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December 26, 2016

Guest blogger, underwater photographer and Singapore reef explorer, Katherine Lu, shares her experiences of discovering Singapore’s marine wonders in this very special Boxing Day post! Be blown away by some of her encounters! Above: Cuthona sp.

People always tell me Hantu has nothing to see. They say the visibility is quite bad and the water green.

In mid-2015 I dived at Pulau Hantu for the first time after stumbling upon a local diver’s page which had a picture of the Costasiella Kuroshimae aka “Shaun the Sheep”. I had become obsessed with this critter after returning from Bali and it was in Hantu!

A year and a half later I am now diving almost every weekend because I think Hantu is a best kept secret for macro. When I started diving Hantu my spotting and photography skills weren’t as good but now I have learned how to spot critters on my own and at the same time greatly improve my photography by using Pulau Hantu as my training ground to experiment. I’m proud to say that all of my award winning photos have come from Hantu!

December is the time of year of monsoons and the water is cooling but with that comes more critters, perhaps because of more food.

We are also doing more night dives and seeing different critters appear. I joke and say to people you have to come quick because what’s in season this week is gone the next. An example of this is this Tambja sp, it was everywhere but by the next week it had disappeared.

This Doto sp. laying its eggs was found on a night dive. I was looking for Dotos and looking through hydroids. I spotted something but wasn’t sure if it was anything until I looked through my camera lens. It was a Doto, and it had eggs! There wasn’t just one but two of them. Later when I was finishing the dive I found another Doto pair also laying eggs!

What a great night of diving. It’s always so exciting to see a new sighting or leave that day with good photos. Next week, back to Hantu to see what more surprises it has in store.

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