but as we descended I found it kept a steady stream of bubbles in-front of my mask. I fiddled with it for five minutes or so before switching to my secondary regulator. Bubbles gone, I could finally take advantage of the 20m visibility.

The dive sites we’ve visited in Costa Rica’s north Pacific region are volcanic and lacking in any real reef structure from what I’ve seen. Our DM pointed out 2 clown shrimp, but that was pretty much the only macro life we saw on any of our 4 Playas del Coco dives. What was in abundance was porcupine fish and rays. I’ve never seen so many porcupine fish crawling the rocks and every few minutes you’d see spotted eagle rays and stingrays approaching from the blue. Sitting atop the sand, there was plenty of skate and we sniffed out a couple of moray eels among the rocks.

About 30 minutes into the dive, we came across a large stingray with 2 spears protruding straight up from it’s back. Kelly didn’t want to take a picture of a dead stingray and we were going to move on before realizing it was still alive! The spears were two different types so my thinking is that someone shot it, failed to kill it and at a later date someone else attempted to put it out of its misery after seeing the first spear, but also failed. The resilient ray swam off, leaving us saddened about the whole situation.

One additional perk to diving with Deep Blue: They don’t have a dive time limit. Too often, we’ve been restricted to 45 minutes and have still had another 15-20 minutes or more of air remaining. If I’ve paid for the whole tank, I’d like to use it! All within safety limits of course, but I find the 45 minute rule ridiculous. At around 1000 PSI, we did our safety stop and came up after 57 minutes below. We swapped my leaky regulator with a spare, had some water, pineapple, a couple cookies, and lounged in the sun, chatting with our DM about Cocos Island where he’s had the opportunity to lead dives with the hammerheads. Unfortunately the price point is keeping us away. At $4000 per person for a week of liveaboard diving, we’ll have to pass it by this trip.

The second dive of the day was at a site called “Tortuga” (Turtle). We descended to 20m, circling a pinnacle of volcanic rock. More eagle rays and stingrays floated around us and as we came over a crest of rocks we found four 1.5m white tipped reef sharks resting on the sand below us. Circling around them, we lay on the bottom briefly then moved in for some pictures. Swimming away from the pinnacle, our DM lead us to a fairly large wreck which I poked my head into. Yup, full of puffers. Drifting the length of the ship and peering over the bow, we found ten white tip reef sharks resting in the sand below. We returned to the shallows of the pinnacle and spent the rest of the dive peering in holes for golden moray eels.

After the two great dives, we signed up for another two the following day and returned to town to get dried out and have a deco beer. That night, we went to the Papagayo steakhouse where Kelly and I both ordered the surf and turf. When our plates arrive, we each had two 6 ounce steak fillets and 4 good sized shrimp, plus sides. Kelly couldn’t even start her second steak. An impressive plate for $20 each, but perhaps a little overkill. If you’re coming to Costa Rica, be prepared for some huge portion sizes. It’s rare that we finish a meal here.

The following day, we arrived at the beach to find a group of 10 people waiting for the dive boat. Thankfully, three of them were headed to the Catalina Islands on the alternate boat and two of the others were doing courses so it was just five of us fun diving together, perfect. We drove a little farther out to sea than the previous day to a site called ‘Virador’. Jumping in, we found that the visibility had worsened considerably since the previous day to 10m at the most. Much the same as the day before, puffers, rays, moray eels, and skate. Just much harder to photograph and find.

Our final dive was at Punta Argentina again, but began a little further east at ‘La Cruz’. Again, with the limited visibility we saw much the same as the day before, just less of it. Kelly did come across an octopus wedged deep in-between two boulders, but he wasn’t interested in posing for us.

That evening, we went to La Dolce Vita for another pizza and watched the Super Bowl (and a Canadian expat at the next table losing $500). Go Saints!

The following day we checked out and walked to the bus stop for the 3 hour trip home. On our way there, we saw a sign at a tourist info center that would arrange $20 shuttle transfers to Tamarindo every hour. What sounded like a great deal and would have saved us 2 hours was too good to be true. After waiting for the owner to show up for an hour (Ah, tico time… Pura vida!) and missing the 9AM bus, we left to catch the 10AM bus back to Tamarindo via Liberia.

All in all, we had 4 very nice dives with some larger ocean life at Playas del Coco. The lack of macro life is unfortunate and with the widely varying visibility and higher costs, the diving in Costa Rica has been a little hit and miss. But I’m glad we had the opportunity to get back in the water and it’s added to my anticipation for diving in Roatan, Honduras on the Caribbean side of Central America where we’ll be moving in a few short weeks.

Read the original article here: Scuba Diving at Playas del Coco

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3. Week 14: Diving, diving, and more diving

I’ve finally gotten around to putting all of my underwater photography from our year in Southeast Asia into a book. Just in time for Blurb’s “Best Books Contest”. Finalists are based on the number of votes so this is where you come in. Please go here and vote for my book! You’ll need to register (so they can make sure people only vote once) but it’s quick and it would mean a lot to me.

- Vote for my book here! (Click the blue ‘Vote’ button on the top left of the page)

You can even purchase it, if you want your very own copy (but don’t worry, it’s not required to vote).

About the book:

Bottom Time
Southeast Asia from below
“After 10 years in the Internet industry, web designer Kelly Hale and developer Mike Schimanowsky sold all their worldly belongings, bid farewell to friends and family, packed a laptop and traded in the daily 9-5 for a life of nomadic freelancing and travel.

365 days, and 90 dives later, these are some of their favorite photos from our year in Southeast Asia.”

About Blurb

For those of you not familiar with Blurb, it’s a great resource for creating your very own book. For Christmas last year, I made a book, for both Mike’s and my families. It was a great gift, since we weren’t gonna be home for the holidays and not only did our parents love it cause it was full of pictures of us, but the quality was really great, and it was easy to create.

All you need to do is download the BookSmart® software (or InDesign® templates if you’re an experienced designer) for either Mac or PC, and start creating. The software lets you import photos from your computer or from photo-sharing sites like Flickr, and Picasa, and it will even slurp your blog for you. It comes with a bunch of templates for layout, as well as backgrounds, borders and themes. Once you’ve created your book you upload it to Blurb, and order away. You have the option of hard cover or soft cover, and can choose premium paper for that extra professional look.

Most people use Blurb to document their vacations, or their wedding, and especially their children and pets. But there are also lots of people out there using Blurb to self publish their photos, stories, or illustrations. Ever wanted to write a children’s book, or publish your photography. Blurb allows you to do this, and gives you a place to sell your book. You set the price (above the production cost) and keep the profits.

The first time around my book was purely for family, but this time I wanted something less personal in hopes of selling a few copies. I chose only my best shots and concentrated on subjects that might appeal to a broader audience. I’ll let you know how things go and if I manage to sell any, but for now, please vote for me!

- Vote for my book here!

Read the original article here: Vote for my Underwater Photography Book!

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View on YouTube

Read the original article here: Sipadan Dive Video

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Just wanted to let everyone know that the rest of the Sipadan & Mabul pictures have been uploaded! You can check them all out here.

Read the original article here: Sipadan & Mabul Pictures Uploaded

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The Philippines pretty much had it all as far as I was concerned. Great macro and muck diving in the Dauin area. Fantastic wall dives at Siquijor. Beautiful soft corals and schools of fish at Apo Island. Turtles at Moalboal and sharks at Malapascua. It’s a package that was hard to beat. Traveling through Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, I never came across a place with the diversity that the Visayas offered. Sure, there were some amazing hi-lights along the way like the whale shark in Thailand and manta rays in Indonesia, but never matching the sheer range of corals, creatures, and dive opportunities. Until Sipadan…

Early Tuesday morning we left the Perhentians, taking a spine crushing speed boat ride to the mainland while we hugged our laptop bags away from the spray and rain. 10 hours of taxi rides and planes later we arrived in Tawau, Borneo. Another hour later, we were in Semporna hunting for a late dinner.

The next day we woke at 7am to catch the boat to the island of Mabul. Upon arriving at the Billabong Scuba homestay, we found out they had overbooked and moved us to the longhouse next door. We soon found ourselves in a rundown 2m x 3m room with only a couple grungy single beds in it, shared bathrooms, and set meals. The thing is, there’s no middle tier options on Mabul. It’s either $30/night per person at a homestay/longhouse, or $3-400/night at one of the few resorts. So we were expecting things to be a little rustic and rundown, but even then it was a bit of a shock. We don’t do a lot of budget hosteling.

Billabong was the only place that had been able to guarantee us 2 full days at Sipadan, and we booked a month and a half before we arrived. Most places had no availability at all, and many people we met said they had booked their 2 and 3 day Sipadan trips 4-6 months in advance! Sipadan has a very strict permit system allowing only 120 divers a day on the site.

We did a number of dives at Mabul over the next 5 days. Initially, we weren’t overly impressed with the south side of the island. It’s touted as a macro paradise, but we saw surprisingly little and the visibility was quite poor. We did eventually end up seeing a ghost pipefish, some interesting nudibranch, crocodile fish, and quite a few crinoid shrimp and anenome shrimp at a site called Coral Garden.

There’s also a very large man made reef on the south side with large schools of fish. On the north side of the island, there’s a 25m wall with a few great sites on it. Lobster wall (alas, no lobsters were found) and Ross reef, as well as Eel Garden were great dives. We saw a number of turtles and stingrays, some shrimp, moray eels, plus 20 or 30 nudibranch. I also found 2 huge cuttlefish at Eel Garden, and a big Flying Gurnard which was a first for me.

There’s also a site called Seaventures. It’s an old oil rig that was gutted and ended up being turned into a dive resort. While interesting and there’s lots of sea life under it, it’s also a bit depressing. The site is basically a big pile of trash dumped off the rig. From toilets and iron bars to filing cabinets, they just threw everything overboard and 10 years later it’s now a faux reef. While it’s full of life now, I can’t imagine what else was originally swept away into the ocean and I don’t want to promote dumping trash into the ocean because 10 years later fish can hide in it… but we did see a frog fish.

Our first day at Sipadan, we took a speedboat to the island around 9am. Signing in with the permit people, they gave us a flag to identify our boat. We geared up and headed off to South Point, which is known for shark sightings. :) Jumping in, we first noticed the amazing reef. Beautiful hard corals as far as you can see, huge fans, and thousands of tiny fish everywhere. Dropping over the edge of the wall, we saw our first shark within a minute. A meter long white tip reef shark, cruising around 12m.

We dropped down to about 25m. With visibility stretching out to 50+ meters, we quickly saw small groups of white tip and black tip reef sharks patrolling. Then, looking down below to 40 or 50m, we found big grey reef sharks around 3-4m long. Spinning in circles trying to see all the sharks passing within meters of us, interspersed between them were turtles headed to the surface for air, or camped out on the rock shelves. For 50 minutes we just drifted along in the current, flabbergasted at the sheer number of sharks and turtles. Coming back above the wall, we were again in a vast field of coral full of every kind of fish imaginable. Easily the best dive I’ve ever done.

The following 5 dives at Sipadan followed a similar script. Beautiful coral entries, deep walls, surrounded by sharks and turtles, only to return to the huge coral beds for our safety stop. Easily, we saw 75 sharks and 100 turtles over those 6 dives. Plus, it’s trigger fish nesting season. At Hanging Gardens we came across hundreds of trigger fish ascending the wall and when we came up for our safety stop, we found them nesting in pockets of coral as far as you could see. Unbelievable. Even better, almost every creature we came across is so unaccustomed to human contact that they hadn’t developed fear or aggression towards us, so Kelly got some fantastic pictures.

The 5 sites we dove were:

• South Point - Shark Central. Black tips, white tips, grey reef sharks. Lots of turtles. Trigger fish everywhere. Slow drift.
• Barracuda Point (twice) - We saw a barracuda tornado, big trevallies and schools of jackfish. Lots of turtles. Fast drift.
• Hanging Gardens - More white tip sharks, turtles, and nesting trigger fish.
• Mid Reef - White tip/black tip sharks and turtles.
• The Drop Off (Turtle Tomb) - Too many turtles to count. A school of bump head parrotfish at 8m, schools of batfish, white tip sharks. Briefly explored the turtle tomb where many turtles (and some divers) get lost and have perished in the twisty caves and tunnels.

All in all it was an amazing experience. Easily the best 6 dives I’ve ever done and more than making up for the cramped quarters, food, and long travels. Plus the other travelers we met were so genuinely excited to be diving one of the worlds premier sites it was impossible to be put off. We’ll be retelling and reliving tales of the shark that passed within inches of my face or the turtle that chased us into the tomb for what I hope will be a long time.

(More pictures to come, Kelly just hasn’t gotten around to editing them all!)

Read the original article here: Week 47: Diving Sipadan and Mabul

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2. 2 weeks vacationing and diving in Belize
3. Sipadan & Mabul Pictures Uploaded