My recent diving trip to Tenggol island marked the 3rd time I attempted underwater photography. This post is more on some of the better photos I took with the limited equipments I currently operate while breathing compressed air – Canon S90 with Ikelite Underwater casing.
Paradise with beach, crystal clear water, and sun, right here in Malaysia
Looking through the photos make me want to have underwater strobes and a couple Inon wet lenses so much. It’s a wish that can be answered by a few dozens RM 100 bills I can’t really afford to part with at this moment.
There’s always a delicate balance on splitting the limited amount of dough between gears and diving itself. Oh well, soon, soon…
Anyway, here are some of the better photos that serves a good summary from the 3 day trip.
nemo in anemone
Nemo, the artist formally known as clown fish, is quite abundant at coral reefs around Tenggol.
In one instance, Haze was talking to our dive master Charlie and used the word “nemo” before correcting herself and address it as “clown fish”. Charlie had to tell her that nobody uses clown fish anymore, not even the .. ahem.. older generations. Pixar is really that influential.
blue spotted stingray
Ikan bakar never looked so pretty. I found this blue spotted stingray (the colors are gone when you .. bakar them :S) hidden under some corals, these bottom dwellers usually like to hide under boulders, which makes this quite an opportunistic capture. I like how the blue spots turned out.
Haze, KY, Dave, and Rich
First pic was when we just arrived, the second on one of our normal boat dives with me and my full set of gears, and the last one just before the night dive on second day.
By the way I think that was the only pair of jeans on the whole island.
this crab is probably quite yummy on dinner plate
A lot of crustaceans come out to play and prey at night, Rich spotted this fancy crab amongst the rock and I was able to snap a pretty decent photo with the built in flash. I so wanted to have this on the dinner table, but alas, Tenggol is a marine park.
spiny lobster, even more yums!
Also known as rock lobster, this decapod would probably taste even better than the crab mentioned above! This thing was huge, at least 2 feet in length. But then looking through sea water amplifies your vision by around 30%.. emm..
the 5 sisters of Tenggol
This is one of the five sisters of Tenggol. They are five Vietnamese ship wrecks laying at the bottom peacefully at over 30 meters depth, there’s another wreck on slightly shallower water in the middle of the lagoon too.
We went to the wrecks every morning for 3 days straight. The slightly murky water, low light condition, and the quietness of being underwater gives this site a pretty ghastly feel. One can only imagine what went through the refugees’ minds from the moment the board the boat with all their belongings to feel the war torn country to the point when they reached Tenggol and had to sink their boat to make sure they weren’t gonna be towed out and left alone drifting in open sea.
A wide angle converter would do me good at this site.
look ma, a green turtle!
This was the only green turtle spotted over 8 dives. A shy little one about 2 feet in length.
Turtles aren’t very common in this part of the world anymore, this probably has something to do with the fact that they’re still selling turtle eggs at Kota Bharu and Kuala Terengganu, with the authority turning a blind eye on the grotesque abuse on animal conservation effort in this country. It’s just sad.
Giant barracuda, smile!
Schools of juvenile barracudas are pretty common at Tenggol, but the big ones less so. This was one of the two giant barracudas we spotted during the last dive. They’re some 3 feet across and can look downright scary, this photo doesn’t do justice to the awesomeness of this fish though.
look at the stars, look how they shine for you
Other than going underwater and enjoying the beach, the other thing that I absolutely love about being on an island is the stars. They are absolutely brilliant at night, thousands and thousands of stars when the sky is clear.
We were just chilling on the beach, under the star, and sipping some whisky at night. It was awesome, I want to be back there now!
Nudibranch is a type of shell-less mollusk (octopus is a mollusk too!) that dots the ocean, typically hanging at the rock wall, coral, or bottom of the sea. Also known as sea slugs, these creatures are pretty tiny, typically not larger than your pinky.
Nudis come in a huge variety of shapes and colors, but they usually have a recognizable head with a pair of antennas, and an naked gill like organ at the rear that looks almost like a flower. The colors act as a deterrence and/or camouflage, some nudis can somehow “move” venoms from their prey to the outer part of their body to make themselves toxic to their potential predators. Fascinating stuff.
Tenggol island was partly made famous by the abundance of nudibranchs, and in my last trip (31st April to 2nd May) and over 8 dives, I’ve spotted at least 11 different types of nudis at dive sites around the main and surrounding islands.
The photos below are taken with my Canon S90, either with the miserable built in flash that’s half blocked by the underwater housing, or with natural light. Color temperatures are corrected, as with a bit of contrast adjustments.
I am dreaming a set of underwater strobes, but those toys are pricey….
Phyllidia varicosa
Also referred to as the scrambled egg nudi, this one’s pretty big in size, almost 3-4 inches in length. I don’t know who came up with the name, but if you serve my scrambled egg in this color, I’m probably gonna reject it.
Flabellina exoptata
From the puplish base, white tips and the blue rings, this looks like a flabellina exoptata but I could be wrong.
black nembrotha something?
It took me better part of an hour to find out the name for this nudi, no luck. Anyone know?
Atagema intecta
Again, atagema intecta might not be the correct species name for this black nudi with tiny brown spots all over. With 3000 or so species of nudibranchs it’s quite a drag to find the correct name sometimes.
Chromodoris coi
The white and grey nudi with black outline’s just lovely.
Phyllidia coelestis
The first time I spotted this lovely blue and black nudi with yellow spikes and tentacles.
Chromodoris magnifica
This one’s also called the stripped pajama nudi, not hard to see why. But does anyone seriously still have pajamas of this yellow, white, and black color scheme?
1. Phyllidia pustulosa 2. Nembrotha kubaryana
3. Pteraeolidia ianthina 4. Hypselodoris bullocki
These few are the more common ones around Tenggol, with Pteraeolidia especially plentiful. In the last dive I could spot at least a dozen of them within 10 meters in diameter.
Mine’s at the pristine beach on Tenggol island. 6 dives yesterday and today, now waiting for sunset, dinner, and a night dive.
sand, sea, bliss!
Still no whale sharks, but we have at least another dive tomorrow before heading back to civilization.
How’s your weekends?
This is the last of 3 part series on my diving trip at Tenggol that happened from 27-29 March, 2010. Click on part 1 and part 2 (with dive site map) for previous entries.
Above is a short video from dives I did at Tenggol, editing it made me miss diving lots, but it’s all good since I’m already planning another trip to Tenggol over the labor day weekends. This time I’m going to have my own set of equipments too, yes, diving is now a serious hobby for me. 
Work hard, play hard.
wreck diving at Palau Tenggol, Terengganu
This was the second time I visited the house wreck that is located within the protected bay where the resorts sit, the last time was on the 30th July, 2004. It was a relatively easy dive albiet the relatively murky condition. Terence took his time to snap pictures during descent and somehow managed to get lost and had to surface alone and missed the fun completely, poor thing.
nudibranch – sea slugs if you can’t be bothered
For the 4th dive of the same day, we chose to go shallow for a more relaxing dive at Pasir Tenggara. Saw more nudibranchs, starfish, and managed to take a couple more videos of clown fish too. It started drizzling as we surface, but luckily water wasn’t all too choppy.
star fish, table coral, and them nemo!
For the last dive of the trip, we went to the famous 5 sisters dive site. Here lies 5 Vietnamese regufee ship wrecks at over 30 meters underwater. Looking at these relics made me wonder how the refugees must have felt when they arrived at this small island and had to sink their ships just so they can’t be towed out to international water and left for dead.
We stayed at depth for only about 15 minutes before proceeding to shallower water to avoid decompression time. Visited some artificial coral reefs too.
Due to my failure in checking the underwater camera casing’s seal properly, a couple drops of moisture went in, but thank god it wasn’t a full flooding. Gotta be more careful next time.
I’ll see you in a couple weeks, Tenggol!
Time to continue my second Tenggol dive trip post. I intend to use this blog as sort of a dive log so just in case I lose the precious book, at least the information would be here. What a concept, right?
In case you missed the first post, it is here – Tenggol Island dive trip – redux
With the help of my latest toy – the Bamboo touch & pen, I now present you my very first awesomesauce drawing of Pulau Tenggol dive map, something I shamelessly copied from Tenggol Island Beach Resort website.
To avoid exercising plagiarism to the fullest, I added a little smiling clown fish to the dive map for that extra cheerful factor. Sweet isn’t it?
Nembrotha kubaryana (nudibranch), blue spotted sting ray
After the relatively deep dive two, we took the boat to Amazing Grace for our final dive for the day, a dive site located near the southern end of the neighboring island closest to Tenggol.
seaweeds and giant Sea Turtle
Like other sites at Tenggol, there were more nudibranchs to be found. I spotted this very colorful nembrotha kubaryana crawling up on a coral, while it resembles land slugs more than other nudi, you’ll be hard pressed to find something of this color above ground.
There’s a mild current at this location and we did a very relaxing drift dive, a perfect end to the day. Spotted a giant turtle that turns out to be the only one we saw in the entire trip.
KY, Rich, San San, Joe, Terence, Jonathan with ze Whisky
After dinner, the six of us spent quite a few hours talking quite a lot of crap with the aid of a bottle of whisky so thoughtfully brought to the island by Jonathan (Joe brought another bottle for the next night too).
With no TV, restaurant, or let a lone a pub, it is imperative to BYOB to this island.
swimming under boulder at Tokong Laut, bat fish
Tokong Laut is one of the more challenging dive sites at Tenggol. With swift current at entrance, you have to descent pretty quickly to avoid getting swept away by the moving water.
It is also the very same dive site we had to abandon almost 6 years ago when Terence did exactly that, swept away by current.
anemone, Pteraeolidia ianthina (purple nudi) chromodoris coi (white nudi)
We did concure Tokong Laut this time around, and boy it was some rewarding experience! There were plenty of big size bat fish all over, and we particularly enjoyed those “swim throughs”. When Charlie the dive lead talked about swim throughs on land, I thought it was about finning through uninteresting places, little did I know that we got to swim through openings beneath huge boulders. The experience was exhilarating, almost but not entirely unlike cave dives.
Of course, there were more nudis at this site too.
exceedingly good lunch!
I must give two thumbs up for the food at Tenggol Beach Resort, all our meals were really good. The collage above was from one of our lunch/dinner session. WIth fish, prawns, chicken, and vegetable to go with rice, it was out of our expectations. My previous dive trips usually accompanied by lousy foods.
can you spot the tiny white shrimps on the top right pic?
KY, Rich, and San San. Hypselodoris apolegma (purple nudi)
Dive #5 was another pretty deep dive at Lost World, which isn’t on the map above (can’t exactly remember where it is located). We spotted some tiny white shrimps, more nudi, as well as angel fish, among others. The feature of this site though, must be the sea fans. They were plenty of white sea fans making up the very beautiful seascape.
BBQ by PDRM Terengganu
After the 2nd dive, we were treated by the local PDRM who happened to be at Tenggol for an excellent BBQ lunch. The grilled cuttle fish with kunyit and BBQ ikan kembung were excellent! So were the curry and they even had rice too, it was amazing. Who said cops aren’t friendly?
There were 3 more dives at Tenggol that I shall post soon, and hopefully with some videos too.
