Whale....shark!!!!!! Where's my camera?

The photos in this poster (and others to come) were extracted from video footages taken using a Sony TRV900E encased in a Stingray I underwater housing. This was a golden video opportunity of a lifetime when a willing fellow techie diver, Davy Koh, happily cruised alongside a little baby whaleshark, propelled by a scuba scooter in the deep blue waters just off one of the Udang oilrigs off Anambas!

• 
  And it is precisely these encounters (unpredictable though it may be) with beautiful marine creatures that made me take up underwater videography!
  
  It was on my first muck dive in Mabul that I chanced upon a school of sotong kechil (aka Baby Squid) performing what seemed to be a mating jig, til I noticed a huge cluster of transparent, bulb-shaped squid eggs nearby! Were they mating? Were the parents protecting the little 'uns? Darn! Where's the camera when you need it? Somehow, I'd lost my buddy (not a rule to break when diving, but what the heck....the waters were barely 2 metres deep)....but it was at that moment that I knew I HAD to document all that I saw, and share it with all those poor souls who made yet another wrong turn!
  
  I must confess I've become a slave to my video camera! I never leave home without it when I go diving....and ironically, I dive less now than I used to, partly coz I've finally gone to the mecca of diving and need landtime to edit all that footage! My camera and housing are also kinda busted from overuse and this is one hobby that's left a huge crater in my pocket! Never thought I'd see the day when I start to give excuses for turning down dive trips!
  
  But it was not always like this. I loved diving. Period (with a smile on ya face). It was the closest experience to flying! Like superman, you can stretch your wings (errrr....fins? ok, arms)...and fly over fields of colourful aquaculture! Swimming shoulder to fin with pelagics 3 times bigger than myself is somewhat of a surreal experience....almost like being in a Dali painting! And discovering that there are stranger creatures living in our deep oceans than I would imagine living in Mars! Absolutely awesome! The simple joys of appreciating a different world then open only to a privileged few who dared to take the plunge.
  
  So, one fine day, over a cuppa cofffee, Davy asked me a puzzling question. "Why don't you have a dive hobby?" What did that mean? I thought diving WAS the hobby! "You know, like tech-diving, underwater photography, scooter-riding?" That thought pricked me hard like an annoying urchin's needle sinking into my finger, and as any diver would have recommended, I just had to break it off and knock it into my system. Knock knock, who's there? An underwater videographer? Yes, but it's not going to be easy....