Victor Rock, Hong Kong

by Andrew Waller

Legions of schooling fish pursued, according to some, by Dogtooth Tuna; lion fish and multiple morays; Huge Jellyfish; rock covered in a variety of soft corals; viz of six to eight metres. Was this really Hong Kong? Well, only just. Taking advantage of flat-calm conditions and a lightly laden boat - just 13 divers - we had made it to Victor Rock, close to the eastern limits of Hong Kong's territorial waters. As the rock doesn't break the surface - it rises to about six to seven metres at the tip - we had taken a bit of gamble on whether we might find the place, but it paid off handsomely.

Despite the superb weather, the day's early portents weren't promising. The first-comers to Tso Wo Hang were greeted by a sight of Indonesian or Vietnamese proportions: The pier was packed with people swarming aboard about a dozen boats. This exodus, it turned out, was of divers taking part in the net removal at Hoi Ha Wan. I heard someone say there were 600 people involved. If that's the case, I feel bound to ask whether Hong Kong's remaining reefs survived exposure to 1200 flippered feet and the usual quota of dropped weightbelts and other gear. The most immediate impact, of course, was that the nearest car park was already full at 9 a.m., and the next-nearest filled up soon after that. On top of this, two of our cars were delayed by a traffic accident and arrived late, so by the time they had found parking and got their gear aboard, we were half an hour behind our scheduled 9-30 a.m. departure. I was starting to worry that my first turnout as DM of a club dive in, oh, half a decade was sliding rapidly downhill.

Fortunately, our luck improved from here on. I can't remember who first suggested Victor Rock, but the idea got a good reception and we agreed that if conditions looked good when we got to the southern tip of Basalt Island, we would go for it. The only question: Could we find it? Yip the Younger didn't exactly give me a confident nod when we showed him the chart, though I'm told he has taken divers there before. Our lucky break was that Martin Holden, who was one of four non-SCDC divers doing nitrox training with Steve, had brought his handheld GPS device with him. I also managed to find some reasonably effective transits on the chart, though I have to admit that without an echo sounder they wouldn't have been sufficient to put us precisely over such a small target. The joke of the morning was that we wouldn't need any of this hi-falutin' technology, because there was bound to be a bunch of fishing boats over the rock, but on arrival there was only one, and that was cruising around in circles. Given that the bottom around the rock is 25 metres-plus and probably featureless for miles, we really did need to be confident we had hit it, and after 10 minutes' manoeuvring with the aid of GPS, transits and that old standby, a weighted sounding line, we finally found what we were after. In fact, the anchor went in at the base of the rock, but we were right there. (The first divers in tied a distance line from the anchor line at about 16 metres' depth to provide a shorter swim to the rock face.)

Sea conditions were absolutely placid and apart from the fishing boat already mentioned we were joined only by a sailing yacht with two gweilo divers aboard that anchored up just a short distance away. The only thing not in our favour was a fairly significant current that stayed with us all day. We rigged a floating line from the anchor line back down the side of the boat so that divers entering the water were able to pull themselves forward. (If you were fit, you could just about swim against the flow, but Yours Truly has to admit that the shock of going from 0 to 60 nearly crippled him, and I doubt I would have made it without the line. I think most of the people with all that nitrox clobber were glad of it too.) We also trailed a line and buoy behind the boat, and it got used more than once. Fortunately, though, this current seemed largely confined to the first few metres at the surface and it wasn't bothersome except during entry and exit. The nitrox group managed to do their simulated stops on delayed SMBs without drifting more than a few metres.

As for the diving, well, the opening words summed it up: There was a lot to look at, and the water was pleasantly clear. Coming around the rock with Janice Wan, who is finishing off her Sports Diver training, I encountered the two divers from the yacht (which they had confidently left unattended!), and they pointed out to us not one but three morays all lined up in a crevice. I took my knife out and gently held the angled blade a few centimetres in front of them, hoping the flashing silver shape would draw them out - morays always seem to be quite curious - but they refused to stick their heads out much further. There were the usual small reef fish around the upper part of the rock and, a bit further away, swarms of shoaling fish, with some bigger shapes - the Dogtooth Tuna - above and around. The soft-coral cover was pretty colourful, and it would have been a good day for macro photography.

Needless to say, everyone wanted to stay here for the second dive, so we did so. All in all, it was a great day and with the exception of the final bit of Janice's SD assessment, I think everyone managed to get done what they wanted. If only they could all be like this!

(Footnote: As we weighed anchor, we were treated to the sight of the two divers from the yacht making a long and arduous surface swim in pursuit of their drifting vessel . At one point, they seemed to be losing the race. We hung around long enough to see one of them regain the ladder and the other begin to close in, albeit slowly. The fishing boat, although closest to them, showed no sign of being prepared to render assistance. I wonder if the divers would have gone ahead with their planned dives if there had been no other boats present. Given the direction of the current, the next stop is the Ninepins, if you're lucky, and the Philippines, if you aren't!!!

South China Dive Club

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