A Sunday outing with Dive Club 854 to Pulau Pawai, Singapore
By Tom Bird
My brain works in funny ways at 6:00 in the morning.
Different logic circuits are on duty at that time than at 2:00 in the
morning when I set my alarm clock. At 2:00, I associated diving with fun,
pleasurable activity. At this unholy hour, I associated it with all kinds of
unpleasantness and misery. Somehow I tricked myself into getting up and out
of my room. I dragged my sorry carcass out to the Clementi MRT station,
hefting a bag that felt like it was full of lead (it was). There I met up
with Chris and Avril, who looked just about as sleepy as I felt. We greeted
each other as enthusiastically as we could manage and hailed a cab.
As we pulled away, I was convinced that the hardest part of the day was
over, and was glad of it.
Not so bad. We met up with the rest of our crew at a table outside a
hawker centre somewhere unknown to me. I ordered an iced Milo to take the
sting out of my craving for something unhealthy, introduced myself to the
members of the diving club as they drove, bussed and staggered their way
in from their various corners of Singapore. I have to admit I was still
half (or more) asleep, but I did my best to hold myself together.
I remember thinking proudly to myself about how well behaved I was being as
I introduced myself to Danny with a firm handshake.
"Hi, I'm Tom." He looked at me suspiciously across the grip..
"Yeah. I met you five minutes ago." I remembered him then,
remembered shaking his hand. Go back to bed, Tom.
When everyone was mostly accounted for, we loaded into a variety of
vehicles and drove down to the marina where we were to meet up with our
trusty launch. I was very conscious of my raw amateur status in this group.
My first and latest dive had occurred over four years ago in the chillier
waters of Whiteclife Park, B.C.. I'd read over the introducory diving
manuals Chris gave me and felt confident that I could handle the various
skills and procedures pretty well. Rigging up the tank seemed pretty
self-explanatory, and I remembered the hand signals for the most basic
of communication. What I couldn't remember was whether or not I was going
to die.
The trip out was a good chance to review the one hundred eventualities
that would make my life difficult under water should they occur. In
addition, I got to know my diving companions a little better beyond a
handshake (or two). I was originally afraid they would be elitist snobs,
looking down on my novice status with the disdain that only the superiorly
educated can muster. This turned out not to be the case and, much to my
delight, the group dynamic quickly grew relaxed and congenial as the boat
chugged smokily out to the islands and the dive site.
Our destination was Pulau Pawai, one of the islands to the south of
Singapore. Pawai is a lush green and brown forested island no more than
half a kilometer in length. I was originally surprised at the amount of
forest there, considering all the other islands we'd passed. Singapore's
southern islands are mostly occupied by petrochemical refineries, and are
therefore covered in oil tanks, smokestacks and other assorted non-green
non-vegetation. Pawai, however, is owned by the Ministry of Defence. It's
used as a practice range for live-ammunition bombing both from the air and
the ground. "The Air Force and the Navy take turns using it. The airforce
practices straffing, the navy practices shelling targets." Chris pointed
out a series of large, dilapidated targets, testimony to the accuracy of
the Navy's shelling. At this time, it occurred to me that this would be a
bad place to be diving if a troupe of testosterone-addled junior cadets
were practicing bombing and shooting the living shit out of anything that
looked remotely destroyable. I must have looked a little concerned because
Chris, without looking at me, said: "Don't worry. They take Sundays off,"
I exhaled.
He continued: "Usually". Basket. He was smiling, too.
"Just don't pick up any shells if you see them bottomside." Thanks. I'll
remember that.
We anchored off the tip of Pawai, next to a fishing bumboat. As we
dropped the anchor, he picked up his lines and took off, disgruntled by our
presence at his fishing hole. We took that to be a good sign. The captain
informed us that the bottom was sandy, which suited me fine as I could
kneel on sand without feeling guilty about breaking coral. We geared up.
Here I have to admit that much of my previous training left me. I was
nervous. I managed to get most of my gear figured out with some help from
Chris, double and treble-checked all the hoses and regulators and valves
that I could think of. The dive master checked me over again as I prepared
to jump in. I stuck my regulator in my mouth, checked my mask and
weightbelt and BCD and flippers, then took a large leap of faith off the
back of the boat.
Bubbles are all I can see. I momentarily forgot to inflate my buoyancy vest
and happily kicked to the surface, waving an O.K. sign to the people on
the boat. They waved at me to inflate my BCD and suggested I grab the rope
that was trailing behind the boat in the strong current that was rapidly
sweeping me towards Sumatra. I happily did both, then floated there,
getting a feel for the gear, the water, the current, and my mask.
Water was leaking into my mask and I attempted to get a better seal on my
face as Avril and Chris joined me. In the end I told them I would be O.K.
and we swam a little towards shore before giving each other the
thumbs-down signal. The water slowly covered my head and immediately
started trickling into the bottom left corner of my mask. I was too busy
clearing my ears and looking out for the bottom to worry much about not
being able to see, so we slowly sank into the gloom.
The bottom loomed near and I panicked briefly as I saw that it wasn't
sand. Large lava rocks poked up towards us and I realized that kneeling on
them was going to be distinctly uncomfortable. I made a huge mental effort
to stay levitated above them but, having forgotten completely about the
buoyancy controller and all the laws of physics, I floated down until I
was almost lying on them. I was wondering how the Natural Law Party did
their Elevation trick when Chris re-introduced me to my BCD. What a
happy acquaintance. With a burst of air, I slowly levitated.
At a the correct buoyancy, you tend to rise with each breath as your lungs
fill with air, then fall again slowly as you exhale. I was breathing so
hard I thought I was going to get sea-sick from the up and down. You have
to understand that it had been four years since I had last done this. I
was pretty nervous and excited to be there, fifty feet under bodywarm
water with a coral reef to explore and 2500 PSI of air to do it with. To
add to my excitement, my mask kept flooding and I kept clearing it with
great gusts of precious air through my nose. Chris and Avril gathered
around me where I hovered above the sand and we held a sign-language
conference on what to do about my mask. We eventually surfaced, I swapped
masks with Chris and we re-decended to explore in ernest.
The photos that Chris took with his (nifty yellow) underwater camera can
do the wildlife more justice than I can with my clumsy words. As I
endeavored to find the ideal buoyancy again, we skimmed with the current
over to the reef. Avril and Chris kindly held my hands until I accepted
the limitations and freedom of underwater movement.
Then they let me go, like a fledging penguin. Brain coral greeted us,
along with its entourage of rocks harboring clusters of finger-fat soft
corals. Whip coral lashed lazily at our legs and anenome fish peered at us
warily from their stinging shelter. At first I was so busy revelling
in the feeling of clumsy flight that I didn't notice the life that
shared the water's warmth around us. The visibility was good; around five
meters through gently foggy sediment and we could therefore afford to be
a little more independent in our exploration of this realm.
Chris pointed out a vibrant blue and yellow nudibranch to me,
Avril made swimming motions to sign a butterfly fish. I gawked.
I could imagine my exclamations floating up to the surface with my spent
air, bursting my delight into the air above for the jealous seagulls.
Unfortunately the current was quite intense, so we had to keep swimming
fairly constantly into it. I tried to keep track of where we were, but
soon lost all sense of direction as I turned once, twice in a circle. I
happily followed my two leaders into the current, stopping where they did
and gradually getting more comfortable in my new environment.
All too quickly, I looked down at my pressure guage and saw that it was
hovering around the five hundred mark. Time to go topside. We thumbs-upped
each other and drifted skywards. I imagined that if I were to die and go to
heaven, this is what it would feel like; placidly reaching upwards with
outsretched arms to the silvery light of free air. Our bubbles raced ahead
of us like puppies, never stopping to check if we were following.
At the surface, I couldn't give words to the feeling that was keeping me
afloat then and there. I settled on expressing my thanks over and over
again. We inflated BCD's and swam slowly against the current (again)
towards the boat and lunch. Tired and happy was the general consensus
among the seven wet divers as we munched on Avril's delicious chicken
salad. I got to taste grass jelly drink for the first time. I'm still not
sure if those chunks were supposed to be in it, but it sure tasted good to
my salt-pickled throat. We ate rather too much in the hour and a half
between dives, sitting on the foredeck under the sun and cultivating a
healthy sunburn.
For the afternoon, we shifted spots to the northeastern reef, slightly
shallower and more sheltered. With less depth and current, the dive lasted
twenty five minutes longer than the first, for a total of one hour. With
the added time, I became more proficient at maintaining a depth,
navigating around objects using the current and my momentum. I also got
to appreciate the undersea life more as I spent less time trying to avoid
crushing it, or skewering myself on spines. I'll resist the temptation to
launch into a Gerald Durrel-esque cataloguing of the creatures we spied on
that second dive. Suffice it to say that there was a lot, it was colourful,
and I'm glad to be a marine biologist in training so I can justifiably get
paid to do this sort of thing. Chris let me use his camera and I took some
terrible pictures, which gave me a huge appreciation for the skill required
to take good photos underwater. Towards the end of the dive, I started to
get a headache and was glad to return to the surface. I felt unfairly heavy
as I climbed aboard. I wanted to return to the lightness underwater.
On the trip back, we sat in the cockpit discussing the dive, joking and
generally absorbing the good humor of the day. The group taught me some
useful Malay phrases and I practiced my Singlish.
We cruised off into the sunset, the perfect end to the perfect day's diving.
Except it wasn't.
Go to Part two
