Logan visited in January this year, so we decided to try some west coast diving on the peninsula also known as Western Malaysia to distinguish it from Malaysian Borneo where we dove in Mabul and Sipadan. We had a short 2 hour drive south from Penang to the coastal town of Lumut. Directly west of Lumut is Pulau Pangkor Laut where Ryan and I celebrated our anniversary – wonderful place if you are ever in Malaysia looking for an island resort for a special occasion.
We dove with Quiver Dive Team in the Pulau Sembilan area for 2 days with 3 dives a day. We spent day 1 around Buluh and day 2 at Buluh, White Rock, Saga and Lalang.
We were told to bring a camera and a torch and be ready for a lot of seahorses but not to expect great visibility…
We are happy to report that the diving delivered on all expectations. Green water full of floaties with day time viz that required lights to keep track of each other… and a bunch of seahorses of many colors! Ryan and I saw our first and only seahorse at Mary’s Place in Roatan in 2023 around dive #145. We saw at least 6 on this dive trip and have photos and videos of most of them.
This next video is a good indicator of the current and viz…and it’s funny to see a birdbeak burrfish hiding from the current and bumping into the urchins.
This was our first time seeing these colorful pipefish.
And we were lucky enough to get a decent video of this seahorse eating.
Our last dive of the trip was at Pulau Saga. This dive was to be an easy shallow dive out of the current along side the small island Pulau Saga just west of Pulau Lalang. We could tell we were definitely not “out of the current” as soon as we descended, but it was quite manageable. I came across two gold-dotted flatworms and stuck my pointer in the sand to hold my position long enough to snap a photo (you can see it below in the gallery). When I turned around, I couldn’t see Ryan and Logan or the dive guide, so I drifted along the same line and depth while I looked around and tapped my tank with the pointer. When it was obvious I had passed the south point and the current was picking up, I deployed my SMB and surfaced. By the time I had surfaced, I realized I had indeed been swept right past the south point and began a slow surface swim against the current back to the point.
Meanwhile…. the dive guide had pulled Ryan and Logan up to shallower water closer to the island to get out of the current right after I had stopped and turned upstream for the flatworm photo. Once they realized I was not with them, they surfaced and made their way around the south point looking for me.
We all breathed a sigh of relief once we heard and saw each other. We decided to drift over to Pulau Lalang and finish the dive right up against the edge of the island on top of the reef. We were rewarded with another seahorse and wrapped up our two day dive trip with a good story as a bonus.
So now I can say I’ve actually used my SMB for its intended purpose and Ryan and Logan have another story about how me taking pictures can turn annoying.
The photo gallery has our collection of orange, yellow, and purple seahorses. We saw several more but they were a bit shy. See if you can guess which photo was the SMB pic!
Next dive trip is on the other side of the planet in Hopkins, Belize. Hope you enjoy this post until we get the next one posted!
