Photo of the Week (01/23/2012): The Trug

The propeller of the tug boat wreck fondly known as the Trug. Home of curious Lionfish and a superb swim through filled with glass fish.

M0010576

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Top 10 Memorable Ocean Experiences of 2011: No. 01 � Swimming with a Flatworm

Image
It�s 2012 and I�m looking back on a 100 dives in 2011 and 200 since I started diving way back in 2009. Since this was my first full year of diving with somewhat reasonable dive skills and a camera, I figured I would put down some of the most memorable dives/events that I have had the privilege of experiencing during the season. Of course a lot has happened so expect a multi-part post with the events in no particular order of significance. I will start of with a characteristically geeky event, my brief if surprising swim with Thysanozoon nigropapillosum which rather less jawbreakingly is known as a Polyclad flatworm. Usually you see these vivid black and yellow flatworms innocuously sitting on the rocks on shallow reefs such as Palagalla so I have come to associate them with brown, murky water and silty dive sites. I did see one launch itself for a brief swim, undulating gracefully through the water so I knew that they were quite mobile as well. Thysanozoon nigropapillosum sitting pret...
Read more

King Gemunu (Yala 05/06/2010)

Image
As announcing sightings goes, Suren�s was a bit of a mix of anticlimax and irony, as a he turned towards us with a thoughtful expression on his face and announced he could have sworn he had just seen a tusker approaching through the bush as we whizzed past. Sumudhu and the tracker seemed a bit nonplussed by this casual announcement but we nonetheless backed up quickly to investigate. The heat hadn�t gotten to Suren�s head as he had indeed spotted a rather magnificent tusker coming towards the road. Silently one of the Kings of Yala emerged from the brush onto the road. Along with the leopard and bear, the tuskers of Yala are another iconic animal for the wildlife enthusiast. I was brought up on pictures, stories and very occasional sightings of the famous tuskers of the park such as the now dead (mostly from being killed for their ivory) behomeths such as Kublai Kahn and the Podi and Loku Pootuwas (cross-tuskers). This particular tusker was Gemunu, not a tusker with the most impressi...
Read more

Top 10 Memorable Ocean Experiences of 2011: No. 09 � The Mysterious Wreck

Image
It still seems strange but at the time I dived the huge wreck in Vakarai, it never occurred to me to question what the wreck was, what ship had gone down when to create this paradise? I guess at the time, I was still a relative neophyte, more concerned with fish and photographs. This wreck was the first that really woke my interest in wrecks as more than just fish aggregators and pretty sites. On our return to Colombo, DJ enrolled me inadvertently in his search for the name and origin of the mysterious wreck. As we scoured lists of sunken ships and coordinates it became apparent that there were two strong candidates for the wreck, both sunk during the Japanese attack in April, 1942 which also sank the world famous Hermes . The first candidate was one of the ships from the Hermes convoy, the merchant navy ship the British Sergeant which was an oil tanker that had put out to sea that fateful day before being sent to the bottom by the Japanese raiders. I found a rather thrilling story ab...
Read more