Hammer Dive!

Hello to all Paradise blogger! Its was such a busy week and sorry for the delay of update. The end of last month, we encountered cold current of upwelling in Sipadan and Mabul. Anyway the weather is raining and windy, and the visibility is less than 15 m. But one of our dive group from Thailand lead by Jay and Ron saw the school of Hammerhead sharks in Sipadan. They are so happy and so excited and some even fear of what they saw infront of them. So end up with no photo of the Hammerhead, but only one of them took a short video of the Hammerhead sharks. This week will uploaded some beautiful photos took by Allan Townsend. Thank you so much for the lovely photos ......they are lovely couple we ever met in SWV Allan and wife Jacqueline. They love gobies so much, so we have some very good photos of the gobies from them. Enjoy!

School of Bumphead Parrotfish(Bulbometopon muricatum) feeding in the early morning.

Beautiful Painted spiny lobster (Panulirus versicolor).

A delightful little Squat / Ambonion shrimp (Thor amboinensis).

Ornate Ghostpipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus)

Spine-Cheek Anemonefish (Premnas biaculeatus)

Juvenile Harlequin Sweetlip (Plectochinchus chaetodonides)

Crab-eye Goby (Signigobius biocellatus)

A pair of Yellow shrimp goby (Cryptocentrus cinctus)

Brownish color phases of Yellow shrimp goby (Cryptocentrus cinctus)

Black-ray shrimp goby (Stonogobiops nematodes)

TDEX 2007

Thailand Travel and Dive Expo (TDEX) 2007, starting from May 24-27, open from 11:00 am - 8:00 pm, at The Queen Sirikit National Convention Center.

Theme for this year "The Real Diving Hub of Asia" with the aims to brings together under one roof a great diversity of tourism related products.

http://www.tatnew.org/events

TDEX is supported by numorous of key dive industry stakeholders such as the diving equipment manufacturers, training agencies, dive travel agencies, tourism bodies, liveaboard operators, books and magazines, underwater camera, marine conservationists and more, such as PADI, NAUI, Wahoo Diving Center, Dive Supply Bangkok, All Star Diving, The Living Sea, Aqau Lung, Mares, Scuba Pro, Oceanic.........

Sipadan Water Village Resort sent representative from the dive team and marketing attended TDEX. Bobby, Ron and Allan (dive team) , and Amy (Marketing).

Sipadan Water Village Booth.

Bobby, Ron and Allan from the dive team.

Compressor supplier
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA WORLD

Thailand 5 star liveaboard

NAUI Worldwide and http://www.dumnam.com/

Cressi dive equipment

Tourism Malaysia

Hard working staff in the booth.

http://www.travelorenge.com/

Professional Divers

A group of Professional (Medical doctor) divers came last week and spent about week to drove around in Sipadan, Mabul and also Kapalai. Majority of them come from France.They are really busy person in the world, morning diving then evening having meeting. Anyway, the beauty of coral distribution and the diversity of the marine life here impressed them and eased their tension of meeting every night.

School of Bumphead Parrotfish (Bulbometopon muricatum).

School of Spade fish (Platax teira).

School of Barracuda(Sphyraena qenie).

View of the Turtle Carven, Sipadan.

Full of mystery, unique and hidden beauty in the different perspective.

Group photo of the France group diver.

Thank you ! Wish you have a nice day!

Coral Spawning

Corals are animals in the phylum Cnidaria. An individual coral build by billions of tiny polyps which produce calcium carbonate skeletons also known as reef building corals or hermatypic corals. Whereas nearly all the soft corals lack of hard skeletons called non-reef building corals or ahermatypic corals.

Nearly all the hermatypic corals have Zooxanthellae - symbiotic algae live in the coral tissue, play important function to enable coral to deposit calcium carbonate much faster and also provide food to the coral polyps.

Corals growth and reproduce by sexually and asexually. The colony grows as the polyps repoduce and also polyps divide to form new polyps. Corals reproduce eggs and sperm just like other animals.

Usually the corals spawn at the night time. When the night falls, coral polyps start to expand and pink coloured bundles are held under the mouth of the polyps are visible through the transparent tissues and waiting for the time to release. When the biological clock stikes, the eggs and sperm released into water in bundles from the mouth of the coral polyps and float to the surface and get fertilize. Fertilized planktonic coral larvae called planula, drift with current for days and reach a suitable habitat to settle and growth to form a new reefs.

For mass coral spawning to take place, synchornized by the tidal change, moon and water temperature which is the specific cue to released all the eggs and sperm exactly the same time. However, the exact time of coral spawning still unpredictable. Mass spawning overwhelms the predator such as huge plankton feeder - whale sharks and other fishes. Besides, mass spawning also important to increase the opportunities of fertilization.

During this early of June, few days after the full moon, there are 4 Japanese divers who was lucky to experienced the unpredictable dive in our house reef here. We saw three species of table coral spawned.

Karasawa Kiyoko san took video of the coral spawning.

Kiuchi Hirotaka san waiting for the coral to spawn.

Akuzawa Hiroaki san took photo of the coral spwaning.

Nagata Kazuyo san observing coral spawning.




1st coral spawned : Acropora cerealis

2nd coral spawned - Acropora listeri

3rd coral spawned - Acropora hyacinthus

CHEERS!! HAPPY DIVE!!

SWV Resort Welcome you back to our blog!

Weather for the past few weeks was good eventhough sometimes raining and visibility also good in Sipadan and Mabul. There is a few photos of Sipadan Water Village Resort with a good view in the early morning, after rain with rainbow and evening time with fullmoon.

See clearly the photo actually there is double rainbow in the sky above SWV Resort which can be see in the early morning after rain.

Beautiful fullmoon evening just right above the chalet.

Paradise 1 house reef is one of the great dive site just right in front of our dive centre. Usually if you are 1st time comer in our resort, you will have chance to explore the Paradise 1 guided by our divemaster. After that, you can explore the Paradise 1 or 2 by yourself during your self dive.Paradise 1 have a few resident huge green turtle (Chelonia mydas) and Great Barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda) named Alex Jr.

Great Barracuda is fearsome looking and solitary predator commonly found in the shallow reef. Usually has a few scattered dark blothces. The Alex Jr. - resident Great Barracuda is about 1m in length. The Great Barracuda is the top predator of reefs and feeds on variety of fishes, cephalopods and shrimps. They rarely attack humans, but they attracted to shining or reflective objects such as ring or ear rings because look like the silvery fishes.

The macro life in Mabul and Kapalai is fascinating and fabulous with high variety in colour, shape and diversity.

Sipadan dive is amazing with school of Barracuda, Jack fish, many turtles and sharks.

Come and experince Sipadan and Mabul diving with us!

Blue- spotted Fantail Stingray

(Taeniura lymma)

Day Octopus

(Octopus cyanea)

Nudibranch

(Bornella sp.)

Decorated Reticulidia Nudibranch

(Reticulidia halgerda)

Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas)

School of Barracuda (Sphyraena qenie)

Clarence Koay - also known as Coral Boy!

The main photographer for the blog this time.

READY TO JUMP! ONE!

TWO!

JUMP!!!

THANK YOU ! SEE YOU AGAIN!

HAPPY HARVEST FESTIVAL 2007

May is a celebration month for Sabahans, Kadazan Harvest Festival also known locally as " Tadau Ka'amatan". The celebration throughout the whole month, but the peak of the celebration on the 30th and 31st of May(public holiday for Sabahans). Kadazans is the major indigenous tribe in Sabah, they believe in worship of ancient Gods and the existence of spirit. Hence, they worship to the spirit of paddy plant and also thanksgiving for the harvest of paddy throughout the year. During this festival, Sabah native wear traditional costumes and enjoy carnival from daybreak till dawn served with rice wine called 'Tapai'. Special greetings to all "Kopivosian Tadau Ka'amatan" or "Happy Harvest Festival"!!!

During the last week of May, our resort is full of non-divers because of the public holiday and the school term holiday. However, we have small group of divers.

Above: Ornate Ghostpipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus)

Our guests : Matsuyama Takashi, Matsuyama Ristusko, Naka Kazuaki, Naka Daisuke, Jules Hinves, Jennifer Sarah Gran.


Sunset dive still be the attractive dive for the divers to observe the mating behaviour of the Mandarin fish (Synchiropus spendidus). Small in size, extremely shy but locally common and covered with beautiful flourescent orange, green, black and blue colour. They are the most fabulous macro fish for underwater macrophotography in the world. To get a good photo of the mating behaviour is very difficult because they only mating for a precious few seconds suspended in mid-water column and soon hiding back to coral rubble. Try your best!





Heron Ardeadoris nudibranch (Ardeadoris egretta) about 8cm length with flower like body and bright yellow line around the body.

Dawn dive in Sipadan to see the school of Bumphead Parrotfish (Bulbometopon muricatum) wake up from sleep and start the daily journey around the Sipadan island. Cleaning, feeding or sometimes displaying or mating behaviour can be observe in Sipadan.

We would like to say Good Bye to Lee, one of our divemaster who been here for about 1 year and 7 months ........We all going to miss you! Take care and All the BEST in your future journey!

YO! Guys....Hard Dive!

GOOD BYE! SAYUNARA! CIAO BELLA! ZAI JIAN!

SWV RESORT, MABUL