LOCATION:
Located somewhere in the middle of the bay in Salang. It is hard to tell the exact location (most people will go with a dive master anyway), but it is somewhere between Salang Reef North and Salang Reef South. The entry point is usually right behind Dive Asia's landing dock, from which you need to swim for about 100 metres to a buoy before descending.

DESCRIPTION:
I had initial reservation before diving at this site. First, because I haven't done any wreck-diving before, and second, I wasn't sure if the RM70 dive fee would worth my time considering the poor visibility often associated with wreck diving.

My worry wasn't entirely unfounded because during the early descent, the visibility was extremely poor that I could barely see the divers in front of me. We descended to a sandy bottom at about 20 metres, and slowly crawled our way forward, haphazardly I must say, until the dive master signaled us to slow down.

When I looked up, the wreck was standing before me. It was a rather huge ship, or rather, a fishing trawler intentionally sunk to create the diving spot. I started to circle the bottom with delicate movement to avoid stirring the sands. The dive master instructed us to circle from the ship bottom in an ascending movement to fully enjoy what the wreck has to offer.

The bottom portion was nothing that interesting. There were a number of isolated white sea fans, brown and red sea whips, white dendronephthya, leaf oyster (Lopha cristagalli, very sharp edges, so please exercise caution), and a bottom-dwelling lionfish.

I ascended to the main deck of the wreck. The dive just got more interesting. I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of yellowtails. Their numbers created a magical underwater scene of some sort, especially when you swim through them. There were also Behn's damselfish (silvery-yellow body, neoglyphidodon nigroris), an elusive but large blue-ringed angelfish (pornacanthus annularis) and common Indo-Pacific sergeant. I also saw a unique type of white algae that I could not name, surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of glassfish (Ambassis macracanthus).

The scenery at the ship's tower mast also was spectacular, especially with the much-improved visibility of about 10 metres. The dominant species here was brown hydroid, not the stinging one I suppose, and other unique-shaped corals that compete for sunlight to grow.

Overall, Salang Wreck was also a memorable dive for me in Tioman, apart from Chebeh Island of course.

MY RATING: