Scuba with Mark and Christine

For my birthday, Mark and Christine had invited Christel and me for a day out on a divingexpress boat. Here, I was to meet Ken Chan, scuba-father to the sandy-bottom divers. Unfortunately, Ken had three students with him, so we were going to be entertained by him only on board, but not underwater. The boat left 9:00 from the Kwun Tong public pier, and our first dive was at Po Toi island. The previous day, Hong Kong had seen a black rainstorm, but the sea was surprisingly calm. Visibility however was a different thing altogether. Mark, Christel and I formed a team of three, and from the boat swam towards the island at about 8 meters depth. First thing we encountered was a relatively young ghost net that fortunately had not trapped fish yet, so we decided to worry about it later. From here on, we followed the shore to the left, in thick heavy soup, lost and found ourselves several times. Still, the dive was worthwhile, in particular one wall was covered with very pretty small anemones. Also, there were surprisingly large patches of coral. Christel was not too happy about the visibility (2m) and eventually left. Mark and I decided to take out the net, but immediately lost each other again. In the end, I took out half the net, and had the deckhand on the tender pull it up. As much of a help as the guy was, I had hoped he would dispose of the net properly, and not roll it up and toss it overboard, as soon as I was off. Like pizza, even a miserable dive is still great fun, and I left the water looking forward for the afternoon dive.
Here are some photo from the fist dive:

Some small sea anemone

Mark, at his best

Some friendly crab

Tons of white and purple soft-coral, cauliflower shaped