Tai Long Wan

Shock! Horror!! Divers find Rock!

(Yet another) New Dive Site

Sunday,11 September, Cheryl presiding, we found ourselves parked tothe east of Round Is in Mirs Bay in near-perfect conditions: flatcalm, littlebreeze, somewhat overcast so not so hot, and vis of atleast 5 metres(well, until certain fins got to work...), and maybe asmuch as 8 m. I was conducting a Search & Recovery course with theIron Man,and having had a successful morning, and the team despatchedto do their thing on the afternoon dive, the two of us decided to havean ordinary dive (none of that tedious supervision stuff).The plan wasto investigate the northern end of the island on that side, havingfirst circumnavigated the danger zone from a bunch of anglers on therocks (not that I was expecting their casting skills to be up to much).Hence, due north, then turn left to go inshore after a suitabledistance. However, Plan B was rapidly invented (in-water update, forthe technically-minded), just as we reached the point of turning left,for in the haze at the edge of visibility loomed ...

(Dan-dan-da-dan-dan-daaa!)

...a reef! Towering up all of, ooh,what? 5 m? - could be more, could be less - was a bedrock outcrop fromour position at about 10 m. Odd, I thought, that's not on the chart.So, we swam around, and there's another one, and then another ... andso on, for 20 minutes exploration, in and out of gulleys and aroundtowering (all right - maybe not towering, but they were not titchy!)attached chunks of country rock (no, not nauseating music! I dunno,read your geology!).Seeing as we had reached our notional turn point,we came back on the west side, in and out some more, finding in thecourse of all this some 4 big (one a whopper) octopuses. Iron Man hadbeen complaining that he had never seen one before underwater, now hehad found two for himself. The little chappie was delighted, and sattransfixed as one was enticed (= scared) into a walkabout. No, guv, itwasn't on purpose! Honest!

So far, Todd and buddies are the onlyothers to have seen this magical land (that I know of); we passed themon our way back and I pointed the way with an expressive "OK" signal.However, fish traps indicate that it is not altogether unknown tolocals. Now the odd thing about all this is that it really is not onthe chart (see the the little extract). We were parked just about atthe S of Sha, and swam due north (I can besure of that much! Well,barring a Major Magnetic Anomaly confusing my slice of lodestone, thatis). The only clue is the "R" just level with the top of the island,given that the surroundings are silty-sandy mixtures, but clearly thereis no reef, no rocks significantly approaching the surface. It isbedrock (not Bedrock),and not a pile of rubble dumped by some mainlandflytipper. What a thing! Normally, absolutely everything of anyimportance has been found and marked. Is this a Major Oversight, I askmyself? A Significant Error in charting? Well, I have a GPS fix forourlocation (surprise!), and we have the technology next time we areentertained by Hong to scan the area (weather permitting). We shallfind out how far this thing thing reaches, and then dive it again. Itcould be good. But don't tell anyone, or they'll all want to do it.

Brian Darvell