Diving Holidays

Seven Skies and Igara on the Black Manta - 19th to 21st October 2007

The GUE Annual Dive Extravanganza was held on the 19th to 21st October 2007. LivingSeas chartered the luxurious liveaboard the Black Manta for a weekend of wrecks in the South China Sea.

We had a full charter and 20 of the region's GUE divers came in to Singapore to join Gideon and the rest of the LivingSeas team on the boat. There were divers from Perth, Thailand, America and Singapore. Half the boat consisted of technical divers, which was good as some of the recreational divers had a chance to see what technical diving was about for the first time.

The boat set off from Tanah Merah at 7:30 pm on Friday evening and we headed straight for the Seven Skies wreck.

The Black Manta (courtesy of Simon Mok)

Diving Day 1

The highlight of the trip was definitely the dives made at the Seven Skies wreck, although the current was pretty strong. Visibility was great and the sea was calm, but best of all was the whaleshark that hung around the whole day.

The amazing marine life at Seven Skies (courtesy of Simon Mok)

A view of the Seven Skies funnel (courtesy of Vincent Kaw)

View of the Whaleshark while on deco (courtesy of Vincent Kaw)

Beautiful shot of the Whaleshark (courtesy of Simon Mok)

Whaleshark coming up to say hello (courtesy of Vincent Kaw)

See the Whaleshark video

After our wonderful day at Seven Skies we left to do some relaxing night dives at Katoaka, an undersea mound. A nice relaxing dive, it was great seeing so many large marine creatures, including a huge marble ray, a bunch of cobias, a large cuttlefish and a monster sized conical sea shell.

Poor cuttlefish! (courtesy of Richard Walkland)

Diving Day 2

We got to the Igara wreck early in the morning and got ready to do diving again. This time however, the current had picked up and the visibility wasn't very good.

Some teams descended nonetheless and explored the various holds in the Igara.

View of the crack in the Igara (courtesy of Richard Walkland)

Just before the second dive, we somehow lost the mooring and the boat drifted off the wreck. After scrambling to get the boat back to the wreck and picking up the divers who were in the water, the rest of the divers managed to get into the water and do their second dive.

After a pretty uneventful dive on the Igara, we started on our long journey back to Singapore. Our guest of honour, Gideon Liew, gave a speech about how it has always been his dream to get a group of safe divers on a trip like this, and how difficult it has been in the past. After his heartwarming speech, we took a few group photos and got ready to disembark back at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal.

A final group photo (courtesy of Simon Mok)

LivingSeas is already planning our next trip, which is slated to be in May 2008. We're going to check out some new wrecks this time, so check back to find out where we're going!

Read more about the trip and see more photos below.

A much better-written trip report by Terence Lee
Photos by Terence Lee
Video footage by Sean Cox on YouTube