The weather was getting gray after leaving sunny Mabul during about 70 min boatride to Siamil. Expectations were high, people said good things about this place. And subconciously, looking from Mabul this was a Sipadan-like island on the horizon. Certainly this had to be better than Mabul.
Even the weather was getting bad, things were smooth below the surface. Water was calm and crystal clear. There is a coral slope going to the sandy bottom at around 30 meters. Instead of exploring the reef, the DM launches fiercely towards the boring looking bottom. We follow like lambs with some current against us. In 30 meters this means heavy air consumption. After circling arounf a while, we are shown a common seahorse (dont let the name fool you, it is not a common thing to find). Afterwards
we founf a strange purple scorpionfish, which eventually turns out to be a Rhinopias Scorpionfish. Not understandinf at the time, but this is the rarest seacreature I have seen during my dives switching the instructor community back in Mabul totally mental. Some of them had never seen it during their years of stay here. Its highly sought after by aquarium enthusiastics but rare even among them.
By the way, Marinecenter.com has a pricetag for this fish of 1399 USD, but (not surpisingly?) they are out of stock.
I never thought I would get excited about some goddamn fish. But excitement spread around and eventually I was very proud having seen and photographed one.
Spending too much time with my camera in relatively deep water, I run out of air quickly. Not a good combination with a ten minute deco stop looming ahead. So I decide its better go on buddy air, even though I eventually ascend with a good 25 bar.
There was also other stuff, regular scorpionfish, pipefish etc. but nothing that cool.
Scorpion leaffish
Fire Urchin
If you wanna go out there and look for the Rhinopian yourself - good luck! Instructions: Go about 50 meters from the slope towards the endless seabottom and when you find a 7 cm long purple weedy scorpiofish, then congratulations!
After ascend, the weather had really turned bad and now it was raining horizontally cats and dogs. This dive really didnt go by the book, first the buddyweiserair and then I dropped my mask on the surface so that the dm had to go and find it. Not cool Mike!
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