Diving Mabul Island - Day 1Aug 16, 2009
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Sea Ventures Dive Resort.
Sea Ventures Dive Resort.
Divers having a good dive below us diving Sea Ventures House Reef.
Everyone but me and the bartender here at the Sea Ventures Dive Resort seems to have gone to bed, as I am now the sole guest sitting out in the dining area by the bar. This makes it all the more hard to believe it is only 10:30 in the evening. Then again, diving does not generally put people in the mood for partying. This is the case even though a cover band cranked out pop hits during the barbecue dinner served here tonight. Rather, diving often leaves the body with a kind of hung over feel that many divers can immediately relate to...and lament.
A boat from the Sea Ventures Dive Resort picked us up from the pier diagonally across from our hotel at 9:15 this morning and took us out to this one-of-a-kind resort. Sea Ventures Dive Resort is located several hundred meters off the coast of Mabul Island and is actually a rig platform which has been converted into a dive resort. According to its promotional materials, Sea Ventures is the only dive resort in the world on a converted rig. There is a comfortable outdoor bar and restaurant, a large sundeck and a comfortable ambiance generally. It is quite a neat place to stay.
We did 2 dives today: the Sea Ventures House Reef, located in the man-made reef directly below us in the water underneath the resort, and Froggy Lair, a short boat ride away. Shortly after our arrival in the morning, we attempted to do our initial orientation dive by descending from the rig with a dive master and a dive master trainee to the Sea Ventures House Reef directly below. However, when the strong current ripped off a fin of the dive master trainee within a minute of her having jumped into the water, the divemaster immediately opted to abort our orientation dive and postpone it until after lunch.
To quickly summarize, each of the Sea Ventures House Reef and Froggy Lair had good diving today. While we only had visibility of 4 to 6 meters, the sheer quantity of marine eye candy under the surface proved staggering. Schools of colorful fish swam to and from, and it felt as if we had landed on another planet.
Before coming here, I had high expectations. If today’s dives are any indication of the diving we will experience over the next couple of days, those expectations will be exceeded. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.