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Re:visiting Redang

Why
It was last year when I saw a Whale shark at Whale Mount dive site in Redang island and spent some good 10 minutes with the gentle leviathan. It was one of the most memorable dive trip ever, not sure if I would get the same chance again in my life. Some people dived almost all their life and still didn’t get the chance to be up close and personal with a Whale shark.
Recently, my diving friends were busy texting each other about the recent sighting of Whale sharks in Tenggol island, which is located about 100km south of Redang island. That was some sort of good news and I was hoping that it would travel its way north to Redang island. So this year, together with my dive buddy we planned for a rendezvous with the Whale shark at the same dive site where we spotted it last year. We planned.
Where
Redang’s Long Beach was busier than it was last year, perhaps because of Singapore’s National Day holiday that falls on Sunday and the Singaporean divers were flocking the islands. Good for the tourism economy and resort operators were probably the happiest. The beach was full of people, not a space on the beach sands that didn’t have footsteps marks.
Every morning, the resort will play a musical alarm reminding the snorkelers to wake up and get ready for their snorkeling trip. The high pitch musical alarms were irritating initially but after a few days we sort of got used to it and at some point, I find it quite amusing.
At night, the beach will be full of people with live band playing at the restaurant and followed by crowds filling the beach’s dance floor. On one night, there was a birthday party where people lighted huge lanterns and made their wishes as the lanterns disappears into the night’s sky. On the next night, I guess someone probably didn’t get enough wishes the night before, so they lighted another huge lantern but somehow the wind must have blown it to the wrong direction that the lantern got stuck on a coconut tree and it caught fire. The tree was on fire :-) I wish I was there to witness it but instead I was knocked out on the hammock and was only told about it when all the fun stuffs were over.
In a way the weekend was not exactly the quiet escapade type that we all often had in mind during any dive trip but it was okay, we all had fun.
What
Now, about the diving and what I saw. It’s not much to talk about, nothing spectacular that’s out of the ordinary… hmm let’s see, can the sightings of large Jenkins ray sleeping, extra large Triggerfish stalking us, stocky Blacktip shark hunting, pair of large Giant barracudas, school of Yellowtail barracuda, Hawksbill turtle eating, Trevalies feeding on anchovies, Napoleon wrasse playing hide and seek, school of Bumphead parrotfish grazing the reef, Slipper lobster hiding in the sands, Cuttlefish and their eggs, juvenile Slipper lobster, juvenile Flathead, a walking Devil scorpionfish, several pairs of Razorfish and a few Flabellina and Chromodoris Coi nudibranches…. be considered as ordinary?
Well if the answer is yes, then there’s nothing much was sighted that’s out of ordinary :-)

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