I have encountered a couple of weird incidents underwater. I am an avid diver and a spearo, I was diving Malaysia waters every weekend 20yrs ago. My buddies and i will sail one of their boats up on Friday and back on sunday.

We will avoid the popular islands like aur, dayang and tioman. We dive and spear at sites nobody dives. Eg. Tokong yu(target island for Malaysian Airforce), lima channel and many wrecks that only trawler capt. Will know.

1st incident.

Japanese patrol craft wreck (yongsum maru), this wreck is 100m from a small rock outcrop (pulau berherler)40km north of tioman. It still had its 2 aa gunpods intact with ammo boxes and aa rounds in one of them. 50m west of the wreck is a broken up cargo boat wreck that always have school of big cobias.

My plan for that hunt was to hit the Japanese wreck and slowly swim to the cargo wreck to ambush the cobias, because they will spook if i descent straight on the cargo wreck. There were 6 of us on the boat, 3 of us will hit this spot and the other 3 the next spot.

So 3 of us hit the water, swam down to the jap wreck, swam to the bow and start swimming over a submerged reef to get to the cargo wreck. I was leading the team as the first always gets the fish. Just as i topped the reef and about to creep down to the cargo wreck, the school of cobias appeared, at least 30 of them. I stopped breathing to avoid spooking them. Exhaled bubbles are very loud underwater.

My buddies also held their breath when they saw me raised my gun to track a fat cobia. That was when i heard it. Someone was calling me by my name. My balls shrunk but i didn’t give a rats arse, pulled the trigger and hung on for the ride. It was a short fight as i managed to spined the fish.the rest of the school had taken off. Normally we will hide behind the reef and wait for them to come back. It was only 15mins into the dive and we still have plenty of air. But both my buddies were signaling me to ascend. Since they dont want to wait, i am fine with that, i got mine liao.

We reached the surface and waved to the boat to come pick us up. The 2 of them were palefaced, they started asking me if i heard the lady calling me, she was just about 3m on my left. I didn’t see anyone as my vision was narrowed on my target but i did hear someone calling me, i thought it was my mind playing tricks. As its very quiet underwater without the bubbles. We quickly left the spot after we were picked up.

The 2nd incident was called the (kapal timor) east wreck. These incidents are not in order as they happened so many years ago and i cant remember the order liao.

East wreck is a wooden trawler wreck sitting upright in 30m of water. On top of its wheelhouse stands a cross shaped mast at a depth of 16m.

This wreck always gives out an eerie feel, the water visibility is always bad, average 3-5m on a good day. We like to hunt this wreck because of the golden snappers hiding inside the hull. The water temperature around here is always around 28-29 deg c, but the temperature around the wheelhouse and the mast is always 1 or 2 deg colder, this has always puzzled me, by right it should be warmer as its nearer to the surface. The water only gets colder within 2-3m radius of the structure, which is very weird.

On this particular trip, there was 5 of us, 3 cowboys and a couple tagging along for sightseeing dives. The couple wanted to follow me on my dives, so i let the other 2 hunters take first dip while i be boatman. After 45mins, they surfaced with a variety bag of fishes. Its my turn to scratch my itchy trigger finger. I hit the water and waited for the couple to do their buddy checks. The guy was quite experienced with about 300dives logged, a divemaster rating too. The gf is an advanced diver certified with about 50 dives so they should be able to look after themselves in case they lose me. But i still waited for them.

They entered the water and we descended onto the wreck, current was negligible, vis is still the same (cant see shyte). The blurry image of the bow came into view after 20m of freesinking in the murky water without a reference except the bubbles going up. Loaded up my gun and start finning down to the deck. I want to enter the hull from the bow hatch and park there to ambush the snappers in the hull. There is another hatch near the middle of the deck that will allow some light in and that will light up the snapper when they swim over. I signalled the couple to go do their tour around the wreck, i dont want them to stir up the muck in the hull and cause a blackout. So off they went holding hands…. So loving. Hahaha.

I spent the entire dive inside the hull shooting snappers. And only ascended when my air was low.

The couple was already on the boat. The guy was very agitated pulling his regulator apart. I asked him what happened.

Apparently after separating from me, they swam down to the bottom and start circling the wreck, when they reached the stern, they saw a huge porcupine fish and started to follow it. The porcupine lead them up to the wheelhouse, and then shyte starts happening, bf couldn’t breathe from his reg, he checked his gauge, it shows empty!! So he quickly signal to gf and grab the alternate from her, he couldn’t get air from it either. Gf is confused now, she is still breathing ok. They were just 10 mins into the dive, should still have plenty of air. Next thing she knew bf is pulling her finning for the surface. They reached the surface and got onto the boat. Bf’s gauge shows the tank still has 170 bar of air, the reg is working fine, gf’s tank still has 180 and the alternate is also working fine.

Up till today, it still remains a mystery why he couldn’t get air from both regs while gf is still breathing ok, especially from the alternate as it shares the same 1st stage as gf.