Pelagic fish returning to Northeast Coast:

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
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I took a weekend off to hang at the beach and dive my favorite NE coast dive spot…

I’d been in the water a week before in Hualien, and was absolutey disgusted at the state of the local waters. I badly needed to erase that image from my head.

I was lucky enough to bunk out at my friends beach house in Fulong, which negated getting up at 5am and meant I could do a morning swim before donning the scuba gear about 40 minutes to the south. As we entered the washing machine that is the entry, a school of bait fish some 100 feet across welcomed us into a sunlit 40 feet of visibility, a dogtooth puffer swam by, and a huge school of sargeant majors+moorish idols were happily tearing into some small moon jellyfish…All within 10 feet of the entry.

I knew it was going to be a stellar day…

Within about 10 minutes we were slowly drifting along at 20 meters, and out of the corner of my eye I spotted something I’d not seen since Malaysia…A full size rock grouper in the 3 foot 15 pound range. A clown trigger fish also made an appearance, being busily attended to by about 5 cleaner wrasse. Several moray eels were spotted, as well as schools of convict tangs in their hundreds.

We emerged exuberant after seeing such a vibrant example of what NE coast diving can be…We had some lunch, and headed back down for seconds.

By this time the current had really picked up, the soft corals in their brilliant reds, purples and oranges, were extended and feeding on the rich, cold water upwelling brought on by the incoming tide. The fish life, so abundant on the first dive, had increased tenfold, to the point where at one spot we simply stopped stunned at the sheer volume. A school of fusilers ripped by at flank speed, numbering several hundred.

Suddenly, while surrounded by this explosion of marine excellence, one side of the school parted and about 15 great pacific barracuda came rolling through in the 4 foot plus range. One of them broke off and came down to investigate. He then proceeded to position himself directly behind me and stayed there for a good 5 minutes while the remainder of the school circled overhead…Amazing.

When you start seeing top end pelagic predators on a reef, especially close to shore (barracudas prefer deep, offshore pinnacles) it’s a very good indication that the resident fish population is abundant and stable…If this keeps up, who knows…Sharks?

One can only hope… :sunglasses:

That dive is going to keep me high for a month… :slight_smile:

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Sounds bloody marvelous. I’m guessing you were somewhere around Longdong.

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Excellent post MJB! I was up in Wanli myself, wish I’d known you were going to be up there…

Is this an increase in marine life you’re seeing, I mean over previous years? I wonder if things are actually starting to get better, now so many of the really dirty industries have moved to China…

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MJB -
Most excellent news and a great post!
Thanks! :bravo:

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Please don’t make this public … in a blink the whole Taiwanese fishingfleet will be there … or some divers will go spear fishing … :s

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There are only 5 people on the entire island that know where this place is… :wink:

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There are only 5 people on the entire island that know where this place is… :wink:[/quote]

I wonder if they make a wetsuit big enough for me? Hmmmm maybe. Sounds beautiful. Although I’d most likely drown. It sounds like a nice way to go.

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Almost makes me want to get back into a wetsuit. Sounds like you had a not-to-be-forgotten day. Did you get any pics?

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The last time I went diving on the north coast I couldn’t see my hand infront of my face and I got tangled in a net. :unamused:

Nice post MJB. Brought a content smile to my face imagining all those fish.

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I think any diver who’s spent some hours underwater has had a dive (or a dozen) like the one I described…For us lucky enough to be based here, some of the worlds premier dive sites lie within a short plane ride…Palau, Sipidan, The Similan islands, Palawan etc…

I’ve done them all… :sunglasses:

It makes one fairly jaded toward local diving, Kenting last year was a lesson in depression, corals and clear water in in a fishless moonscape, Green Island, once fantastic but slowly succumbing to overzealous development.

I was so thrilled to have the sense of “wow” reinstilled on a local divesite, and even more thrilled at the speed of recovery when an area is simply “left alone”. A better writer could have described the scene far better than I, but suffice to say I was “blown away” by what I saw.

Thanks for all the encouraging words…It’s a nice change of pace to see recovery, not decline on any of the local reefs. :sunglasses:

Dangermouse, there aren’t many sites like this left…It’s hard to get to, the entry/exit is terrifying, and it’s very tidal dependent. The current on an incoming tide is usually too strong to swim against, and on an outgoing, undivable. You check the local tide charts carefully before diving there.

Sandman, I didn’t take my camera this trip… :loco:

The local waters are fairly turbid even on a good vis day, and all attempts I’ve tried at wide angle photography look like a snowstorm (backscatter from all the suspended particles) so I usually go with a macro kit when I dive up north. If you’ve ever seen a Nikonos V setup, you’ll know what I mean. If not, suffice to say lenses aren’t interchangable underwater. The fish here are also fairly squirrely, and any shot taken from over 3 feet is a wasted shot with flash.

The memory of that dive will live on for quite a while, and will make me that much more anxious to be a regular visitor once more. :sunglasses: