Pattaya June July 2012 Trip, Our 2nd Dive with Remarkable Rays

After getting out of the tank with the big sharks (I believe they call it Zone 2) I figured the other tank would probably be an anticlimax. I hadn’t scoped out the tanks before diving as Don had and instead had spent about an hour chatting about just about everything you can imagine with Ali, Underwater World’s Iranian dive master.

As I said in the previous post, Ali is an interesting very personable fellow. During our hour long conversation he spoke excitedly about a proposal he has made to the owners of Underwater World to expand in a big way by adding another gigantic outside pool and basically making it a “reef world” that would provide the best possible interactive experience with a plethora of sealife for both scuba divers and snorkelers. I would LOVE to see that happen.

Once again, Don managed to “do his thing” by talking Ali into letting us take a small net bag filled with 10 feed fish into the tank with us. Since it wasn’t exactly feeding time for that tank I don’t think Ali and the tank management really wanted us to do it, but it didn’t take too much pleading to make it happen. It reminded me of all the times my mom used to say, “Don’t eat that cookie; you’ll spoil your supper.”

Getting into the other marine tank wasn’t nearly as easy as the first. To get into the tank with the big sharks all we had to do was drop into the big concrete bathtub that performed as an anteroom, open the steel gate and swim right in. In the second tank we had to gingerly make our way along a narrow concrete ledge and then just as carefully lower our selves, weighted heavily down with all our dive gear, into the water off a rock wall. Going through all that I realized that getting out would be an even tougher process (and it was).

I went on regulator before dropping into the water figuring to put my flippers on while sitting on the bottom. My own fins are much easier to put on and take off, requiring only a tug of a thick spring that fits around the back of my Achilles over my dive bootie. To someone familiar with them the loaner fins would probably be just as simple to use but in this case one of the fins straps had come off and I wasn’t familiar with how to reattach it. I called Ali over and he took care of it for me. A full 5 or 6 minutes later and I was finally ready to explore the new tank.

I shot a couple puffs of air into my BCD to get me off the bottom and went looking to see what I could see. Right in the middle of the tank on the other side of the viewing tunnel I saw a swirling mass of excited fish and realized that Don was right in the middle of it. I pressed the on button on my camera and made my way over to him.

Immediately I feel a much different vibe in the second tank. Although for the most part the fish are smaller they are more colorful and move around quickly. But what really makes that tank pop are the rays. I LOVE those things. They are amazing creatures.  They don’t swim, they fly, their wings moving them every bit as gracefully through their element as eagles do through theirs.

At just past 5:30 in the video watch the ray as it leisurely approaches in the distance. It reaches the top middle of the viewing tunnel and suddenly hits the accelerator, shooting forward and reaching me literally in the blink of an eye. It streaks directly under me and I am barely able to turn the camera fast enough to follow it through the viewfinder. They are most certainly underwater athletes and like any athlete rays apparently feel compelled to exercise their athleticism.

On that note, at 5:58 one of the muscularly nimble rays takes a swooping lap around the tank. I attempt to follow it and I do manage to keep mostly within camera range, albeit clumsily and pathetically considering I am swimming with all my might on the inside of its flight path. Just the same, I had a grand time trying to stay up with it, something I wouldn’t recommend normally while on scuba gear, since it causes one to really suck up the air. At deeper depths that’s how you pack extra nitrogen into your body tissues, never a good thing; but with me barely beneath the surface in a shallow tank, I hardly used any air at all I think.

As graceful as the rays are though, whenever they approached, nuzzling, flapping and pushing at me, looking to be fed, I felt like laughing into my regulator from the goofy appearance they effect with those big, seemingly smiling mouths of theirs. Several times while feeding them bits of fish my gloved fingers would get nibbled on. It wasn’t painful. From the feel of it, instead of teeth it felt more like they have a hard upper and lower bony ridges with which to manipulate the food in their mouths.

I think the funniest part of the embedded YouTube clip takes place starting at 2:09 when a ray approaches Don right in front of me and begins to nuzzle and hungrily chomp on my dive partner’s head. Even though I know he’s not hurting Don I can’t help myself when I see the ray almost envelop the top of Don’s head with his munching mouth; I reach out and push the hungry animal away.

The images of the hungry fish completely hiding the person feeding depicts something I’ve already experienced many times, even when I was still but a snorkeler. There are reefs around Puerto Galera where fish are so used to being fed by humans that they similarly engulf people offering them food. I learned though that that behavior is not natural as I tried bringing food with me on dives in the Coral Cover area on the other side of the peninsula from Sabang and the fish simply shied away from me.

Starting at just before 5:40 there is one rather somber scene played out on the video when Ali is seen removing a dead denizen from the confines of the tank. It had been dead for quite some time based on the look of it. Don had been snooping behind all the bits and inside all the nooks and crannies and discovered the stiffly lifeless fish under and behind one of the fake coral features.

Two very rubbery bodied spotted sharks kindly swim together in a circle almost directly below me and I take advantage by recording several seconds of it. Watch how they seem to use a loaded spring effect as they move their tails side to side which easily moves them forward through the water. To go where they want to go they simply aim their heads in the desired direction. Both the rays and the sharks, closely related cousins on the family tree, are natural engineering marvels of locomotion. Humans are clunky half-baked third-rate rattletrap model-Ts by comparison.

All too soon it was time to end the dive, but we had high hopes that Ali would allow us to finish up the considerable amount of air we had left in our tanks by giving us a third dive in the fresh water tank with the huge catfish and arapaima. That would definitely have been a great way to end the day but it was not to be, and in a way, it was our own fault.

Evidently, we had so impressed a visiting Russian family that they decided to give a tank dive a try. We were disappointed but took it in stride. As we rinsed our gear we watched the three young fellows go about suiting up, seemingly for the first time ever.  “Holy cow Ali, I would NEVER want your job!”

“Why is that?” he asked.

“I know it’s just a shallow tank but still, being responsible for the training and safety of three complete scuba novices in a tank full of sharks just does not sound like a lot of fun to me.”

He smiled. “It’s not a problem. I’m used to it. Anyway, I’m so sorry I won’t be able to get you guys into the freshwater tank.”

We hung around for another hour to see how Ali’s clients would do as first time divers. Funny thing, the biggest of the three lads, a muscular crew-cut blonde fellow in his late teens or early twenties, never did enter the tank. We didn’t stick around long enough to find out, but he must not have been able to handle breathing with the regulator. The other two, one a kid of about 14, and the other a young man that I would guess to be in his late twenties, eventually did quite well; although they probably used up just about all the air in their tanks the way they were sucking it down like crazy. I was the same way when I first started, the anxiety and the newness made me feel like I needed to breathe in again as soon as I exhaled. 

If I ever get back to Pattaya again I'll be sure to dive with the sharks and rays at Underwater World again. For me, once was NOT enough.

Pattaya June July 2012 Trip, We dive with sharks

Our recent two week trip to Pattaya Thailand, our second in two months, lasted about a week longer than I would have liked. Two reasons: First, after one week I came down with an awful cold that felt more like the flu; and second, we missed our kids—a lot. It’s understandable that contracting an achy body cold could put a damper on a trip, but I was surprised at myself for being so homesick for my kids. The fact that we took one of them along with us in April on the first trip I think greatly stemmed missing all of them that time; but this time it was just us, and “us,” it seems, was not enough. Strange—it really surprised me; so, a little personal epiphany this time around.

Once again we learned that the area around Pattaya in Chonburi Province is chock full of must-see places to visit. It amazes me that so many people, when I tell them that we go to Pattaya, have no idea that there are so many things to do and see there, other than the bars, nightclubs and beaches that Pattaya is evidently mostly known for. Sure, there are bars and girls aplenty in the evening hours, but during the day there are more family oriented activities than anyone could possibly manage to fit in even if they spend a full two weeks there.

Last April, during our last trip to Pattaya, we visited an aquarium called “Underwater World” located just a short 15 minute drive from the hotels off Pattaya Beach. Don says that over the last couple years of its existence he had passed it many times but had never stopped in until taking us there. I still haven’t gotten around to writing about that April trip (goodness, we made SO many!), although I certainly plan to, so I can include all the great pics and vids we took as non wet-getting observers, but this post came about after seeing that diving in the tanks with all the wonderful fish is offered. Immediately, I KNEW that the next time we visited that diving the tanks WOULD become the primary event of that particular two weeks at Pattaya. (And sure enough—it WAS!)

Deciding which pieces of my personal dive gear to take along with us to Thailand was a primary consideration on planning the trip. Don made the correct decision to take along his BCD while I opted to use a loaner at the aquarium. My “buoyancy compensator device” has the dive weights incorporated into it while the aquarium’s does not, which means I had to wear a weight belt and that sucked. As the years have passed and the pounds have packed on I really do not have much of a waist. I was reminded of that unfortunate fact when my weight belt continually tried to make its way down my hips, over my butt and down my thighs. Aaargh! I really MISSED my own BCD. As it turns out I had plenty of room in my check-in bags and would have easily met the weight limits. Live and learn.

The fellow that runs the diving experience at the aquarium is an expatriate Iranian fellow named Ali. He claims to speak limited English, but you couldn’t tell that by me. I simply slowed down a bit my Michigan “speed English” and he more than held his own with me. As an American retired serviceman I have built up a lot of bad historical blood with the country of Iran. For me, this has come about over the years starting in ’79 when our entire embassy was illegally taken hostage by Khomeini’s underlings in Tehran. My personal rancor continued to build in ’83 when 283 of my marine brothers were exploded to death by one of the first of the Islamic suicide bombers.  And then, in ’98, when 19 fellow airmen were killed at the Khobar Tower explosion by another gigantic car bomb funded and fostered by Iran, and not to mention all the IEDs that they continue to supply to insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq that have killed and maimed hundreds more of us, being aware of all that, you’d think that I would have an intense dislike for Iranians just out of general principle. Thing is, in my travels around the world, particularly in Southwest Asia, I have never met an Iranian that I did not cotton up to. Every single one that I have ever chatted with I’ve found to be extremely personable, deferential, and completely likable. Ali is no exception. He is intelligent, well-spoken, and a gentleman. If you get the chance to dive with him, by all means do it.

As usual, the four of us made our way to the aquarium on our rental scooters, with our gals packing most of our dive gear in backpacks as they clung to our waists in the hectic Pattaya traffic. Don had stopped by to speak to Ali the day before to smooth the way—I call it “Don doing his thing”—and once again, doing so was well worth it since he got them to drop the price of admission; all we had to pay was the $100 each for the dive. Ali had apologized for the cost but he was correct when he explained that the uniqueness of the experience would be well worth it.

We arrived about an hour before the time we needed to start gearing up. I spent the time BSing with Ali while Don and the girls scoped out the tanks we’d be diving through the Plexiglas viewing tunnels. When it was time to get ready to dive Ali said it would be okay if our gals accompanied us to the back area to help us suit up. Truthfully, I cannot do it without assistance. My shoulders and other assorted body parts and joints are just too shot to handle the gyrations of putting on my wetsuit without help. I was surprised that the dressing area is so lacking—only one plastic chair and no tables or enough hooks to store clothing or personal items during the dive, but we made do.

It was a thrill just to find ourselves in the back area of the aquarium. It smells strongly of fish and seawater. I loved it. I went over to the big car-sized entry tank and looked over the edge of the concrete wall down into the water. Surprisingly, one of the largest sharks on site was resting inside, its enormous tan body almost completely filling the giant space from back to front. Seeing that gorgeous creature resting there in all its natural splendor I couldn’t believe I would soon be coursing through the same water with it.

Ali said that most of his diving clients when they approach him to scuba in the tank have absolutely no dive experience at all. With Don’s hundreds of dives since the mid 90s and my two years and 60+ dives, Ali was quite pleased that all he would have to do is float in place and watch us do our thing. I asked him what we were allowed to do as far as the sea creatures we’d be swimming with and his answer was almost shocking to me, “Anything you want. You guys are experts after all.” He did go on to warn us that the groupers at times could be a little aggressive and the same would be true with the large female shark during feeding time. At that I told myself to definitely keep my body parts out of the mouth areas of ANY of the fish in there, a pledge that I forgot about the moment I entered the water of the tank. For a moment I had the stupid thought that if I DID get bitten by something in there that it would provide a really cool souvenir. I’d much rather have an awesome kiss bite scar from a shark than one of those silly tattoos I see on so many people these days.

 

I just completed compiling a video that I’ve already placed on YouTube of all the clips I took during that first dive in the tank containing among other creatures, sharks, groupers, tuna and sea turtles. The rest of this post is about the contents of the 9 minute video, segment by segment.

The first 50 seconds shows Don and Ali making last minute preps and exchanging final words as we then submerge and enter the tank space through the entrance of the entry tub. It’s interesting to see how the air space above the water is completely draped with thick black plastic with banks of bright spotlights at the central apex.

There is an immediate thrill when realizing that there is nothing but water between me and the big fish swimming around the tank. They pass around, above and below us without seeming to care about our presence. I’m not sure if I felt blessedly invisible or satisfyingly accepted; either way, it was cool.

I thought the sight of being so close to the sharks would be off-putting, but it wasn’t like that at all since they convey absolutely no threat whatsoever. There was no fear at all, only excitement.

It was fun also to “spy” on occasion on the “civilian” observers under the curved clear tunnel plastic.  Some of them seemed more taken with us scuba divers than with the sea creatures around us. I do know that a lot of them took a lot of photos of me; every so often they’d flash me good with their camera strobes. I had to laugh into my regulator at one point during the fish feeding period when suddenly I heard an almost urgent knocking on the glass tunnel upon which I was resting. I glanced down and saw this odd looking Asian man giving me the strangest look. He reminds me of one of the Dumb-n-Dumber characters, probably because of that bowl haircut. I suppose he was compelled to demand my acknowledgement. I nodded and went back to my fish watching. Check him out. He’s in the video almost 8 minutes in.

Twice in the video I was fortunate to have one of the large green sea turtles pass very near, looking for a food handout more than likely. At 6:10 you can see what it’s like to swim with one while holding onto its shell. I placed the camera atop of its back and followed along just behind it while lightly grasping the edge of its shell. I did this several times and learned not to hold on too tight. It would let me know to let go by jerking its shell hard side to side. As long as I didn’t impinge its motion though, it was completely happy to let me tag along.

Don was kind enough to take the camera from me a time or two to get me in some shots. At about 4 minutes into the clip I can be seen closely inspecting the big fleshy colored female shark as she lays uncharacteristically (for sharks) on the tank floor. I was thinking it might be sick but I soon figured out what it was doing. It lays there with its snout inches away from a pipe pumping in oxygenated water. Normally, sharks must stay in motion to allow water to pass along its gills so it can “breathe.” In this case the big girl is lazily letting the onrushing water do all the work for her—a very smart shark that.

Oh, and there is another pipe providing the same rush of oxygen rich water to her right, closer to the viewing tunnel where some of the groupers and other smaller sharks do the same thing as the big female. In fact, in the very next segment I approach very closely another smaller spotted shark with its gills being washed by the pipe water. Putting the camera right in its face next to its right eye you can see it idly staring back.

At 7:31 the big female becomes excited by feeding time when two of the Thai tank workers on scuba sets come in with buckets full of small fish. You can see in the video how close she comes to me and in fact she didn’t just pass near but fully pounded into my side with a thud. She did that three times. The first time she powerfully bashed me full into the back of my hamstrings making me think that either Don or Ali had just banged into me for some reason. I swung around to confront my attacker and imagine my surprise when I realized that I had just been powerfully tackled by a very large excited shark. All the fish approached me in similar fashion on occasion during the feeding time, I suppose since they have been conditioned to associate divers with being fed. Ali had warned me about that, telling me to keep my distance. But it was awesome. How many people can say they’ve had something like that happen to them?

Watching the two Thai fellows go about their feeding duties I notice they opt not to wear fins, instead keeping their buoyancy negative so that they can keep their feet mostly on the bottom. I’m thinking that they do it that way so that they can stay vertical, otherwise, trying to manhandle the sharks with one hand while shoving the bucket of fish into their snout with the other would be nearly impossible.

After more than 45 minutes in that first tank Ali gave us the “get out of Dodge sign” indicating the end of the dive. After a short break we headed over to the next marine tank containing the huge rays. The next post and video will cover that dive. Until then….

Claveria diving 3.4, Last Dive, We dive the Pyramids

Our fifth and last day of diving provided a rather unpleasant surprise when we unloaded our last four supposedly full tanks and discovered that one of our large 100s did not get re-filled at the Terra Rika like we thought it did. It was the 100 that I had used when we dove the beach. It had only 1700 lbs in it which meant that one of our dives on that final fifth day would have to be necessarily abbreviated.

Always the problem solver, Don proposed a solution to our dilemma. His idea to maximize our final dive was that I would dive with a full tank while he used the half filled one. Then, whenever we moved from site to site he would go off his tank and swimming above and behind me in trail, he would breathe off my buddy regulator. It sounds easy and it actually is, but it does take a little practice to do it smoothly.

So that’s what we did on our very last dive which we decided to make in a spot that we had never been to before, and that was down and around the two pyramidal shaped rocks at Claveria Bay’s western point. These rocks are iconic; when seen in photos they ARE Claveria.

Iconic rocks of Claveria Bay by NealKelvin

We had been told that the area to the east of the Claveria Rocks, on the bay side of the rocks, is a fish sanctuary. Even though I was skeptical that such a real sanctuary full of unmolested fish actually existed, at least other than in name only, I still wanted to go and check it out so we could say we did. Don agreed and diving that area became the plan for our final dive, that and the fact that we would breathe the first half of the dive using my tank alone until we both had about the same amount of air left in both our tanks.

Boatman Willie and his son took us out to the Claveria rocks, careful to drop us off on the western side to keep the boat out of the declared sanctuary area. Don went in fully geared and then I dropped in where he assisted me into my own scuba gear on the surface. Once we were both checked out and good to go gear-wise off we went. Or did we?

While still in the boat Don suggested we stay on the surface and make our way over to the rocks before submerging. So, as soon as he gave me the okay on my equipment and I did the same for him, I turned over on my back, and looking over my shoulder began to use my flippers to power over to the larger outer rock. I noticed a powerful current fighting me hard but I mostly overcame it by kicking harder and faster.

Sea squirts on the bottom of an overhang of rock

I was within ten feet of the rock looking back expecting to see Don nearby in the water; but no, the current had prevented him from making any headway whatsoever. In fact, he and the boat were even further away from the rock than they were before he started. At that point he decided to let the boat drag him over to my location with him holding onto an outrigger. I’ll give him credit for being able to do that, because although I seem to have more stamina and power using my flippers, I am completely unable to use my hands and shoulders to hold on to the outriggers, especially when there any kinds of waves or current to deal with. I guess all these years in the gym keeping my heart in shape on the cardio machines have paid off.

The rest of the dive came off exactly as planned. For the first 20 minutes after submerging at the base of the pyramidal rocks Don held onto the top of my tank by gripping the manifold connection while we moved to each new site with the two of us breathing from my tank. On occasion I held my console turned up so he could read it and know when our tanks held about equal air.

See the scorpion fish? Its center left head down. 

It turned out to be no big deal; it worked like a champ. Sharing my full tank for twenty minutes completely saved our final dive and allowed us to check out an area we otherwise would not have been able to see. It even lasted a decent length of time, giving us almost 50 minutes of scuba time. Not bad at all.

I doubt if we ever dive Claveria’s sanctuary again, at least not on the bay side of the pyramid rocks. There are some fish over there but nothing remarkable, and what I didn’t like about the area on that side of the rocks is that the seafloor there is uniformly mucky and silty.

In the embedded video entitled “our last day of diving” the first segment provides a look at the geologic features right around the base of the pyramidal rocks. Fish or no fish, diving next to soaring sheer sided rocks that tower many tens of feet above is thrilling and that’s what is going on in the first 45 seconds.

The area directly around the base of the pyramids is actually somewhat noteworthy and worth a dive or two. On our way into the bay we swam between the pyramid shaped rocks and a smaller rock barely jutting from the water. It wasn’t exactly thrilling but the view of water and perpendicular stone enclosing us on two sides was interesting nonetheless.   

Once we made it through the rocks and officially passed into the bay, we turned right angling sharply to the bottom where we found a shallow cave, more like a deep overhang really.  In the video above Don uses his spotlight to light up the inside for my video taking and a lot of fish are seen swimming in schools around us. The only thing that detracts from it is the thick silty muck in there. I did my best to keep from stirring it up but once it happens there’s nothing to be done except to go.

Exploring the sanctuary area we came across a few large coral lump formations which we checked out but really nothing struck us as all that exciting. Again, the mostly silty mucky nature of the area detracts from the experience; so, a half hour into the dive when Don gave me the go ahead to head back to the other side of the pyramid rocks I was eager to get on with it.

Sweet lips

I took lead and Don followed me back out of the bay’s sanctuary side where I used “seat of my pants” dead reckoning to take us back towards the boat by going around the smaller outside rock. In no time at all I had us at the outer pyramid where I immediately began enjoying the much cleaner non-muck-covered towering rock faces. The water there was deep, the currents delightfully in our direction, while the sea-life was active and begging to be observed and photographed.

With all that going on I lost track of my situation, paying more attention to what I was photographing than what was on my dive console. Finally, I took a casual glance at the computer and was surprised to see that I had drifted down to 65 feet. The depth itself didn’t bother me so much as the information that I had only a few minutes left at that current depth, mostly due to the tissue loading that I had already been subjected to during our earlier dive of the day.

‘Whoa! How did I get down here?’ I asked myself as I pushed off and began to slowly ascend. While doing so I looked up and saw Don beckoning me concernedly to come back up but of course I was already ahead of him.

Amazing scorpion fish. See it?

Up on the boat after the dive I took the camera out of the underwater housing and took some video footage on the way back into the lagoon which I include as the last half of my YouTube clip above. At the very beginning just after taking it out of the plastic housing I still had time (barely) to pan back at the pyramidal rocks to show where the dive took place.  Watching the video just now again makes me wish I was back there about to make another dive. We still have lots of areas left to explore in the Claveria area. Hopefully, we'll get the chance to make it back up there again someday. 

Well, I still have a few outstanding photos I want to post so I'll put them below. Enjoy!

Does this look like the face of a fish?

Large coral lump perched overhanging a gorgonian