Pedro Blanco - Myth or Reality?

The Mantas of the South China Sea

This was not actually a South China Club dive, instead Marc Smith-Evans had got a group of people together from several of the HK BSAC Clubs, notably SCDC, Y Divers and Hong Kong Underwater Club, along with some extras. It turned out to be a good bunch of people, and as far as I know everyone enjoyed the trip. Pedro Blanco is a small rock which is in Chinese waters, about 80 miles east of Hong Kong.

To my knowledge SCDC have made 5 previous attempts to find Pedro Blanco, all of them were unsuccessful. This time things were off to a worse start, we couldn't even find the boat! As the second sampan set off from the pier in Aberdeen, we came across the first one coming back, still fully loaded with divers and kit. Unwilling to believe that the boat wasn't there, Marc assumed that all 15 people on the first sampan had gone temporarily blind, so we repeated their tour of Aberdeen harbour. Safely back on the pier we discovered that the boat was now parked up in the New Territories. At this point 2 of the Y divers dropped out (Y not?). The rest of us piled into a fleet of taxis and headed north-east. Once there we began the onerous task of grabbing bunks, tanks and finding out where the fridge was. Then we were off. However the night's entertainment did not end there. Before too long we found ourselves being pursued by a HK Marine Police launch which was flashing blue and red lights and pointing a searchlight at us. Brian was by now in the party mood after a packet of mussels and several Tuborgs, so he invited them over for a beer. The police took one look at him and disappeared back into the night.

We turned up at Pedro Blanco at around 6 am, and it is an impressive, steep-sided rock sticking up in the middle of nowhere. There we found some fishermen taking a break from their day jobs, and encouraging the bird life on the rock. This is a nesting site for some sea birds and the fishermen were helping to increase their population by feeding them. Since you can't just scatter a bit of birdseed on the sea and expect it to float, they had adopted a more practical approach. They threw a large quantity of dynamite into the water. This resulted in a huge number of dead fish floating up to the surface to the delight of the gathered flocks. It had the added advantage of enabling me to write up my dive log without getting wet.

When the explosions had finished we jumped into the 2 chase boats ready to brave the depths. To their credit the fisherman did not bomb us. There may have been several reasons for this and you can choose the most likely:

• They were concerned about the health of the divers.
• They had run out of dynamite.
• They had frightened off all the big fish, and were waiting for them to come back before resuming the barrage.

The first dive was like a good visibility Hong Kong dive, but without the fish (apart from those floating at the surface, or lying on the bottom). In fact things were so bad that a poor cleaner wrasse had to resort to cleaning Keith's fins, he must have been desperate for business. The bottom dwellers must have thought it was Christmas. I saw a large number of Tubastreas (Coral-type things) which just seemed to have been sitting there with their mouths open, when dead fish dropped in. Crabs were out in force. We also saw a tiny nudibranch. Visibility varied, on the exposed side it was up to 20 metres. The scenery was impressive, with steep walls, and valleys near the main rock, and several other smaller pinnacles further off. My sinuses gave me loads of pain and several other people had either sinus or ear problems including Marc who had both. He also had some other problems which led to him monopolizing the toilets, but I'd rather not go into that.

Back on board, we got stuck into breakfast. A bit later I took my mind off the sinus pain by dropping a tank on my foot. This was surprisingly effective and I didn’t notice my sinuses for the rest of the day. I found the second dive much better despite being joined by Marc, since Sheren was sitting this one out. This was also Louisa’s 100th dive. As we dropped down there were lots of jelly-type things hanging around in blue water, including some that looked like tiny eels (jellied eels?). After Marc had photographed all of them we headed for the rock. This time the fish had started to return. We saw big schools of tuna and jacks, along with the more usual reef fish. There were several patches of soft coral, wrasses, butterflyfish, sergeant-majors, hawkfish, and lots of other stuff. We also found several craters and a fuse.

On our third dive we found a sheltered little area with a sandy bottom and large rocks. In here were moray eels, several big scorpion fish, and a very large cone shell. In addition there were hundreds of crabs (hermits, decorators, normals, etc.). Malcolm was particularly impressed as he came across a manta ray. He was convinced noone would top that, and that noone would believe him. It turned out he was wrong on both counts, as Keith had 3 of them on video! I believe these were first mantas that Brian had seen too.

Back on board and we had to leave almost immediately, as it is about 6 hours away from Hong Kong. The time back was spent eating, sleeping and drinking, and was nice and relaxing. As a bonus Ron and Lucy from Hong Kong Underwater Club had picked up a couple of fish to supplement our lunch. Both were very tender, probably as a result of having recently been blown up. In fact we would have done even better for lunch if Tam had been able to get a large tuna from out of the grips of a very powerful octopus. According to his buddy, Tam lost the battle when he got too ambitious, and started to think about how to get the fish into the wok with the octopus still attached.

Thanks very much to Marc for organizing everything. Even those of us who were not lucky enough to see the mantas enjoyed the diving and had a good day. It is a long way out and we would have to plan things very carefully to get more than 3 dives in. Also for those who get seasick, it could be quite a miserable crossing in bad weather. However the boat is quite spacious and comfortable and the crew were very helpful.