'Fun Dive' Scuba

It was way too early on Saturday morning, but Swang and I managed to make it on time for our ride to Wong Shek Pier way out in the far northeastern part of HK (map).  We had another scuba trip planned, our first since getting our PADI license.

We took a boat out to Chek Chau ( 赤洲 ) where we did our dives ( diving website about Chek Chau).

土曜日朝はとても早いスクーバTripをした。パト君とボーン君おきません！赤州でダイビングをした。とても遠い、中国の近いの島です。

This was our boat this time,  not as big and fancy as the Saikung one:

but it gets the job done.  We sailed from Wong Shek for about 45 minutes and pulled up to some calm looking reef area.　今回の船。

This time Swang and I were buddied up with Jeannie, who brought her digital camera. So for the first time I can bring you some murky pictures from the deep.  For some reason she only sent me the black and white version,  but i'm guessing thats because the colors were so muted by the water:　今回ダイビング先生はディジカメラを持て居ました：

thats me abusing a poor hapless star fish!  no, I'm not holding it onto my face, its well in front.

海星ですよ。10手がある！

The diving here, and at the location of our second dive was pretty good,  lots of these big ass 10-footed star fish,  a few soft coral, more cornet fish and in this case I finally saw my first octopus (pat had spotted one under a rock last time but it hid before i could see it).  This time the octopus was really small, only about 6-8 inches,  it swam away as soon as it could.  We also saw a (poisonous) lion fish, they're quite interesting looking.

After our second dive we went to a nearby fishing village to enjoy a late lunch...  unfortunately for me,  eating in a fishing village means lots of seafood:ダイビング後田舎の漁村で食べた：

  Does it look good?  Luckily Diamond hooked me up with some chicken too. ;-)

美味しそう？でも僕は魚食べませんよ！

According to what they told us, since this place is so close to china they do a lot of fish importing from Chinese fish farms down to HK.  Also nearby they have their own fish farms... basically large floating grid of nets which are full of various types of fish at various locations around the island.... here's one on google maps....

Here's the village as we pulled out on the ferry: Really rural!  とても田舎よ！ほんと古香港です。早くなくなりますの景色。。。

This is a not so romantic shot as we went back towards Saikung.  Sego's dad was with us and he was telling us all kinds of interesting tid bits about this area... he started coming up here when he was a kid and he said that recently the fishing communities here have been dying out, since all the younger people have moved to Saikung or further downtown to work and left the older people to work the fishing here.   

Also he pointed out the former vacation bungalow of the head of the British military on some small island along the way. (i think its that white spot on the island in the picture).  Since this area is along the main water connection to China there was (and still is) a lot of smugglers and illegal immigrants trying to pass through this area so there's a higher military presence here than other parts of HK...

All in all a fun trip.  I don't know if we're going to have time to go again before it starts getting cold... but thats ok,  next diving trip will be.... Hawaii! ;-)

今度のダイビングはハワイですよ！