Best weather time frame for Layang Layang?
- Thread starter lizardqueen
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Just came back today from a few days on the resort.
We saw hammerheads on nearly every dive we went out looking for them. On one particular dive they came incredibly close to our group (one guy on our trip was on his third visit to the island, and even though he saw them multiple times in his two previous trips, he said our encounter with 50+ hammies was by far the closest one he's had).
On another dive we were next to the wall, not looking for the hammers at all, but three of them came to visit anyway.
All the other groups on the resort also saw them at some point, though none as close as we did while we were there.
Other things included plenty of whitetip and grey reef sharks, a few pygmy horses, a scorpion leaf fish, ghost pipefish, bait balls and lots of dogtooth - pretty much run of the mill for Layang Layang. Other groups while I was there saw a tiger shark and a baby manta - we had no such luck, so karma evens things out.
I can say with some certainty that if you are diving there right now, you WILL see the hammerheads, but whether you see a faint sliver of white off in the blue for a split second or get close enough to see their eyes darting around and checking you out (like I did) is down to how much lady luck shines on you.
We also had a large pod of dolphins come and play with our boat, which was a very fun distraction. The photographers on the boat stuck their cameras underwater while the boat was moving and got some great fluke (pun intended) shots of the spinners.
One thing that struck me about this trip was the depth of the diving. Every single one of my boat dives there (bar one) was a sub-30m dive, and a couple were, errrr, massively more (I found my own personal depth limit this trip). The resort stipulates a limit of 40m, and whereas every other dive op I have been with has a no-deco rule, this place has a must-clear-deco rule - and this is on air (no EAN available on land, though I believe the LOBs offer this) and AL80s. I appreciated the flexibility as a 150+ diver, and all on my boat were steady and experienced, so we had a good and reasonably safe time, but I can imagine this leading to bad news at some point.
If you have a pony, bring it along just in case, and for goodness sakes stick close to your group when you go deep hammer hunting, which will invariably be most of the dives.
Enjoy the trip.
---------- Post added April 23rd, 2013 at 10:21 PM ----------
And yes, cell service is up and running on the island. The telco engineers flew in with us on the same flight and got it up that same day. Only one network has coverage on the island - Celcom - so check to ensure they are a roaming partner with your network or buy a SIM card in the airport if connectivity is important. Cellular data is over EDGE, not 3G, and is basically unusably slow except for instant messaging and other low-bandwidth operations.
The resort has WiFi in the public areas, but we only got a usable connection 50% of the time.
We saw hammerheads on nearly every dive we went out looking for them. On one particular dive they came incredibly close to our group (one guy on our trip was on his third visit to the island, and even though he saw them multiple times in his two previous trips, he said our encounter with 50+ hammies was by far the closest one he's had).
On another dive we were next to the wall, not looking for the hammers at all, but three of them came to visit anyway.
All the other groups on the resort also saw them at some point, though none as close as we did while we were there.
Other things included plenty of whitetip and grey reef sharks, a few pygmy horses, a scorpion leaf fish, ghost pipefish, bait balls and lots of dogtooth - pretty much run of the mill for Layang Layang. Other groups while I was there saw a tiger shark and a baby manta - we had no such luck, so karma evens things out.
I can say with some certainty that if you are diving there right now, you WILL see the hammerheads, but whether you see a faint sliver of white off in the blue for a split second or get close enough to see their eyes darting around and checking you out (like I did) is down to how much lady luck shines on you.
We also had a large pod of dolphins come and play with our boat, which was a very fun distraction. The photographers on the boat stuck their cameras underwater while the boat was moving and got some great fluke (pun intended) shots of the spinners.
One thing that struck me about this trip was the depth of the diving. Every single one of my boat dives there (bar one) was a sub-30m dive, and a couple were, errrr, massively more (I found my own personal depth limit this trip). The resort stipulates a limit of 40m, and whereas every other dive op I have been with has a no-deco rule, this place has a must-clear-deco rule - and this is on air (no EAN available on land, though I believe the LOBs offer this) and AL80s. I appreciated the flexibility as a 150+ diver, and all on my boat were steady and experienced, so we had a good and reasonably safe time, but I can imagine this leading to bad news at some point.
If you have a pony, bring it along just in case, and for goodness sakes stick close to your group when you go deep hammer hunting, which will invariably be most of the dives.
Enjoy the trip.
---------- Post added April 23rd, 2013 at 10:21 PM ----------
And yes, cell service is up and running on the island. The telco engineers flew in with us on the same flight and got it up that same day. Only one network has coverage on the island - Celcom - so check to ensure they are a roaming partner with your network or buy a SIM card in the airport if connectivity is important. Cellular data is over EDGE, not 3G, and is basically unusably slow except for instant messaging and other low-bandwidth operations.
The resort has WiFi in the public areas, but we only got a usable connection 50% of the time.
sipadiver
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I actually went with Asther. 
She was organizing the trip and I joined up.
Temps were good - think 28deg? Not sure didn't check my com. Dived in boardshorts and rashguard with no issues. There was the occasional cline, but nothing that made me wish I had a suit (or even shorty) on.
She was organizing the trip and I joined up.Temps were good - think 28deg? Not sure didn't check my com. Dived in boardshorts and rashguard with no issues. There was the occasional cline, but nothing that made me wish I had a suit (or even shorty) on.
I've heard that the hammers have not been seen as regularly as last year but they are still around and spotted sporadically. Threshers sightings seem to be more regular though which is unusual. I wonder if they have eaten all the hammerheads? If only we can teach them to swim in schools of hundreds. 
Hopefully we are lucky next week. Threshers are interesting to look at, but i have seen those already. A big school of hammerheads would be perfect.I've heard that the hammers have not been seen as regularly as last year but they are still around and spotted sporadically. Threshers sightings seem to be more regular though which is unusual. I wonder if they have eaten all the hammerheads? If only we can teach them to swim in schools of hundreds.
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