LOCATION:
Pulau Payar (Payar Island) is located some 1-hour away from Langkawi's Kuah town by boat. Normally boat operators will depart from Kuah town around 9:00am and return back from Pulau Payar around 2:00pm.

This dive site is sandwiched between the bigger islands of Pulau Payar and Pulau Kaca. Lembu Rock (or also known as Sunken Boat Point) is a tiny rocky outpost jutting out from the ocean floor. This dive spot is supposedly filled with a number of sunken fish trawlers - an initiative conducted by the marine park authority to create an area of artificial reefs around Lembu Rock.

DESCRIPTION:
I went down for about 10 meter. Even then the visibility was poor. I barely could see anything 5 meter ahead of me. Nonetheless, the sandy bottom provided a great avenue to maneuver whilst watching the marine life and coral growth on my left side. There were quite a number of branching tree coral of Tubastraea micrantha variety, blue sponge corals growing on the ship remnants, some stony and boulder corals, as well as sea anemones.

The underwater scene was nowhere near as prolific as the Coral Garden. Anyway, I saw  a school big-eye snappers (Lutjanus lutjanus) swam across by the hundreds, creating quite a scenery. There were also damselfish, moon wrasse (Thalassoma lunare), longfin bannerfish (Heniochus acuminatus), blue coloured snapper (Lutjanus rivulatus), clown anemonefish (Amphiprion percula), Moorish idols etc

After 10-15 minutes, I arrived at the sunken boat area, which I could barely see anything, except probably some shadows of sail mast or deck, etc.

Just I thought the dive would end that way, my East Marine dive master signaled to us: a one-metre long black-tip reef shark (Carcharinus melanopterus) swam by, very close to my feet in fact. A few minutes later, we spotted another one. In general, they are harmless and couldn't be bothered by the presence of divers at this area.

Overall, not a bad dive, but the visibility was terrible. I wish I saw the blacktip sharks much earlier before I ran out of air and had to return to the surface.

MY RATING: