Diving in the City
It’s getting nearer to the end of the monsoon season and the nitrogen withdrawal symptoms must be really bad. A few days ago my friend and diving instructor Nick asked me whether I’d be interested in trying out a new lake he found somewhere in Damansara Perdana. I, like any true dive junkie, immediately said yes. For those of you who are not familiar with the area, it’s a suburb just several kilometers away from Kuala Lumpur city center.
This morning we met at half past eight in the morning for breakfast in Shah Alam. Lee (another PADI instructor) drove Nick and me to our regular restaurant nearby for “Nasi Lemak” and “Roti Telur”. There we met up with yet another PADI instructor Kelvin (I hope I got your name right).
After stuffing ourselves we made our way back to Dolphin Sports dive center in Matsushita Sport Center where Lee runs his dive and swim shop. We loaded up our gear into my car and off we went.
We soon made our way to the dive site. It wasn’t actually a lake but a flooded rock quarry by a construction site!
The view from an apartment complex on top of the hill nearby the quarry.
I drove my car as near as possible to the banks. We still had about 4 meters of rocky slope to get our gear and ourselves down to the edge of the water. It was really hard work getting all that gear down – especially the tanks. The hot late-morning sun didn’t help at all.
Kelvin, Lee and Nick unloading the gear from the back of my car.
Kelvin opted not to dive, so it was only the three of us. In retrospect, I think he turned out to be the most sensible among us.
Lee suiting up on the edge of the water.
Nick in his commercial diving overalls up to his waist just barely one step away from the sand bank.
The water didn’t smell bad – that’s a good sign! I could see schools of small fishes near the surface, so it’s probably not some toxic waste dump – another good sign! However the water looks really green – reminds me of Pulau Jarak! “Doesn’t look too bad” I thought. Hah! Was I ever wrong!
Nick takes one step into the water and he’s already up to his waist. The bottom was a layer of soft sand over very fine silt. Step on it and your feet sink into the muck up to the top of your ankles. It feels a little like it’s pulling at your feet.
We moved to deeper water and gave each other the signal to dive. The moment we went it I immediately lost sight of the others. Visibility was almost zero! If you stretch your arms out you’d not be able to see your fingers! I swam around with outstretched arms in the hope of finding the others. I could barely read my dive computer to check my depth. I couldn’t even tell whether I was going up or down – the pressure on my ears gave me some rough indications. It was around 4 meters and I bumped into Nick briefly, and in a split second I could not see him again. It was hopeless and I decided to surface. In fact we all can up one after another within seconds. None of us knew where the other was even though we were only a meter or two from each other.
This is exactly the condition of the visibility. Nick was at about 2 meters depth and just centimeters away from my camera.
On the surface, we decided to give it another go but this time we would hold on to each other as we moved along. Down we went again 3 abreast. Slowly we descended while moving forward. At about 8 meters everything became really dark. We had to use our dive lights. After a while we hit bottom. It was 13 meters. The three of us formed a circle and then sort of stared at each other for a while. I don’t think there was much we could do under such conditions. Several minutes passed and Nick gave us the ascend signal. All of us agreed and slowly made our way up. Lee had already deployed his sausage earlier and we held on to him while he solely wound on his reel to control our ascend rate.
When we reached the surface we could only burst out in laughter.
Lee and I near the surface.
Nick and Lee near the surface.
Nick and Lee on the surface.
A hour of loading up our gear, half an hour struggling in the hot sun to get out gear down to the waters edge, another half and hour to pack our stuff up, and finally an hour of cleaning up. All that effort for 10 minutes of dive time in near zero visibility!
Was it worth it? Probably not – but it was definitely an interesting experience. Kelvin thinks that we are a little crazy - hmmm.... maybe. A small group of people fishing on the opposite bank probably agrees with him.
The craving for nitrogen will hit us again and the dark green water of a rock quarry will once again look like diving paradise.
It looks so beautiful from afar.
This morning we met at half past eight in the morning for breakfast in Shah Alam. Lee (another PADI instructor) drove Nick and me to our regular restaurant nearby for “Nasi Lemak” and “Roti Telur”. There we met up with yet another PADI instructor Kelvin (I hope I got your name right).
After stuffing ourselves we made our way back to Dolphin Sports dive center in Matsushita Sport Center where Lee runs his dive and swim shop. We loaded up our gear into my car and off we went.
We soon made our way to the dive site. It wasn’t actually a lake but a flooded rock quarry by a construction site!
The view from an apartment complex on top of the hill nearby the quarry.
I drove my car as near as possible to the banks. We still had about 4 meters of rocky slope to get our gear and ourselves down to the edge of the water. It was really hard work getting all that gear down – especially the tanks. The hot late-morning sun didn’t help at all.
Kelvin, Lee and Nick unloading the gear from the back of my car.
Kelvin opted not to dive, so it was only the three of us. In retrospect, I think he turned out to be the most sensible among us.
Lee suiting up on the edge of the water.
Nick in his commercial diving overalls up to his waist just barely one step away from the sand bank.
The water didn’t smell bad – that’s a good sign! I could see schools of small fishes near the surface, so it’s probably not some toxic waste dump – another good sign! However the water looks really green – reminds me of Pulau Jarak! “Doesn’t look too bad” I thought. Hah! Was I ever wrong!
Nick takes one step into the water and he’s already up to his waist. The bottom was a layer of soft sand over very fine silt. Step on it and your feet sink into the muck up to the top of your ankles. It feels a little like it’s pulling at your feet.
We moved to deeper water and gave each other the signal to dive. The moment we went it I immediately lost sight of the others. Visibility was almost zero! If you stretch your arms out you’d not be able to see your fingers! I swam around with outstretched arms in the hope of finding the others. I could barely read my dive computer to check my depth. I couldn’t even tell whether I was going up or down – the pressure on my ears gave me some rough indications. It was around 4 meters and I bumped into Nick briefly, and in a split second I could not see him again. It was hopeless and I decided to surface. In fact we all can up one after another within seconds. None of us knew where the other was even though we were only a meter or two from each other.
This is exactly the condition of the visibility. Nick was at about 2 meters depth and just centimeters away from my camera.
On the surface, we decided to give it another go but this time we would hold on to each other as we moved along. Down we went again 3 abreast. Slowly we descended while moving forward. At about 8 meters everything became really dark. We had to use our dive lights. After a while we hit bottom. It was 13 meters. The three of us formed a circle and then sort of stared at each other for a while. I don’t think there was much we could do under such conditions. Several minutes passed and Nick gave us the ascend signal. All of us agreed and slowly made our way up. Lee had already deployed his sausage earlier and we held on to him while he solely wound on his reel to control our ascend rate.
When we reached the surface we could only burst out in laughter.
Lee and I near the surface.
Nick and Lee near the surface.
Nick and Lee on the surface.
A hour of loading up our gear, half an hour struggling in the hot sun to get out gear down to the waters edge, another half and hour to pack our stuff up, and finally an hour of cleaning up. All that effort for 10 minutes of dive time in near zero visibility!
Was it worth it? Probably not – but it was definitely an interesting experience. Kelvin thinks that we are a little crazy - hmmm.... maybe. A small group of people fishing on the opposite bank probably agrees with him.
The craving for nitrogen will hit us again and the dark green water of a rock quarry will once again look like diving paradise.
It looks so beautiful from afar.
posted by seetho at 12:24 am
1 Comments:
Hahaha... You guys never learn! At least for Nick... He's dived Port Dickson before & it was pretty much the same as this quarry. Although I believe it's worse with the weird smell and seawater. ;P
But BRAVO for you guys anyway for the courage and determination for compressed air! We divers will just do anything for it, huh?
Post a Comment
<< Home