Underwater Australasia

Front page of Underwater Australasia

You guys may have heard and seen this awesome site: http://www.underwater.com.au/

Underwater Australasia is huge site dedicated to scuba diving. One of the biggest dive network and info site I've seen about scuba diving, Underwater Australasia offers the most recent reviews, info, updates, promos and so much more. This community centered site is definitely a fun place to be when you are online, it encompasses everything you want to know and experience about scuba diving; from recreational diving to technical diving, dive courses and products, fishes of the world, photo and video competitions.

I was approached by Underwater Australasia's Tim Hochgrebe who administers the site and I was invited to join the site as a contributor which I happily agreed. I'm kinda honored too, that they like my post on the Dragon Seamoth so here's my post on the seamoth at Underwater Australasia: http://www.underwater.com.au/article.php/id/9676/

I would take this opportunity to invite all of you fellow friends, followers and visitors here to join Underwater Australasia. To register, go here: http://www.underwater.com.au/register_member/

Come join the site's regular photo and video contests here:
http://www.underwater.com.au/photo_competition/
http://www.underwater.com.au/video-competition/

So yeah, looking forward to seeing you guys in Underwater Australasia and thanks to my new friend Tim for inviting me in. Now I have a new playground. Hahaha.

The Dragon Seamoth

We saw the Dragon Sea Moth (Eurypegasus draconis) at a dive site at Mabul Island. Ribbon Valley to be exact. I took a few shots of this cool little fish a week ago and it is still around now. Hopefully it's gonna stay for a while. The sea moth is not a common fish you can find around here but they can be expected from time to time around the flat, sandy bottom of Mabul Island and Kapalai Island. I once discovered four Dragon sea moths at Roach Reefs before in the same dive and site. But I don't think you can see any at Sipadan Island.

The Dragon sea moth is one of the strangest fish in the world! Also known as the Little Dragon fish, Short Dragon fish and the Pegasus Sea Moth, this creature actually has the ability to change colors based on its surroundings much like the chameleon. If this wasn't weird enough they also shed their skin like a snake in a single piece! They also have two wing like fins that extend out on either side of their bodies. As you can imagine, all of these strange characteristics make the Dragon Sea Moth a favorite among macro lovers. Dragon Sea Moths are not large, only growing to about 6 inch (15 cm) max.

From this angle, you can actually see how it resembles a moth and that's where they got their name from.

Sea moths are distinguished by flattened bodies...

...the presence of large, wing-like, pectoral-fins...

and a body encased in thick, bony plates.

Their modified pelvic-fins allow them to "crawl" across the sea bottom where they dwell. Check out the claws at the tip of the wing.

Seamoths are masters of camouflaging but up close you can see just how beautiful the body-patterns look.

Besides the cool lookin body patterns and wings, big gleaming eyes and all, check out the snout. I guess its been telling a lot of lies and havin too much fun with silly Pinocchio.

The Dragon sea moth have an elongated snout in front of its jaw. The jaw is highly specialized and can form a tube-like mouth to suck worms and other tiny marine creatures from their burrows.

FUN FACTS:
- The seamoths are a family, the Pegasidae, of fish found only in coastal tropical waters.
- As of now, there are only two genera: Eurypegasus and Pegasus and five species known, namely the Eurypegasus draconis (our subject today), Eurypegasus papilio (Hawaian seamoth), Pegasus lancifer (Sculptured seamoth), Pegasus laternarius, Pegasus volitans (Long tail seamoth)
- It can awesomely shed its skin to grow a new one and change colors to camouflage itself!
- When threatened, it will spread its wings out like picture #2
- It is strongly believed that the seamoth is poisonous but its not really proven or studied yet. There's still a debate going on about whether its needle-like spines are poisonous or not.
- A very delicate and strange creature, seamoths are sold at aquarium shops at a very expensive price. But since it is not easy to care for, the seamoths are not popular aquarium pets.
- It is said that in olden days, seamoths caught in China are so revered that it is dried and used in magic amulets.
- The elusive sea moths don't bite cus they have no teeth~

THE GREATEST ADVERTISEMENT EVER!

A big cheer, loud claps and a standing ovation for those who made this. It is clearly one of the best ad ever to be made, and my 40 seconds of time was worth spending. LMAO!

HAVIN SOME FUN!

Safe and knowledgeable divers have more fun!

As one of the instructors at Sipadan, our mission is to provide you with the best personalized service possible. It is our dream to introduce to as many people in the world to the beautiful underwater world at Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai as well as the many exotic dive sites around. And of course, we want you to join us and have good fun, underwater!

A big congrats to Ann, Deon and Ina for doing their PADI course with us. Here I have some pics from my new friend, Deon from Sweeden.

With me are Deon and Ann from the Netherlands.


A new friend, Ina from Germany. She is also a blogger and writes about her travels in her blog here: http://snow-in-september.blogspot.com/


A new student diver and friend. Meet Sumaryono, an embassy officer from Indonesia!


Step 1: You take off your mask.


Step 2: Put on your Oakley


Deon the new Terminator


Ann havin fun and lookin cool on it


The buddies' trademark nemo sign that will haunt Timo for a long time. Haha.


A school of friendly scads circling around us during the PADI course.


Ann


Deon


Ogle with your Oakley


Divers gettin ready for a dive at Sipadan


With Ann and Deon is Timo in the middle


With me is another instructor, Rika from Sipadan Water Village who blogs for the Paradise Log


Dive tanks


A beautifully painted map of Sipadan Island.


Our dive schedule board


A view of the Sipadan Water Village Resort

More Than Words

Hi guys! Here's some pics I took during Xmas and New Year. The pics don't look as good as I have hoped, on top of the strong/strange currents and bad visibility, my camera's been a b*tch and needs servicing plus, I suck. I don't remember where I placed my wide angle lens so I had to stick with macro so I hope you guys like a few shots of them small fishes and critters. I thought about writing to elaborate more on my dives but decided to put more pics instead of just boring words. Hope it works and that my pics could speak more than words about my dives that period and finally, hope you like the pics.


The cute and pinkish Pygmy seahorse at Seaventures


A beautiful swimming Ornate ghost pipefish at Kapalai


A well camouflaged Whip-coral shrimp


A salute to you by a Bubble-coral shrimp


Do you know that the sea cucumber is a prized delicacy in the Chinese community? The Malay community calls it Gamat and are said to have excellent healing properties.


You can see big Hermit crabs the size of a volleyball during night dives in Mabul


A shot (sorry for the bad angle) of the mimic filefish


A shy (kung fu) Panda clownfish


A swarming school of juvenile catfish. Careful, they sting.


One of my favorite squat lobsters, the munida sp. also commonly known as the Robokon ebi in Japan. A very small subject, smaller than a pygmy seahorse.


The anemone crab, I might take this shot for my new name card.


A nudibranch known as Nembrotha Kubaryana performing a Lion Dance lol


The whip-coral shrimp usually adopts the color similar to their home.


This Whip-coral goby adopts a reddish color instead


A juvenile scorpion fish


This is a rare nudibranch, I forgot the name and am too lazy to search it up. Please help.


An anemone shrimp


A juvenile mantis shrimp. Even though it's still young, its claws can still rip your finger out. It is also known as the 'thumb splitters' by modern divers


A light colored juvenile lionfish


I used to know the name of this nudibranch, this one is insanely tiny. Help needed for common name and scientific name.


Growl! The yellow painted frogfish! This one looks big but it's actually half the size of your I-phone.


The snake-eel buries itself underground and would usually swim out to hunt during sunset.


A red painted frogfish at Seaventures. Pretty color.


Clark's anemone fish and this one seems boastful!


Did you know that the leaf-fish, also known as the paperfish is a member of the scorpion fish family?


Leaf fish comes in a variety of colors from white to pink, purple, green, brown, black and etc.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Wishing all you good folks a happy, merry, awesome, sexy, marvelous, super and cool New Year 2010!

Spent my new year teaching diving and doing some photography at Sipadan, Mabul and Kapalai. Although the weather wasn't very inviting, the visibility around Mabul and Kapalai was sh*t, but the visibility at Sipadan did not disappoint. Water was a bit colder though, dropping to 25 degrees or lower with a thermocline. Definitely not the best period to dive here but hey, I know I wasn't here just for the diving alone...

New Year's party was a blast at SIPADAN WATER VILLAGE RESORT, good food, crazy games, good music, lovely people and awesome boozes! And of course, binge drinking and partying as well as culture exchange every night!

Here's more pics to share with everyone! Sorry about the lacking of fish pics lately, been teaching a lot lately so I didn't do much photography but I do have a small collection I took during Xmas and New Year so will hopefully keep you guys glued to my lil blog.


Hiroshi Nomura-san, one of the owner and director of Sipadan Water Village Resort posing with Josey.


Professional wedding and event photographer from Lahad Datu, Mike Ng and his girlfriend Joanne Liew


Awesome student divers: Fatt, Kimmy, Yeeven, Ross and his bro, Elisa and Isaac


F4


Let the binge drinking session resume!


The Feng Shui master, Robin Deane


Hawt babez


Livin up to the spirit of PIRATE NIGHT!


Comrades from team CAPTAIN HOOK! Do you think the dude looks like Kenpachi? Give him some spikes, bells and studs and he is fit to go.


Check out the bartenders! Best rum here!


Of course... The shark man!


Not sure why would a monk be allowed on PIRATE NIGHT but I guess we all need some blessing once a while...


Introducing team 1: The very intimidating and loud team PETER PAN!


Team 2: A quite disorganized and demoralized team CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW (oh how sad...)


Team 3, the last team! Our team! The very well-rounded CAPTAIN HOOK!


More members from team-work oriented CAPTAIN HOOK! We won this year lol! I seem to win with different group each year, lucky me. And I didn't even lift a finger...


The team captains are the resort dive masters, with other dive masters assigned as judges and referees and game supervisors and of course, bouncers...


Everybody starts preparing for the games. Here our teammate, the very cute Shiori-chan helping out a friend with the team wristband.


Here is Ah-Ket, the DJ for the night with his bad-ass dragon art...


Our team had a great start with the musical chair game. We dominated until...


The power players, team PETER PAN decided to just floor everyone and steal the chair away and claim themselves winners lol


Cake feeding game! One must be blindfolded and the other one with hands tied. The objective? Blind member must feed the cake to a member without arms and the team that finished first, wins. You need some skill but usually the result is still always, hilarious.


See? She got pwn'd


The proud king wins again! The cake eating gladiator and two time world cake-eating and finger-biting champion!

A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE!

It wasn't the dives that made our Xmas so awesome, but the people we met and dived with that made it so extraordinarily special. Thank you to all you great people for your support and love and also to the staff of Sipadan Water Village Resort for making our Christmas such an awesome one, like every year! See you guys again, real soon!

To the SWV dive crew: Yes I am gonna 'bomb' you guys again next Christmas! lol


Sincere thanks and love from,

Allister & Josey

P/S: Check out some pics we took during our string of parties and pics before dives, but the fish pics will have to come later. Sorry we missed out quite a few of you, will tag you all on facebook!



Got beer? Eva, Josey, Bobby Belma and Mina


Niger and his sister (my awesome student), the lovely Heidi


He who dives with the Tigers, it's Howard all the way from South Africa!


This is how you jam... a second before the string snaps...


Tag team: Jonathan and his father, the equally tough Richard


The 3 dudes: Videoman Sen, Anand and Bankai Lord Ron


The 3 chicks: Rika, Yeeven & Josey


Bobby and Alan doin their thing


Dive buddies: Yeeven & Nelson


Jonathan and his lovely mother, Madam Kathie Ong


The Charlie's Angels? Reiko, Elizabeth and Josey's palm


Cool English teacher Lynsey O'rourke


Chan Kok Foong and his girlfriend Erica celebrating after her first dive experience!


Yup you got that right, SIPADAN! With me are Mariana, boatman Jabar, Meor, Farah, Sarina, Shamsul with his girlfriend and mother, boatman Swaib and dive master Bobby.


Take One!


Take Two!