熊熊的家

Booked dive session on Dec 4, Saturday at 1:30pm after I collected the next day Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon Race Entry Pack at Suntec Centre.

I took MRT to Harbourfront MRT, then take a bus to Sentosa Visitors’ Arrival Centre. Pay the admission fee and take a mono-rail to Underwater World. Once arrived, I found that there have a lot of people lined up to buy ticket and some people stuck at the entrance.... Joe, the staff, greets me at the entrance. He is going to dive with me and show me around.

We firstly enter staff area, from the top view, the pool is bigger than I see inside the tunnel. After change clothing, without the gloves and fins, I am now ready to dive!

We drop into water, like Joe said, the water is warm at 29 degree and just only around 3m depth. Two nurse sharks (around 2m long) catch my eye in first sight. They're lying (sleeping?) on the bottom and stay together very closely, look like a couple. We swim to them, Joe touch one of the them and she wake, then he pick and hug her vertically (head on top, trail at bottom). I surprise that she let him "play" like that. Then Joe gives me hand signal to do the same but I refuse, I just hug her horizontally. Her skin feels like a sand paper, heavy, big and friendly. She hasn’t tried to escape from my hands, until I let her go.

Then, we swim over the tunnel to next area, we meet some Rays and Hump heads (will talk about these later), we haven't stop and straight ahead to meet the Bull Sharks.

Underwater World split a small section for the Bull Sharks. Although my dive called 'Bull Shark Encounter', we are not allowed to enter to danger zone. We just stay behind the splitter (they call it 'cage') to watch them. Look inside the area, there have two (one big, one small) Bull Sharks with some big fishes. At the beginning, two sharks swim far away from us, but they swim closer & closer and keep looking at me with their black small eyes in minutes later. Why? I guess they know a stranger in the pool and want to know who it is. Once they swim that close to less than 1m, I could even touch them thru’ the windows of the splitter, but of course I didn’t. I didn’t feel scare or shock, just exciting to meet the famous ocean killer so close like that into water.

I can see more clearly to them now, the small one about 1.5m longer, slim and young, no special of her outlook. Another one, around 3.5m long, huge size, extremely heavy and older, and she have still bloody large injury at her left trail, look like scratch at pool recently.

After few minutes watching, we leave and go to next door, the Dugong (Sea Ox).

The Dugong, named Gracie, she live alone in a small area. This is her lunch time when we arrive. Her food is not a fish or reef but a kind of glass like water plant.

Gracie is big and fat, at least 2m long. She totally ignores us to touch her and just keep eating. Her mouth look like a big "O" sharp when eat, look very funny. Also, she is cool… even I hold one of the plants, she still keeps eating others in the tray which at the pool bottom. Since she looks like to enjoy alone, so we leave to not disturb her.

We go to the final stop… Joe leads me to an area with some Rays and Hump heads (as I mentioned before). Suddenly, they (smaller one at least over 1m long) come around us. I know what’s going on, just a second later… feeding time. Joe gives me some food, shell like with brown color meat inside. Once they see I have the food which holding in my hand, the Hump Heads become crazy to come to me and... aiya… she bite my hand without glove. She runs away very fast to escape my revenge.

However, the Rays are gentle, they only swim around, only come when I show them the food (just hold it between in fingers this time). I found that they have small teeth to crash the shell and eat the meat inside. Also, they don’t mind we touch them, slip and soft skin. I think other than Jelly, Ray is one of the most beautiful creatures into the water. Around 10 minutes feeding time, we say Goodbye to lovely fishes and creatures, and back to the surface, finish the dive.

Total dive time around 40 minutes, cost S$170.