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February 2004
Hin Daeng-rumors about hammerhead sharks at the 70m wall…
Purpose of the project:
To prove that the rumors about hammerheads are not true…;)
Description of dive site:
One of the most delightful missions of our team is to stop false rumors. During the years we have noticed that there are a lot of “know-alls” and “story-tellers” in this business-not so many “doers”. Many local dive professionals have vaunted about how you can see hammerhead sharks at a wall going down to 70 meters.
We heard about the rumors and as we could not find anybody who had actually been down to 70 meters there, we decided to go and explore the place, to see if there is any truth in the rumors. In our team were Janne Miikkulainen, Jani Makinen and Finnish Navy officer Petteri Airanne. When having one more talk with these “know-alls”, suddenly nobody was sure anymore if there were hammerheads at this site at all and also how deep the wall really was…
Details of the dive:
We went down to 55 m quiet fast, after dropping off on the south side of Hin Daeng, and came to a sandy bottom. In front of us was a steep wall extending all the way to the surface, making it a nice dive spot. We had come to find a wall going deeper, so having trimixes calculated for 70 meters depth on our backs, we took a bearing south and started swimming. The Bottom was sand and sloped down slowly. After swimming for about 8 minutes we had come to 65 meters and it seemed that the bottom was not going down any deeper. Our options were either to try to swim some more or return to the wall, so we could see at least something during our dive. At the depth of 55 meters the dive site is magnificent: a lot of big fish, steep rocks and beautiful soft coral.
We rose to our decompression stop next to the wall and for once enjoyed decompression with something to see instead of being in the empty mid blue water. After descending to 30 meters, a strong current tore us away from the wall, so the rest of our decompression was in the mid-water anyway.
So we did not find a wall going to 70 meters and no hammerhead sharks-we did take wings off from one more rumor.
Gases used:
Bottom gas trimix 17/35, decompression gas EAN 40
Equipment used:
Wetsuit 5 mm
2 X 15L steel 200 bar tanks
1 X 12L aluminum 200 bar deco-tank
2 X ScubaPro MK25 + S600 regulator
Diverite/OMS backplate, harness, wings
Reel + SMB |
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