Enrolled myself to Aquaria’s Dive with Shark last weekend. There’s 2 slots that guest can join, the 1pm and 5 pm. The 1pm slot is usually for certified diver while the 5pm is for non-certified. Aquaria is not really strict about this, guest can request to join the 1pm slot. The whole event sould take you about 3 hours. The first hour is for training and diver’s hand signals, and the rest is for prep and the dive itself. The cost of the dive is RM450 for non-certified diver and RM400 for certified divers. I know it sound expensive but bear in mind that there’s reasonable amount of risks involved. You’re diving in a tank with sharks. Plus, this includes the rental of the diving equiptment, the dvd recording of the whole event and the goody bag you’ll be getting. Aquaria is also kind enough to supply me with an instructor to guide me through the whole experience for no additional charges. Talk about value for money.
Getting in the wetsuit was murder. I’m telling you, those things should have a ‘dangerous item’ label. Turned out, you have to wet it first before doning it on. After quickly slipping in the wetsuit, I was briefed about how to use the mask and the tank and again, drilled with diver’s hand signals. This is important because diver’s need some way of communicating under water. The prep area is actually their staff room but equipt with shower and a lot of diving equptments. There, you can also see behind the scene of how the tank works. They’ve got filters for everything; sand, protein etc. Those filter’s are huge. My cameraman told me that Aquaria is currently employing about 80 staff.
The oxygen tank weight about 10kg(i think) and you’ll also be wearing some sort of heavy belt. Probably to weight a diver down. Wearing flippers and the oxygen tank, you have to walk backwards into the water, and then to the backflip thingy at the edge of the reef. Btw, I saw a mermaid with a pink top came out of the water just before i dive. Hehe..
I was advised to just let the instructor manouver me underwater instead of doing it myself. Don’t kick and don’t wave your arm. The reason is rapid movements attracts the sharks curiosity. They’re not really violent, but the risk is still there. The instructor guided me throughout the whole tank which is a maze. I’d be lost and end up in the shark’s den without him.
The day ended with me awarded with a simple certificate. What’s cool is the "I survived Dive with Sharks" t-shirt included in the goody bag. You can’t buy that at the gift shop. Plus, I’ve managed to collect about 6 shark teeth. I would highly recommend this to anyone.
Shark’s teeth
Check out the rest of the pictures here and Ghazali’s photopages. I haven’t receive the dvd yet from Aquaria. I’ll keep you guys updated when i get it.
Also, I’m moving this blog to blogger.com to take advantage of the nicer url. Check it out http://penyelamat.blogspot.com
