The north wind was blowing strongly again today, so I figured it might be tough for drift diving...

How about taking it easy for a change and heading over to Gorilla Chop, where I’ve heard the number of mackerel is on the rise?

Since opportunities like this don’t come around often, I made the long trip—about an hour and a half—to check it out!

Air temp: 28°C, Water temp: 28°C, Visibility: 10–20 m

When I arrived, even though it was still before 8:30 a.m. when the gate opens, the parking lot was almost full.

The crowd was probably even worse than at Junglia.

Near the entry point, there were training sessions, introductory dives, snorkelers, and even people dressed up as mermaids…

With sand swirling in the water and virtually zero visibility, the scene was, in a word, chaos.

As I swam further out to sea, the visibility improved, the crowd thinned out, and I began to feel a sense of calm.

And as for the school of mijyun I’d come to see…

If I could just erase my memories from last year, this would have been a truly spectacular school!

It felt like being in outer space.

Of course, there was plenty of small fish action too, and the schools of barracuda and grouper were still going strong—it was a blast!

So, tomorrow I’m heading back to the Kerama Drift!