Closer to the Border

Well, this week it was a day trip to Ah Yah Jin. It's so small, I can't even find it on mapquest. It's north of Seokcho and just a little closer to Kim Jong Il. Everyone was tired and a little down after Korea's loss to Switzerland in the World Cup. Pretty much the entire country watched despite the fact that it was on at 4:00am and ended in Korea's first round elimination. In someways, these dives are like therapy. And I have to say that these were some of my favorite shore dives ever. The conditions were great. Our max depth for the first two dives was around 10m and we had calm seas and decent vis in the range of 6-10m. There were so many small things to see and I was really excited to get out. Lots of crabs, and jellies and snails. Little kind of conical shaped egg-type-things and little 1cm transparent sacs amongst the grass filled with little orange eggs. One small nudibranch and a whole lot of yellow and green seaweed. At the end of the first dive, I saw an "octopus armed starfish". I counted somewhere between 25 and 30 legs on this blueish-gray starfaish that measured about 45cm in diameter. Never saw that before. Too bad I didn't take my camera on these dives because the first 2 dives (both shore dives) were the best.

The last dive was a boat dive with a max depth of 18m. The vis was decent but not as good as in shallow water. Thankfully it was warm. The coldest the water got all day was 13 degrees and it went as high as 19. It'll soon be time to switch to my thinner drysuit underwear. I took my camera on this one so I have a fiew pics.




This first one is my buddy Mr. Lee. He was good on air which is fine by me. Our dives didn't go past 45 minutes but often they don't go longer than 30. He was diving wet but was a trooper and didn't complain about the cold once. Hardier than I and a great insta-buddy as farm as I'm concerned.





Here's another of the kelp. It's kind of strange for it to be so high this late in the year. Usually the plankton blooms would have cut them down by now. This particular plant is somewhere in the range of 6 meters. It went from the top of a submerged island, almsot to the surface. It gave me something to look at on my safety stop.





Here's James driving the bus. He's a great guy and runs the Scuba Green Peace outfit. He provides me with a couple of the lovelies in the shot below for long drive back home. Because of Sunday Seoul traffic it took more than 6 hours to return which was more than 2 longer than the trip to there.





Notice the advertising blurb on the bottom of the can. Gotta love OB Lager. As we departed Ah Yah Jin, it the sun was out and the sky was blue. It was a long drive home but the diving made it worth it. About 5km outside of Sanbon it started to rain. I have about a 20 minute walk from where James drops me off and I can never get a cab from there. It was no big deal though because I had an umbrella. All in all, a very fun day.

Visibility Woes

A few more dives logged this past weekend. On Saturday, we headed off to Daejin on Korea's East coast. It's pretty small so it's not listed but it's next to Yongdok on map #4:( Map of Yongdok KR) It started to pour as soon as I stepped outside the door. At least it was warm I guess. I got to the place where James (Scuba Green Peace) meets me and he was already there. That was nice. Then we began the 6 hour drive to Daejin.

We arrived and quickly jumped in for a night dive. Vis is hard to judge at night because you can only see as far as your light goes. There were lots of large rocks so you couldn't look too far without seeing one of those anyway. Not a lot to see. An baby octopus and a squid. Lots of colourful kelp. I nice dive (5m) but the current and surge took us down from our entry point so we had to swim around some rocks to get to the stairs.



We had a lot of rain and thunder during the night and when woke up, the wind was from the west. James had promised me 10 meters of visibility in Daejin but it was not to be. We suffered with 1-3 meters all day. The rain and wind had conspired to ruin our vis. Still, we had fun. I logged three more dives on Sunday. Depths of around 16 meters with water temps around 10-11 degrees. I saw the largest octopus I've ever seen in Korean waters. I'd guess it was about 2 meters if you streteched his legs out. He was so big and confindent. He didn't even swim away when we approached. He just sat there and blended his colours into those of the rocks. I watched him for about 5 minutes. If he was smaller, I'm sure my dive buddy would have had him for a meal. At his size, it would have been a bit of a fight.

I took a few pictures but the aren't worth posting. There were so many particles in the water that the light was all messed up and I ended up with a lot of back scatater. Instead, I'll just post a couple videos. They aren't very good but they're better than the photos.

VIDEO: Entry

VIDEO: At Depth