So it's been a while since we've been diving and with a long liveaboard coming (Kapalselam trip) we decided that we needed some brushing up and so we took a long weekend diving trip in Bali. Menjangan was the area we chose.

Menjangan

Menjangan Island is located in the north-west corner of Bali, not far from the eastern end of Java. In fact in a clear day we can see two East Javan volcanoes, one of which is Mount Raung (3332 meters), looming majestically in the west. But the nearest volcano is Mount Prapat Agung (310 meters) in a peninsula just southwest of Menjangan. Menjangan Island is part of a national park (Taman Nasional Bali Barat) and there's no resort there, so we have to stay in the mainland.

To go to the Menjangan island you can take boats from Labuan Lalang a fisherman port in the mainland, or a smaller fisherman's port to the east, in Banyuwedang area just next to Mimpi resort. The nearest places to stay in the area are some expensive resorts such as Mimpi  and Gawana Novus in Banyuwedang, which have their own piers. The cheaper alternative would be to stay in Pemuteran, about 20 minutes drive away east. Kapalselam had done trips whereby you don't stay around the area at all but drive at dawn from Denpasar, do two dives in Menjangan and then drive east to Tulamben. But it's a looooong and tiring trip.

Thursday night we flew from Jakarta in a 7pm flight, but it was 30 minutes late, so we arrived in Denpasar at 10pm (the flight is 1.5 hours but Bali is one hour ahead of Jakarta). Well, if you ever want to do this I can tell you now, don't fly too late at night. Take half a day off and fly in the afternoon. We learned this the hard way. The drive from the airport to Mimpi resort near Menjangan where we stayed at took 4 hours. Hence it was 2am when we arrived. We were obviously knackered.

However when a dive instructor who came with us in the car asked if a 9.00am start would be too early we said no. She was shocked, it looked like she was hoping we'd use the whole day resting and dive the next day. No way. We came all the way here to dive, not lazying in the sun. Besides, we'd have at least 6 hours of sleep and I'd been sleeping in the car along the way anyway :)

 mangrove lined bay in Banyuwedang

Dive 1 Menjangan slope

That morning we had Wayan, a divemaster from Mimpi, to guide us (didn't see the dive instructor from last night at all). The boat ride from Mimpi's pier took about 30 minutes. We stopped at the narrow strip of shelf north of Menjangan Island, geared up and backrolled into the gently dipping white sandy bottom dotted here and there with small patches of corals.

A few fin strokes later we were at the edge, a steeply dipping reef front and wall covered with healthy hard and soft corals, various sponges, ascidians and algae. There were a lot of gorgonian fans and big clams were strewn here and there in the shallower depths. Reef fish are abundant – from the small ones like anthias, damselfish, many small wrasses, lizardfish and occasional blennies and dartfish, to the bigger ones like butterflyfish, angelfish, huge batfish, many tangs and surgeonfish, parrotfish, occasional groupers and lone snappers, and schools of fusiliers.

We found a Periclimenes imperator or Emperor Shrimp on a huge sea cucumber of the genus Holothuria and saw a big Bumphead Parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatus). But the highlight of the dive was a green turtle (Chelonia mydas) with two remoras (Remora remora) riding belly-up on its back. Wayan the guide tried to look for pigmy seahorses in a gorgonian fan at around 15m depth but to no avail. He found them 4 days ago, he said, but apparently they've moved away.

 Green turtle with two remoras on its back

The sun was shining brightly and the water clear resulting in a visibility between 25 and 30 meters, horizontal and vertical. It makes you feel giddy when looking down and see the bottom a long long way away. We didn't dive deep, the maximum depth was only 20.4 meters and we dived for 57 minutes.

Dive 2 Pos 2

After more than an hour of rest in the narrow stretch of sandy beach at the southeastern point of the island, we dived at Pos 2 just off the pier, wearing the gear in the calm water. Again the bottom profile was the same; it started as a very gently dipping shelf covered with white sand and rare patches of corals, followed by a sudden drop at the reef front – a wall covered with healthy marine life offering an explosion of colours.

The creatures are similar to the first dive: anthias, damselfish, gobies, anemonefish, wrasses, lizardfish, blennies, butterflyfish, angelfish, rabbitfish, batfish, cardinalfish, file fish, pufferfish, tangs, surgeonfish, parrotfish, groupers, snappers, and schools of fusiliers. We saw some fierce looking Titan Triggerfish (Balistoides viridescens), a lobster (Panulirus versicolor) and a Yellow boxfish (Ostracion cubicus) pairing with trumpetfish (Aulostomus chinensis).

  Devil scorpionfish

The highlight of the dive was a strange looking fish just below the pier at around 15 meters of depth. I think it was a Devil scorpionfish (Inimicus didactylus) though it's difficult to be sure as it was all covered with sand. We dived to a maximum depth of 20.1 meters but mostly stayed at around 12 meters. The total dive time was 61 minutes.

Dive 3 Coral garden

In the afternoon we started the third dive at 3 pm. The weather was still the same – sunny. That time the moon was in the waning phase. The water was calm at surface, and not much current either underwater. The temperature was 29 deg Celcius. Another nice and calm dive. The visibility was also still great, around 25 meters. We dived for 59 minutes, with maximum depth at 18.9 meters and average depth at 11.9 meters.

This dive site was located at the northeastern part of the island. We didn't dive anywhere near the wreck off the northwestern part of the island because Wayan thought the current was bad there. We also didn't go to Eel Garden because Wayan said the week before a fisherman had done a bomb-fishing in the area and most of the garden eels have disappeared. Very sad!

We encountered similar bottom profile and similar abundant marine life. Just as we began to descend in the wall a remora tried to hitchhike on Wayan. He shooed the fish away and it decided to hitchhike in my buddy's leg. Remora (Remora remora) is also called suckerfish because the first dorsal fin above its head has adapted into a flat-like structure that can open and close to create suction for the fish to hold on to other animals. Hence it benefits by using the host as transport and protection and also feeds on materials dropped by the host. Remoras are commonly found attached to sharks, manta rays, and other large fishes. Apparently though, they are also known to attach themselves to divers, perhaps confusing them with large fish. This may not be flattering to my buddy but the remora kept attaching itself to him during most of the dive.

 a remora hitchhiking on my buddy

At a depth of around 17 meters Wayan observed a pinkish gorgonian fan and found 3 tiny pigmy seahorses of the species Hippocampus bargibanti. He was very happy.

Puri Jati

That night we wanted to do a night dive near the mouth of the bay in Banyuwedang. We heard some mandarin fish have been sighted there. But the guide told us these fish have disappeared and he didn't seem to be too keen on doing a night dive. He said visibility is usually bad there. Well, it's a night dive, it doesn't matter, but he looked reluctant so even though disappointed we didn't push.

We decided to do a different dive the next day. There are other dive sites beside Menjangan in the area. There's Pemuteran which is a reef slope off the mainland a few minutes east of Banyuwedang. But the description didn't seem to be too exciting. We wanted to do muck diving, which can be done in Secret Bay at the channel between Bali and Java, and in Puri Jati which is located about 30 minutes drive east of Pemuteran. We chose Puri Jati.

 black volcanic sand of Puri Jati

Dive 1 Puri Jati East

The car dropped us at a tiny village on the beach surrounded by rice field and vinyard. Under the trees there were several bamboo benches and two tubes of fresh water for divers to use. There was a sizeable temple among the rice field and the grapes from the vinyard was deep purple in colour, smallish and not too sweet. The most interesting feature of the area is probably the duck farms. Hundreds of ducks were kept in coops under the trees in the beach. They kept moving here and there in a harmonious group moves, but their sound wasn't harmonious at all and it never stopped. Quack quack quack quack......

 duck farm in Puri Jati

It's a shore dive so we had to walk with our gears across the beach to the water. Luckily the beach was sandy, unlike the gravelly beach of Tulamben, and the waves that day was small so the entry wasn't too painful.

The bottom was very gently dipping, covered with soft black volcanic sand. Marine-life wise, compared to Menjangan this is a desert. The black sand was very soft so a few uncareful strokes of fins could cause quite a storm. The visibility was only about 5 meters without those sand storms. But, it's perfect for muck diving. We're excited and hoped to find the strange creatures that characterised areas like this.

 a porcelain crab and anemone fish on the anemone host

The sand was dotted with hundreds of small corals Cyathoceras sp of the Caryophylliidae family. Here and there we found some sea pens (Pteroides sp and Virgularia sp), sea grass (Halophila ovalis and Cymodocea serrulata) clumps, anemone (mostly Haddon's sea anemone or Stichodactyla haddoni but there were Beaded sea anemone or Heteractis aurora and Leathery sea anemone or Heteractis crispa too) and tube anemone. Very rarely we stumbled on some sponges and ascidians.

 Armina sp nudibranch

The sea anemones commonly play hosts to several different animals living harmoniously together. These include several types of anemonefish (Amphiphrion sp), juvenile Three-spot dascylus (Dascyllus trimaculatus), cardinalfish (Apogon cyanosoma), anemone shrimps (Periclimenes brevicarpalis and Thor amboinensis) and porcelain crabs (Neopetrolithes maculatus).

There were a lot of Threadfin sand divers (Trichonotus elegans) swimming in groups low near the bottom. Some were perched on the sand bottom but disappeared into the sand in a fraction of a second as soon as we got near. We found a type of Lizardfish (Synodus sp), a crocodile fish (Cymbacephalus beauforti), a nudibranch (Armina sp.), a Leopard flounders (Bothus patherinus), a Comb star (Astropecten polyacanthus) and a moray eel which I can't identify.

Broken hearted, but facing a choice of either recuperating in Singapore in the confinement of my tiny apartment or following the group and recuperating in a 'paradise', I decided to go anyway with the group. It wasn't as I had expected though. To tell a long story short – I was bored. Totally bored. An atoll in the middle of blue sea, away from the civilisation, is not a place for an invalid like me. It was heart breaking to see my boyfriend and friends went out each morning to do their dives, while I had to be happy sitting the whole day in the restaurant terrace, staring at the sea. I definitely wasn't happy. So this is a warning – if you're not a diver, don't go there. There's not much to do other than play in the swimming pool and sit in the sun. And eat. Well, it could be a dream holiday for some people but definitely not for me.

Anyway, I'll stop bitching and moaning and start talking of more useful things :)  Even though I didn't dive Layang-Layang at all, I can report this: Layang-Layang must have a healthy coral reef. And how do I know this? Well, my boyfriend brought my camera underwater everyday and he took photos of any fish he could snap at. On the surface I downloaded the photos, sorted them out and identified the fish. Surprisingly, of all the fish photos he took, we managed to identify 19 different butterflyfish species. That's impressive and since butterflyfish indicates healthy reef, the reef around Layang-Layang must be healthy.

I know that many divers, especially those already pocketed hundreds of dive hours, don't consider reef fish such as butterflyfish or anthias interesting. Most would give a cursory glance and register briefly – lots of reef fish. That's it. They would then hunt for the more exotic fish like ghost pipefish, frogfish, barracuda, stingray, shark and the like, and creatures like turtle, crab, shrimp and nudibranch. But my boyfriend has this fascination to fish, any fish. While other divers hunt for tiny nudibranch he'd be happy snapping away at the colourful reef fish. He would then diligently flipped his fish identification bibles and identify them. And actually his fascination kind of rubbed on me and now I do the same, we become aspiring fish geeks.

I remember my instructor Abi told me as a novice diver two years ago that butterflyfish can actually indicate the health of coral reefs. This site www.vifishandwildlife.com confirms that. It says that since butterflyfish mostly feed on coral polyps, the abundance of butterflyfish is in direct correlation with the distribution and amount of the corals. Also butterflyfish respond to declines in coral quality and abundance with behavioural and spatial changes. Therefore the condition of a coral reef can be monitored by observing its resident butterflyfish. I can't find any information on the web that connects the diversity of butterflyfish with the health of coral reef. I was hoping to be able to confirm that the more type and number of butterflyfish you find in a dive site, the better reef condition is. But maybe it's not like that. I suppose maybe the nooks and cranny of different islands with deep seas between them in the Pacific encouraged specification? Not sure, I'm not a biologist so before the real biologists out there boo-ed me I better stop talking.

Anyway, the number of species of butterflyfish in Layang Layang is quite impressive. We've never actually record the diversity of butterflyfish in the other dive sites we visited, but we can say that in Layang Layang we found more species that we have never seen before in other places. The above mentioned website, for example, also mentioned that only 7 species of butterflyfish can be found in the Caribbean, so 19 species is, as I said, quite impressive

Butterflyfish are small, thin, disk-shaped fish with pointed noses. Butterflyfish are fairly small, most are 12-22 centimetres in length although some species could grow to 30 cm. They're common and usually swim in shallow water, but they constantly dart from place to place and rarely stopping anywhere for long. They're mostly brightly coloured and patterned, hence the common name butterflyfish. Their Latin name Chaetodontidae, however, was derived from the Greek words chaite meaning "hair" and odontos meaning "tooth", which describe their rows of brush-like teeth in their small mouths.

Butterflyfish are bottom feeders. They feed primarily on polychaete worms, coral polyps, crustaceans and mollusk eggs, scraping the invertebrates with its bristly teeth. However some juveniles and adults often form plankton-feeding groups and clean other reef fishes such as parrotfishes and surgeon fishes. Butterflyfish are diurnal, active during the day and sleeping at night. At night they find shelter among the corals from night predators such as moray eels, sharks, and other large reef fishes.

Butterflyfish belongs to the Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, Subphylum Vertebrata, Class: Actinopterygii or Osteichthyes (Ray-Finned or Bony Fishes), Order Perciformes (Perch-Likes), Suborder Percoidei and Family: Chaetodontidae (Butterflyfishes).  Sources differ in the number of genera and species within this family. Some say there are 120 species and 10 genera, some say 127 species and 11 genera. Some common genera are Chaetodon, Forcipiger, Hemitaurichthys and Heniochus (Bannerfish).

The species we found during our dive trip in August 2006 are as follows:

Chaetodon adiergastos (Eyepatch Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon auriga (Threadfin Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon baronessa (Pacific Triangular Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon benneti (Eclipse Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon ephippium (Saddled Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon falcula (Saddleback Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon lineolatus (Lined Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon lunula (Raccoon Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon lunulatus (Pacific Pinstriped Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon melannotus (Black-backed / Tail-Spot Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon ornatissimus (Ornate Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon punctatofascitus (Spot-banded Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon rafflesi (Lattice Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon speculum (Oval Spot Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon trifascialis (Chevroned Butterflyfish)

Chaetodon unimaculatus (Teardrop Butterflyfish)

Forcipiger flavissimus (Long-nosed Butterflyfish)

Hemitaurichthys polylepis (Pyramid Butterflyfish)

Heniochus singularis (Singular Bannerfish)

The common names can be different from book to book, but the latin name should be the same. We used the following for our main source: "Reef Fish Identification – Tropical Pacific" by Gerald Allen, Roger Steene, Paul Humann and Ned Deloach; complementing it with this book: "Asia Pacific Reef Guide" by Helmut Debelius and some internet sites. If you're a fish buff and you found that we have made mistakes, please do inform us. We are just novices in the world of fishes and know almost zilch about marine biology, so the probability of us making the wrong identification is quite high. We're sorry some of the photos are blurred; it's not easy taking pictures of darting fish with a compact camera and no strobes. All these photos were taken by Martin D.

 More on Butterflyfish:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterflyfish

http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=433

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Underwater/Australia/Cairns2003/Butterflyfish/Sampler/index.html

http://seafocus.com/species_butterflies.html

http://www.saltcorner.com/sections/zoo/butterflyfishes.htm

http://www.vifishandwildlife.com/Education/FactSheet/PDF_Docs/22Butterflyfish.pdf#search=%22butterflyfish%22

It all started during the drunken last night of 2005 Manado dive trip in early November. I was attacking the Menadonese food that Cesil’s parents kindly donated to us, Tom and Mia were downing tequila and Mul was laughing continuously while trying to kiss another guy (can’t recall who). In one corner Martin tried hard to convince a very drunk Erwin that having the New Year countdown celebration underwater would be a great experience. Apparently in the end he managed to extract Erwin’s promise to coordinate a diving in Bali on 31 December, but we weren’t sure that Erwin would even remember anything about it, drunk as he was that night. So it was a surprise when he texted us a few weeks later about a New Year’s Eve dive trip!

31 December 2005 morning dives

We arrived in Bali on the late evening of the 30th December, staying at a hotel across from Bali Scuba. Early in the morning we were all organised into different cars and drove to Padang Bai.

Using Waterworxx boat with Mister Wolfgang himself to lead us, we headed to Gili Biaha for the first dive. It was a cloudy morning and the sea a bit choppy. The water temperature, fortunately, wasn’t too bad. It was 27 degree Celcius, a lot friendlier than the last time I dived here. However the visibility was not the best, it was only 10 meters, way below the visibility of the last time I was here, which reached 30 meters.

But still, the underwater was nice. We dived to 20 meters. As always, I like the volcanic wall with its coral covered pillars. We saw several sharks, huge lobster, an octopus, lots of squirrelfish and several nudibranch. The current was mild though there was quite a surge.

The second dive was at Gili Tepekong. It was a shallow dive, 14 meters at the deepest for me. Visibility was worse but we saw the sharks and the dive through the cracks and caves of Gili Tepekong is always fun, that we dived for more than an hour.

After the two enjoyable dives we said goodbye to Waterworxx and headed for Tulamben.

31 December 2005 the New Year countdown dive

That night the sea roared violently in Tulamben. The wind was beating ferociously, and the wave surged fiercely against the gravelly Tulamben beach. I stood shivering in the back verandah of Matahari Tulamben Resort looking with doubt at the white froth of the wave that almost reached my toes. The sky was dark with clouds and it drizzled lightly. Plus we heard that the river had flooded again – this could mean that Tulamben water would be like cappuccino – thick with brown mud. Are we crazy enough to dive in this cold night, I wondered.

At that point I thought that if everyone decided not to dive I’d be glad to also cancel the dive. But then again, I thought, this would be a rare chance, doing the count down to the New Year underwater. Plus before leaving I had announced to everyone - at home, in the office and all over the world - that that’s what I was going to do: celebrate the New Year underwater. What would they say if later they found out that in the end I didn’t do that?

Only Erwin, Martin and me were left in the verandah that night after dinner – the rest went to their rooms to have a bit of sleep before the dive. I decided not to take any nap because I thought I would feel too comfy in bed and would be too lazy to brave the cold water later :)

Apparently Kapal Selam divers ARE crazy. The weather wasn’t improving, but an hour before midnight everyone was up and scrambled dazedly around where the gears were hung. I hate donning my wet wetsuit in a cold night like this but with everyone ready to dive, there’s no excuse for me not to go :(

Then another bad news arrived – no porters will be available to help us since it was late already. We all groaned – the thought of walking along the gravelly beach carrying the whole gear in the dark was just too much. But Pak Oka, the owner of the resort, was nice, several of his staff appeared to help the females with the gears. Haha… sometimes it’s nice being a woman. Saying sorry silently to my feminist friends, I enjoyed the pampering :)

Still, walking gingerly along the beach in the dark while carrying 5 kilos of weights was not an easy thing to do. Swearing every time I stumbled, I asked myself again and again: “Why am I so stupid to be here and suffer like this?”

We stopped at the supposedly calmest point in the beach that night, just off the mouth of the river, near where all the jukungs (little wooden catamarans) were parked. It wasn’t calm at all. After struggling in the dark to don the gears, we struggled again to enter the water against the waves which determinedly tried to keep us from getting into the sea.

Finally, we managed to get in, and the water felt warmer once we were underwater. But next came another problem – there’s nothing to see. The water was dense with mud – so murky I couldn’t even see my buddy, who was right next to me and holding my hand! Even with the big torches we had to be very near each other so as not to be separated. So this is what it’s like diving in coffee, I thought.

I tried hard to follow a patch of light which I thought belong to Erwin. The patch of light slowed at a point which I thought was still not very far from the beach. My dive computer showed a depth of 17 meters. It was in a gently sloping sandy-silty bottom. We should be turning right if we wanted to go to the drop off as agreed. But instead the patch of light that I followed just dived around and around and around in the area.

I was hoping whoever it was; the patch of light had not lost direction. Some Kapal Selam diving professionals have been known to lost direction sometimes when they are ‘not at their peak condition’ (i.e. when they’re having hangover)  :) But I remembered that we have not been drinking that night, so this wasn’t one of those situations. Maybe this is the location intended to be the point where we would celebrate the New Year. But I thought we would dive at drop off, which would be to our left?

Then the water became somewhat less murky so we could see in the torch light to about 2 meters, and I began to recognise those in the group. One was Erwin; so I was following the correct patch of light, or so I thought. My beloved buddy Martin, of course, was following me faithfully. Monica from Mimpi Resort was buddying with Erwin. Then there’s Erika and Cynthia. I didn’t see Tom or Mia. Pak Oka, Theres and Pak tjokro were also nowhere to be seen. They were probably separated from us earlier.

There we were in that cold dark night, diving around and around in a circle in the murky water, with nothing much to see. Sometimes, when somebody inadvertently kicked the bottom, the water became thick like porridge with the sand, silt and mud swimming along with us, and there were even less to see. And it began to feel a bit boring and stupid, and I was waiting impatiently for the midnight to strike.

Wait a minute, how would we know when the midnight will struck, I thought. Martin was supposed to indicate when it’s midnight but I wasn’t sure how he would do it since his dive computer was in the dive mode and there’s no indication of time in that mode, except to indicate the length of the dive. Oh well, I shrugged, he could probably estimate the midnight from the time we entered the dive and the length of the dive. Later on I learned that this was exactly what he did, and then we both learned that actually even in the dive mode our identical dive computers can be used to indicate time, by pushing one of the buttons. Duh! Talking about knowing one of your most important gear!

Anyway, in the end Martin bang his tank and we all followed suit, banging with all our might. The fishes must have thought we’re mad. Torches were made blinking and we groped here and there to shake hands. (And by the way honey, that wasn’t my hand, and hopefully you didn’t do the same to any of the other girls :) ...)  So this was it, our underwater countdown celebration. Too bad we didn’t have any drink with us. It would have been nice probably to have champagne in a Ribena-like packaging, to accompany our celebration.

Mission accomplished, we immediately started to ascend. We struggled again to get to the shore and walked with all our gears back to the resort (Alas, no pampering for the ladies this time!)

Later we learned that Tom and Mia had to abort the dive because Tom has a problem with his equipment. Also we learned that Pak Oka had dived with Theres and Pak Tjokro to the drop off – as per original plan – and found that the visibility was good there. Hah, so I wasn’t following the correct patch of light after all!

1 January 2006 morning dives

It was difficult to wake up in the morning. But thinking that now after moving to Singapore I can’t dive as much as before, I persuaded myself to get up and get into the wet wetsuit again.

The two morning dives were nice. The waves weren’t as ferocious as during the night and the sun was shining. The early dive was at the Liberty wreck. We saw the huge grouper, the barracuda, a mantis shrimp, the garden eels and many sweetlips having breakfast. The second dive location was right behind Matahari Tulamben resort, a gently sloping sandy bottom covered with lots of soft corals. A nice calm dive with lots to see, that without realising it we dived to 31 meters! We met several unique nudibranch, a school of jacks, lots of anemone fish, a cuttlefish and lots of sweetlips. The gentle morning sun was streaming into the water and I thought it was a perfect anticlimax to last night’s adventure.

That afternoon we drove south to ‘Kapal Selam headquarter’, Hengky-Thea’s house in Kerobokan. As usual, the dive trip ended with an eating and drinking party. Barbequed fish, chicken, shrimp and many bottles of alcoholic drinks were the menu of our above water New Year celebration, and we laughed at our experience the night before. It wasn’t a spectacular dive but hey, at least I can say I have celebrated the count down to 2006 out there in the sea - underwater!

This was my second diving trip to Bali. My first trip was in May earlier in the year. At that time I managed to squeeze in 8 dives in Tulamben and 3 dives in Menjangan in three days. The dives in both places impressed me a lot so I was so excited to be able to go again, this time with different people and visiting more dive sites.

If we look at a geological map of Bali it will almost entirely be red coloured, since almost all of Bali is covered by volcanic rocks mostly aged less than 1 million years old. The non-volcanic areas in Bali are the areas around Negara which consists of sandstone and limestone, the areas around Menjangan island which were formed by limestones and Nusa Penida and the areas south of Kuta which are made of older limestones.

In this 4 day diving trip we would dive first above a 2-3 million year old limestone bedrock (Menjangan), then above a young (less than 1 million year old) lava and breccias (Tulamben), then around an area comprised of a mix of 10 million year old rocks from an old volcano and less than 1 million years old rocks from Gunung Agung (Padang Bai) and lastly above a 5 million year old limestone bedrock in Nusa Penida. Surely with this variation in bedrocks there will be variation in the morphology of the land and the environment. So I was really looking forward to the trip.

Friday 12 August 2005 – To Bali!

That afternoon after a hectic day at the office, I rushed to pick up Martin and the bags, then dragged them all in a taxi to the airport. My knickers was in a great twist when 40 minutes before take off time we were still held up by traffic at the gate of the airport; the jam caused by an accident involving a huge container. And we didn’t have the ticket yet; I only had the code of booking for an Awair flight in my purse. Panic time, big time. Luckily Wawan and Tom and his gang who were way ahead of us managed to pass the gate before the accident, so I told them my code over the phone and they got the tickets ready for us.

When finally we reached the terminal, the group was waiting for us. Jerry came out of the check in area and gave me the ticket, and Martin and I checked in. I breathed a lot easier after that. We hung around in the check in area waiting for Erwin and some others and when they arrived we walked quickly to the waiting lounge. It turned out that we still had to wait for a while before boarding.

There was no incident at all to report on the plane. I was starving – I forgot to bring any food, not remembering that this was an Awair flight, hence no food. So while the others were enjoying their various yummy meals I slept to forget my hunger.

In the Denpasar airport Erika, Wawan, Martin and me took two taxis to get us to Hotel Hapel Semer in Kerobokan, near where we were supposed to meet the next morning. It was almost midnight when we checked into the hotel and I couldn’t remember much afterwards.....

 click picture for more photos

Saturday 13 August 2005 – Menjangan: Catching The Deer

In the ungodly hour of 5 am the alarm went off, we grudgingly woke up and packed again, then waited for Erwin to pick us up. We then met the others at Hengky and Thea’s place.

I can’t recall how many cars we used to drive to Labuhan Lalang, near Gilimanuk in the NW corner of Bali. Martin and I rode in Mia’s car, driven by Tom. I think there were a car driven by Hengky, another by Erwin, by Jerry, by Lala and by Irene. It took us about 2 hours to reach Labuhan Lalang, the mainland port to go to Menjangan island.

On the way we encountered many religious ceremonies held in village temples. There were also sport games and marches held for the upcoming Independence Day celebration. Quite a number of groups of kids in school uniforms marched military-like on the street in a competition. Martin was amazed and he called it forced march. Well, some of the children did look like they were forced to join the march.

Dive 1. Menjangan Pos 2
There were 23 people in our group, and we took several boats from Labuhan Lalang. In my boat the leader was Mia, and the rest of the divers were Jerry, Cesil, Wawan and me. Martin came with us in the boat but he did not dive. I was hoping that the next day in Tulamben he would be able to do a discovery scuba dive, and Tom was helping me finding someone to guide him. I hoped he wouldn’t be too bored waiting for us.

Then we started the deer hunting. Well, not really. The area we’re diving at is around the island of Menjangan, which means deer. In May 2005 I dived in three places, the 19th century ship wreck at 40m depth, garden eel and Pos 1. That time the visibility was very good, 20-30m. So I was looking forward to dive again there.

I wasn’t disappointed. That day the visibility was 20-30m as well. Beautiful clear blue sea. The first dive site was Pos 2. It was a wall and steeply sloping reef with white sandy bottom. In the shallower parts the reef was partly bleached and dead but many has started to grow again. In the Periplus Diving Bali book David Pickell and Wally Siagian explained that the once profuse growth of corals in Menjangan was struck by two disasters. In 1997 there was an explosive growth of crown-of-thorns that killed most of the corals and in 1998 El Nino brought rising water temperature that finished off the rest but a few. However the disasters mainly struck on the shallower part of the reef, and left the deeper ones in the walls ok.

Now the corals have grown back and there’s a twist to make the story ends happily – according to David and Wally, while previously the reef flat consisted only of a handful of species, after the disasters there were more diversity in there. Well, they may be right, because I saw that on top of a dead 50 cm diameter table coral grew different algae, ascidian, sponges and soft corals. In a space that once was only occupied by one species now there were more than 5 species (that I recognised, that is. There maybe a lot more).

My camera refused to work again, just like in my previous trip to Bali. It seemed that whenever it was brought to a depth of more than 10 meters it didn’t work properly. Sometimes it refused to turn on, sometimes it would turn on but the LCD would not work. Strangely enough it worked properly on the surface, with or without the underwater housing. I was disappointed but I guess I’m not yet a true underwater photographer because even though my camera did not work, I still enjoyed my dive immensely.

Dive 2. Menjangan Pos 1
After a lunch in the Menjangan island under a clear blue sky, we dived off Pos 1. It was a moderately sloping reef with white sandy bottom. There were more dead corals here than in the first site, but some has grown back. There was no current at all, though the surface was a bit wavy. I leisurely watched little things like a bunch of big dascylus hovering above a huge 1 meter diameter table corals. Sometimes they ducked in between the branches of their home, and I wished I had my camera with me. Strange it may seem to other divers who are much more experienced than me, reticulated dascylus swimming in and out of table corals are one of my favourite underwater photo objects.

Then I tried to stay still over an anemone with several resident pink anemonefish. They caught my attention because among the tentacles of the anemone I saw one tiny Clark’s anemonefish trying to hide in one corner. I wondered if it was common for different anemonefish types to mix in one home. If it’s not then I wished the tiny brave Clark’s anemonefish the best of luck.

There were several nudibranch which I have not seen before. Too bad my camera did not work. But I hope the others managed to take some pictures of them to identify later.

After the dive we sailed back to Labuhan Lalang and after some tea and refreshment in the little warungs we drove almost 100 km east to Tulamben. It was a very long drive. I tried not to fall asleep and to accompany Tom in a conversation. He must’ve gained a lot of points in the eyes of his darling Mia for driving all the way from Kerobokan to Labuhan Lalang and then again to Tulamben :)

 click picture for more photos

Sunday 14 August 2005 – Tulamben: A dream came true?

That morning we again had to wake up early for a dawn dive in Batu Kelebit. I was knackered after the consecutive late nights and early mornings, plus the long drive. But the thought of diving at Batu Kelebit which I had not visited before helped to wake me up.

In the previous night Tom and I had arranged with Pak Oka, the owner of Matahari Tulamben Resort, to get someone to guide Martin in a Discovery Scuba Dive. I was so happy to be able to arrange this and yet I was worried as well – would he like it or would he not? It was my dream to have a BF who’s a diver.

Martin’s first dive was to be an hour later than my first dive of the day. So I said goodbye to him and set out bravely negotiating the gravels in the beach of Tulamben – all the while marveling at the nimble local old ladies carrying heavy tanks on their head while walking easily on the same gravels that hurt my feet.

Dive 1. Batu Kelebit
Batu Kelebit is located about 1 km south east of Tulamben. We had to go there sailing in little jukung boats. The sea was wavy so it wasn’t easy to don the gear in the water but with those little jukungs there’s no other way.

The water was 27 degrees, one degree colder than the day before in Menjangan, and there was a medium current. However I was happy to see the good coral growth covering the steeply sloping reef. The bottom was covered with white sand, so my geological mind set out to work. In Tulamben, just 1 km north-west along the beach the sand was black. Either there’s a lava flow in the area or a stream had brought the black sediments from the foot of the volcano. But then I remembered the rocks jutting out in the drop off in Tulamben – they are lava flows.

Climbing back up to a jukung is what I hate the most that day. There’s nothing more embarrassing and less dignified than a diver trying to climb back to a jukung. The boat is very slim and it’s about half a meter sticking out of the water. There’s no ladder. So you had to haul yourself up, straddle across the boat with your butt sticking up in the air, and then tried to pull your legs in. Not a beautiful sight, I can tell you. Because I wasn’t fit enough to drag myself up, my buddy Wawan had to push me from below and the boatman had to pull me up. It was unbearably embarrassing.

Walking back to Mature (short for Matahari Tulamben resort) I saw Martin standing up on the restaurant. Again I was thinking nervously whether he had liked his first dive or not. It turned out I didn’t have to worry at all. He was there with a big grin and two sparkling eyes. Thea said that I had created a monster and that a new diver-to-be had born. I was so happy. A diver BF? A dream came true!

He was very bubbly and recounted his experience again and again. Everyone congratulated him and asked him what he saw. His answer was, ”Lots of fish!”  So I showed him the marine life identification books and pointed out the different marine life that he might have seen. Not long after that the guide picked him up again for the second dive, and I was very happy as I saw the glow in his eyes as he walked west to dive in the USAT Liberty wreck.

Dive 2. USAT Liberty Wreck
My second dive was in the wreck as well. It was probably the most popular dive site in the whole Bali so it was choke full with divers. The schools of divers probably matched the numbers of fish. However, the beauty of Liberty wreck is this: the fishes are used to divers. That’s one of the reason I love diving in this wreck. The fishes would get close to you, almost brushing you – they don’t seem to mind us the lumbering, awkward slow giants.

The other reasons include the diversity of the fish – surgeonfish, different types of angelfish, different butterflyfish, bannerfish, batfish, grouper, snapper, fusilier, sweetlips, parrotfish, dascyllus, squirrelfish, different anthias, triggerfish, pufferfish, boxfish, trumpetfish, lionfish, scorpionfish, different anemonefish, you name it. I was excited that I saw a big table coral with reticulated dascyllus (Dascyllus reticulatus) growing next to one with a swarm of humbug dascyllus (Dascyllus aruanus).

When I came here in May Pak Oka was our guide and he showed us the more camouflaged types like leaf fish and the transparent cleaner shrimp Periclimenes sp., and also a pair of harlequin shrimps hiding under some rocks. My prize for this dive was a huge barracuda which was hovering above us.

Towards the end of the dive we did safety stop in the area near the eel garden. The safety stop didn’t feel long at all, as I could watch the garden eels bobbing in and out of the black sand and also a school of fish which kept attacking the sandy bottom, creating small dust storm as the ate with their vacuum cleaner like mouths.

Getting out from the sea we all teased Erwin who almost led my group to the deep blue sea, missing the huge wreck, because he lost direction.

As soon as arriving back at Mature I changed the tanks, tested it, closed it back and went to have lunch. Martin was very excited, telling me that later when he had obtained the proper certification we should come back to Liberty wreck as he wanted to explore the wreck again. He fell in love with diving and wanted to do a discovery scuba diving again the next day and I promised to try and get another guide for him in Padang Bai.

Dive 3. House Reef (Behind Mature)
After lunch we went to get ready but found out that some of us, including me, had used tanks which belonged to other group, so they had changed it for us. However when I opened my tank a small explosion happened. The o-ring of this tank was old, so I had to have it changed. Then as we got ready on the beach, I found out that the regulator leaked. The hose leading to the inflator was loose. I was very disappointed and was about to say goodbye to the others. Then as the others submerged and went out of view, somebody brought a tool and helped me tighten the loose hose. So it turned out I could still dive!

Luckily Tom was really nice he waited for me and in the end we went in together, trying to find the others who were about 15 minutes ahead of us. We descended in the gently sloping black sand bottom formed by the dry river mouth. I’ve dived here before and as always I was waiting for surprises because in the seemingly bleak landscape devoid of colour we could often find exotic creatures. I wasn’t disappointed. I saw a flounders with its two eyes sticking out from the sand and the blackish body completely camouflaged by the surrounding black sand. There was also a stingray which came out of its hiding place under the sand when I came near. Then Tom pointed out a pair of strange looking nudibranch.

At around 33 meters depth Tom motioned us to take a left turn and I was wondering, I thought we’re supposed to dive at the drop off and wasn’t the drop off located to our right? However I followed him, thinking that maybe the others had agreed to go to this dive site. Then we met the school of big-eyed jacks with their silvery colours and big eyes. I loved swimming in and around them it’s so wonderful to be surrounded by hundreds of fish which were not afraid of you.

After that the scene again turned quiet, with just stretches of rippling black sands alternating with boulders of black rocks adorning the landscape. There was not much coral growth, though here and there we saw soft corals in among the boulders.

Then just before the end of the 46 minutes dive we arrived at a series of strange looking man-made wrecks. The structures were created from long thin metals formed into different shapes, among them a skeleton plane. In the wreck we saw a huge pink snapper, almost 1 meter long, busily eating and swimming in and out of the structures. Also around the wreck were a group of big oriental sweetlips, some parrotfish, pipefish, dragonfish and anemonefish.

We surfaced right at the back of Mature, in front of their restaurant. And we laughed at ourselves for getting lost. It definitely wasn’t the drop off we dived at, there was nothing dropping off at all in the gently sloping contour. When the others came back they laughed at us and told us that theirs was the best dive so far – many exotic creatures to look at. I felt sorry for Tom, if he hadn’t waited for me he would’ve been able to go with the rest.

That night 17 people of the group went for the night dive. I decided not to because I was a bit worried about the next day dive which was going to be in Gili Tepekong, reputedly to have the nastiest current in the whole Bali. I thought that if I would have to negotiate a nasty current I better had some rest.

That day turned out to be not a good day for us. Two of the cameras, both Canon S-60, one owned by Dyna and the other by Mul, were flooded. An expensive trip for them!

 click picture for more photos

Monday 15 August 2005 – Padang Bai: Sharks, and the best underwater garden in the world

The next morning we drove south to Padang Bai. We had fewer cars that day because Irene had left, and Thea and Hengky and Mia and Tom had to go back to town. So I moved to the car driven by Jerry and Martin moved to Acuan’s car.

We stopped at Waterworxx and immediately got the tanks out of the car and assembled our gears. I tried to arrange another discovery scuba trip for Martin but the guides at Waterworxx were all busy. Lala tried as well to get another guide from a different dive operator but it turned out that everyone was busy. It was the height of the diving season. We were still hopeful that somebody would be available later so I cheerfully waved goodbye to him from the boat.

Dive 1. Gili Biaha
The first dive site was Gili Biaha. I was worried that it was going to be cold while I only have my 3mm wetsuit with no other protection, not even a pair of gloves or a hood. I was also worried about the infamous current, so I told Komang Samba our guide that I would be following him closely; ready to grab him when I felt I couldn’t handle the current. Komang just laughed.

It turned out that although the temperature was low, 24 degrees so I was shivering a bit, there was no current at all. The water was completely still, apart from the swell near the wall close to the surface. And it was startlingly clear, 30 meters of visibility. It was really awesome. The wall was made of breccia, lumps of lava and pillars of volcanic rocks. I was awestruck. The columns of basaltic rocks showed geometrical patterned fractures out of the textbooks. Never mind the Giant Causeway in Northern Ireland. In Gili Biaha I saw the underwater sides of similar columnar joints (though of course I still want to see the ones in Giant Causeway and walk on them). The whole wall was covered in every inch with corals, algae, ascidians, sponges and myriads of other creatures I couldn’t identify. Even in the cracks and nooks between rocks there were swarms of creatures. The harmony created by the colourless basalt towering above you and the multicoloured underwater creatures on its surfaces was undescribable.

There were not many sea fans/gorgonians; there were many whip corals instead. According to David Pickel and Wally Siagian this signifies that the area is prone to strong currents. Which is true from the many stories I heard from my diver friends, also from the Diving Bali book. In the map of Gili Biaha in the book there were several warning signs with red colours indicating heavy swell or wild current. I guess that day I was very lucky.

After admiring the wall we climbed slowly up to the cave, the mouth big and inviting, and swarming with red squirrelfish. I went in and was immediately welcomed by one medium sized white tip shark which was looking at us warily and then by another small one. At the back of the cave there were two huge lobsters.

Despite the excitement of getting to see sharks and big lobsters, I felt uncomfortable and had problems equalising so I went out quickly. The problem disappeared as soon as I was out of the cave. It must have been caused by the different pressures I experienced as water pushed into and pulled back out of the cave with the swell. I could imagine how scary it could be to be inside in a strong current. Lala said there’s a blowhole that spurts water out when the swell is strong and I guess I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near that place when the current is strong. Imagine being pinned to the roof of the cave by the swell, not being able to swim out. I shook away the disturbing images and followed the others to the shallower slope.

The gently dipping slope was covered fully by corals, both hard and soft. There were huge colonies of anemones, green in colours with Clark’s anemonefish darting in and out in between the tentacles of their homes.

Dive 2. Gili Tepekong
At Gili Tepekong the water was also calm and very clear, 30 meters of visibility. Clearly the heaven was smiling upon us. The temperature was 24 degrees but I wasn’t shivering. It’s probably because of the rice and chicken that I stuffed into my stomach at the boat during the surface interval. As I descended into the sea I thought I have seen the most beautiful underwater garden in the world. The steeply sloping rock face and the terraces were covered with astonishingly multicoloured hard and soft corals. It was unbelievably beautiful, better than any that I have seen so far (well, I haven’t been to that many top diving sites, still I believed this was great).

As soon as we came down the two pillars at the southern tip of the island, we saw 4 small sized white tip sharks hiding under the rocks at the bottom of the wall. The poor sharks looked scared. Most people think that sharks are all scary, but divers know better. We get excited and happy looking at sharks. We know that only a small percentage of sharks are dangerous. And despite the high profile cases shown by the media, in a year there would probably be only a dozen of shark attacks on human, while thousands of sharks get slaughtered by human for their fins to be presented in bowls at wedding parties. Yes, we divers hate shark fin soups. Stop having shark fin soups at weddings or in restaurants!

The dive was really nice; we saw two turtles and we dived through a small long cave full of schools of small fish. There were the usual myriads of reef fishes swimming around and I saw a moray eel, a lot of green starfish and several lionfish. And I still marveled at the lush coral growth.

However several of us noticed that there were several dead fish found on the bottom. Had there been illegal fish bombing or fishing by using cyanide? I hope not.

After that we went back to the mainland in Padang Bai and I found Martin sitting on the beach looking bored. Poor him there were no guides available that day, everyone was busy. But apparently he was entertained somewhat by the hawkers on the beach, trying to sell him sarongs and the usual souvenirs. I felt very guilty of leaving him out on the beach looking at the ferry going out of and coming into the nearby ferry port. But he assured me he was fine, so I left him again.

Dive 3. Blue Lagoon
After getting a set of full tanks we set out again for the third dive, at the Blue Lagoon, a small cove at the other side of the peninsula from the beach we were at. The white sandy beach was full of tourists enjoying the sun. We descended right in front of the beach and with the reef on our right we headed south.

The bottom was very gently dipping, covered completely by white sand. There were only rare soft corals off the beach but as we dived south the coral growth got better. They were mostly from Acropora sp.

We saw several interesting nudibranch, a stingray, and schools of fusiliers. Apart from the usual reef fishes there were a very tiny boxfish, several pufferfish and a trumpetfish. Dyna showed me a decorator crab just as we turned back to where we descended. I dived for 62 minutes in the shallow water (maximum 19m) and still had 100 bar of air in my tank when surfacing. That was a good record for me, who usually run the tank low in a short duration.

After that dive we drove to Sanur to Bali Scuba to arrange the next day dives at Nusa Penida. Before going back to the hotel we had dinner at an open air restaurant in Sanur. Many people looked totally knackered and to be honest I wished I didn’t have to have food and could just go to bed straight away. I sighed in deep relief when we were finally dropped at the Hapel Semer hotel in Kerobokan, the same hotel we stayed at the first night.

 click picture for more photos

Tuesday 16 August 2005 – Nusa Penida: The Mola mola Hunting

Again in the morning I had to wake up early, which was difficult. It was also difficult because I had to say goodbye to Martin. While we all went diving he would have to spend the day in the hotel that day, with nothing to do. After promising that the next time I went diving he would already be able to dive with me, I headed off to Sanur beach with the others.

Dive 1. Crystal Bay
After a nice breakfast of rice and an assortment of pork dishes from a small warung we set out to the sea to the direction of Nusa Penida island in the south-east of Bali, across the Badung Strait. In my group there were Tom, Jerry, Cesil, Julia, Winda, Acuan, Mi Khie, Mul and me, with Erwin as our leader.
Everyone was excited because this was the Mola mola hunt, the highlight of the trip. All of us wanted to see mola-mola and we could not stop talking about it. I tried to calm my heart and caution it, to prepare it if we didn’t see any.

We thought we had agreed to meet the other boat at SD dive site, in the north coast of Nusa Penida. Since our boat was quicker we arrived at the site a lot earlier than the other group. But then we waited and waited and did not see any sign of the boat. It turned out that they had headed to Crystal Bay in search of the Mola mola. So we turned the boat and headed to Crystal Bay (which sometimes is also called Penida Bay), which is located west of Nusa Penida, facing the Ceningan island.

To our dismay we saw 5 diving boats there. There must be schools of divers already underwater. But we went in anyway. I immediately fell in love with the site. As soon as I went in and saw the beautiful coral covered bottom, with swarms or anthias and myriads of colourful fish I told myself that even if I didn’t see any Mola mola, this would still be a great dive for me.

So with a happy heart I looked left and right energetically at all the marine creatures there. The visibility was 30 meters, and the water crystal clear. I saw some nudibranch, schools of fusiliers and my favourites – anemonefish and dascyllus. The temperature was 24 degrees but I was excited enough that I wasn’t shivering.

There were a lot of divers there. Some were heading back already, sadly shaking their heads when we asked whether they have seen Mola mola. Still with a happy heart trying to chase a yellow boxfish (Ostracion cubicus), I swam on. Then I turned my head into the deep blue sea in my left, and my heart leapt. There was a faint black shadow coming up towards us. I didn’t even dare to hope. But there it was, the shadow coming closer and closer to finally form the strange looking Mola mola.

I almost forgot to breath as the unique fish swam gracefully towards us. I tried not to move at all and I must’ve forgotten even to control my buoyancy as suddenly I was already at 35.9m, when before I carefully tried not to exceed 30m depth. I didn’t even notice the pressure in my ear or maybe I equalised automatically without realising it.

This lone Mola mola was still heading towards the reef, which was full of divers hovering neatly in a huge semi circle along the slope, all eyes watching the Mola-Mola, like a set of spectators watching the arrival of a celebrity. It was a beautiful moment.

Unfortunately the moment was broken seconds later as a diver hovering above started to move forward, followed by several others. The bizarre looking fish balked when it was about 6 meters away from us, and suddenly turned around, swimming away to its home in the deep blue sea.

Everyone seemed to be still hoping for the Mola mola to come back or its friends to arrive, but we couldn’t hang around too long there. Erwin signaled us to turn back so we did. At the surface we were all talking about it excitedly and we felt sorry for those in the other group, they did not see any Mola mola....

Dive 2. Batu Nunggul
Back to the northern coast of Nusa Penida in a site called Batu Nunggul, we joked and laughed and talked about Mola mola in the boat while waiting for enough surface time before going back in.

All along the pristine white beaches of the northern coast of Nusa Penida there were rows of seaweed farms, marked by bamboo and wooden poles sticking out of the water all along the coast. In the area surrounded by the poles sprigs of algae were tied in lines and let grown. Men stood in the wavy water chest high harvesting the seaweed. They put them in baskets and village ladies wearing the traditional clothes of colourful kain and kebaya carried the baskets on their heads to the village. They made striking image against the background of the grey houses and the white sand. I wished my Canon Rebel had longer tele lens.

The dive site was not very special. It was a long stretch of gently dipping slope, with quite good cover of hard and soft corals. As usual schools of anthias and dascylus swam above the corals providing yet more colours to the already colourful underwater scene. We saw several nudibranch, but from which species I can’t remember now. I’m so used to taking the pictures of the marine life and identify it afterwards on land.

The best part of the dive came almost at the end of the dive in the shallow water. The bottom was covered almost wholly in soft corals, with anemones living here and there. There were many different anemonefish and they energetically attacked the cameras that the divers point at them. I wish I had mine.....

Dive 3. Toyapakeh
We agreed to have the last dive in Toyapakeh, near one of the huge purpose built reef pontoon where people do water sport activity. The surface current seemed to be of medium strength. I went in right after Cesil and was trying to hold on to the rope when the boat turned around in the current. A swell came and both Cesil and I were almost swept under the boat. In panic I tried to get out from under the boat while at the same time reaching at Cesil whose tank was entangled in the rope. Apparently nobody saw our predicament because as soon as we got free Tom said, “Cesil, what are you doing, are you okay?”  Duh!

Underwater the current wasn’t very strong. It was only 2:30 pm but it was a bit dark because the sky was cloudy. The visibility was quite good though, we could see far up to 20m. The bottom was another long stretch of gently to medium dipping slope, covered by hard and soft corals.

Then the current got stronger and as we were diving along the reef suddenly I saw from afar Tom and Acuan stopped diving and was doing something. Were they in trouble? Then I saw Cesil trying hard to swim back to the reef because she was swept away. Then Erwin signalled us to abort the dive and surface. It seemed that we did have problem.

I slowly went up along with Winda and Julia, while trying to prepare my sausage. In my concentration to the sausage I didn’t noticed that there were a slight down current. I only realised it when suddenly I found myself back at 17m, well below Winda, while before I was at 12m, above her. So I forgot my sausage and tried to ascend. At 6 meter I inflated my sausage and tried to do a safety stop. The current was strong and it seems to be going around and around. Just as I looked behind me, there was this twister-like column of water swirling and swirling there. No wonder I was continually pulled downward. This reminded me of the warning that the Diving Bali book gave: respect Nusa Penida, the current is often treacherous. Thank heavens for my sausage. I also could see Erwin and the others around so I wasn’t worried.

Back to the boat we found out what the problem was – Tom was out of air because he mistakenly took a used tank, which he said was sealed. We all teased him about not doing a standard procedure of checking the pressure before the dive. Tom just grinned embarrassly and couldn’t say a thing.

BBQ
That night the Submariners show their true selves at the barbeque party at Thea and Hengky’s house. Bottles and bottles of alcoholic drinks were gulped down continuously, while plates after plates of grilled fish, shrimp and sausages seemed to disappear very quickly, like magic. It reminded me of the scene from Harry Potter with food appearing and disappearing magically, except that the food in our table disappeared into our bulging stomachs, not into the air.

Thea and Erwin officially announced that the diving trip had ended and that they wouldn’t be responsible again for us after this. Thea also announced that Erika and I were the newest members of Kapal Selam. Yup, after my trip with them to Sanghyang island and this Bali trip I could already get a membership.

The Brit Steve was sitting contentedly at the end of the table. I suspected he had downed quite a lot of alcohol as this normally quiet guy was grinning from ear to ear to no one in particular, with a bit of glazed eyes. I commented that the scene probably wasn’t too different from the party scenes at his home country. He agreed, he said that this wasn’t the Indonesia that he had heard of before coming here. I laughed and told him that we did not represent the majority of the population. Not long after that I looked again at his seat and he had disappeared. Then I saw him sitting on the grass looking very sick. Later on I heard that he puked all over the place. Poor Steve.

Then suddenly Erwin and Acuan were already in the pool, while the rest of us were laughing at them. Cameras flashed here and there capturing people at their embarrassing moment. I thought that everyone would definitely want to hide the pictures when they saw it later at their sober moment.

But I wasn’t an angel either that night. My total count for that night were 2 bottles of beer, one glass (2/3 full) of raspberry vodka (no dilution) and 2 glasses (1/2 full) of vanilla vodka, the last of which was later mixed with tequila by a definitely drunk Tom and I still had to drink it. I could tell you vodka and tequila didn’t go together very well! The last count was a quarter of a glass of straight whisky for the road before I staggered home, walking half unconsciously, half carried by Martin. Thank heaven for his diet vow – someone sober carried me back to the hotel safely!

Looking back, I think the trip was great – it’s a good combination of nice dives, great fun and great people. Altogether an enjoyable trip.

Jakarta 26 September 2005

After hearing me excitedly mentioning again and again that I have seen my first Mola mola during my recent diving trip to Bali a friend asked me what's so exciting about them. Well, Mola mola is THE thing to see underwater in Nusa Penida. These unusual fish don't stop by there too often, only in certain times of the year, so there are seasons in Bali when divers flock together in certain dive sites waiting to spot a Mola mola or two if they're lucky.

Mola mola is the latin word for the ocean sunfish. The word mola means millstone. The fish earns its name due to its exotic and bizarre look. The body is large and has a flat round shape. It doesn't have a true tail fin; instead it has clavus, which is formed of extensions of dorsal and anal fins. All in all it makes the fish looks like it's formed entirely out of a head, which is why it is sometimes dubbed headfish.

The unusual looking fish is the world's largest known bony fish. With other fishes, Mola mola belongs to the kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata and Subphylum Vertebrata. Fish are vertebrates that live in water, breathe with gills and are cold-blooded. They can be divided into 3 classes: 1. Agnatha, jawless fish such as the hagfish and lampreys; 2.  Chrondrichthyes, fish whose skeleton is made of cartilage such as sharks, rays and skates; and 3. Osteichthyes, fish whose skeleton is composed mostly of bone.

The bony fish Osteichthyes, are then further classified into two main groups called the ray-finned  (Actinopterygii) and the lobe-finned subclasses. Mola mola belongs to Actinopterygii subclass, Tetraodontiformes order (which includes pufferfish, boxfish, triggerfish and filefishes) and the Molidae family. The family has 6 species i.e. Mola mola (ocean sunfish), Masturus lanceolatus (Sharptail mola) and Ranzania laevis (Slender sunfish), Mola ramsayi (southern sunfish), Amblypharyngodon atkinsonii and Amblypharyngodon mola

Mola mola or the ocean sunfish are entirely different from freshwater sunfish (which includes the families of bass). They are called ocean sunfish because of their habit of lying at the surface almost motionless as if they were sunning themselves. They do that to give a chance for birds to pick parasites off their skin, like in Southern California where seagulls often seen pecking at Mola mola. Mola mola have rough and leathery skin which hosts more dermal parasites than that of any other marine creature.

Actually Mola mola inhabit the mesopelagic zone down to about 1000 meters and they live most commonly about 300m deep. However in Bali Mola mola often come close to the reef at certain cleaning stations where groups of the bannerfishes (Heniochus diphreutes), angelfishes and butterflyfishes peck at them, eating the parasites that infest their skin. The Mola mola 'season' around Nusa Penida is around August.
 
  Pictures courtesy of http://www.earthwindow.com/mola.html

Mola mola often swim upright and close to the surface that their dorsal fin projects above the water like a large shark fins, therefore they are often mistaken for sharks. These ocean sunfish are commonly friendly towards people, such as divers who venture into their habitat.

Mola mola are also commonly observed jumping out of the water. They can jump 10 feet into the air and recently a family reported in BBC News that a Mola mola had jumped into the air and landed in their boat on top of their kid.

Mola mola can produce more than 300 million eggs, each about 2 to 3mm large. More than any other known vertebrate. They are thought to live for over 10 years but some other website said they can get over 100 years old. However just like many marine creatures they are probably in danger of dwindling population from the increase pressure of fishing by human and other environmental factors.

Scientists have not yet understood the biology of Mola mola and their distribution, hence they do not know yet for certain whether the population is dwindling, however a recent tagging by satellite to monitor the population of Mola mola in Californian waters show that there are consistent early indications that the population size has recently been reduced – possibly due to fishing pressure.

Mola mola are found in warm and temperate zones of all oceans, but prefers open ocean. They eat jellifish, zooplankton, squid, and crustaceans, foraging for food both at the surface, among floating weeds, or on the sea floor and in deep water. Their predators are  great whites, orcas, sea lions, dolphins and marlins.

Man is also an enemy. Although Mola mola have never been hunted commercially by human and are not highly desirable as food since their meat may contain the same toxin as puffers and porcupine fish, they are eaten in Europe and Japan and their liver oil is considered important. They are also used in Chinese medicine. In California Mola mola make up more than 25 percent drift net bycatch.

A discussion forum even reported that there is an annual Sunfish feast festival in Taiwan, where government limits the catch to 66 Mola mola a year.  Disgusting! No wonder it's not easy for us, divers, to sight the unusual looking, unique and wonderful Mola mola!

Jakarta, 25 September 2005

The article above was summed from the following sites:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_sunfish
http://www.oceansunfish.org/lifehistory.html
http://bonita.mbnms.nos.noaa.gov/reports/2003/eco/ocean.html
http://www.earthwindow.com/mola.html
http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/mola.htm
http://www.starfish.ch/reef/mola-sunfish.html
http://www.spart5.k12.sc.us/techtraining/teacher/webpages/SCFish/fish_classification.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/mo2/animals1/tetra/oceansunfish.html
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=1732

Kemarin lagi-lagi aku pergi menyelam. Padahal dua minggu yang lalu juga sudah menyelam. Tapi memang sulit untuk menyatakan tidak pada ajakan menyelam, pun walau tujuannya hanya dekat saja, entah Selat Sunda ataupun Kepulauan Seribu.

Setiap penyelam sebenarnya harusnya mempunyai sebuah dive log book, yaitu sebuah buku yang berisi daftar setiap kegiatan selam yang sudah dilakukannya, tempat dilakukan, lama menyelam, dan kedalaman yang dicapai. Buku itu juga biasanya dilengkapi dengan data-data lain seperti data-data teknis lokasi penyelaman dan kondisi kehidupan bawah air di situ.

Buku dive log bisa jadi sumber informasi yang bagus sekali. Biasanya aku menulis jurnal diving berdasarkan data-data dari buku log-ku dan tulisan itu bisa jadi sumber informasi bagi penyelam lain yang akan menyelam di tempat itu.

Tadi malam sembari melengkapi buku dive log-ku dengan data-data penyelaman kemarin, timbul ide untuk memasukkan data-data teknisnya ke dalam sebuah lembar elektronik Excel. Setelah beberapa jam memasukkan data ternyata hasilnya terlihat menarik juga.

Open water certificate, yaitu sertifikat terendah yang diterima seorang penyelam setelah belajar scuba diving, kuterima 9 Mei 2004 dari Bubbles Dive Centre. Sekarang ini, yang berarti sekitar setahun setelah resmi menjadi penyelam, sudah kulakukan 83 penyelaman. Penyelaman semenjak sertifikasi kulakukan hampir tiap bulan, kecuali pada bulan September-Oktober 2004 saat harus bekerja di offshore dan bulan Januari 2005 karena tidak ada ajakan untuk menyelam karena semua orang ketakutan dengan isu tsunami.

Sebetulnya 83 penyelaman dalam setahun adalah frekuensi yang cukup tinggi buat seorang recreational diver sepertiku. Banyak teman lain yang frekuensi menyelamnya tidak sebanyak diriku. Tapi banyak juga yang jauh lebih banyak. Apalagi teman-teman yang memang menjadikan dunia penyelaman sebagai profesi, dengan menjadi guide atau pelatih. Buat mereka dive log isinya bisa ratusan bahkan ribuan penyelaman.

Dua bulan setelah menerima sertifikat paling dasar aku ikut pelatihan tingkat berikutnya yaitu sertifikasi penyelam tingkat lanjut untuk menjadi advanced diver. Ini kulakukan karena aku ingin mengikuti kegiatan ini dengan standar keselamatan yang tinggi, artinya melakukan kegiatan penyelaman yang lebih advance, setelah menerima pelatihan yang cukup. Karena sebetulnya penyelam pemula hanya diperbolehkan menyelam sampai kedalaman maksimum 18 meter, dan belum diperkenankan melakukan penyelaman malam hari. Setelah menerima pelatihan advanced penyelam bisa menyelam sampai kedalaman kurang lebih 30m dan melakukan penyelaman malam hari.

Sebetulnya banyak penyelam yang melanggar batasan-batasan itu dan kuakui aku pun sempat melakukan pelanggaran dengan menyelam sampai 20m dan melakukan penyelaman malam sebelum menerima sertifikasi tingkat lanjut. Tapi tentu saja itu beresiko, batasan dibuat karena menyelam adalah olahraga yang beresiko cukup tinggi yang harus dilakukan dengan pengetahuan cukup untuk menghindari kecelakaan.

Pelatihku, Abi dari Bubbles, adalah orang yang punya disiplin tinggi dan cukup keras dalam menetapkan batasan-batasan. Ini cukup cocok dengan aku yang sebetulnya tidak suka beresiko yang tidak perlu dan melanggar aturan. Maka kalau mendengar penyelam-penyelam lain saling bersombong tentang kedalaman maksimum yang pernah dicapai mereka, aku cuma diam saja. Buatku kegiatan menyelam adalah kegiatan yang menyenangkan dan tidak perlu dijadikan ajang uji kekuatan dengan resiko mengalami kecelakaan.

Penyelaman sebanyak 83 kali itu menghasilkan total jam selam sebanyak hampir 74 jam, yang berarti rata-rata durasi menyelam adalah 52 menit. Memang menyelam itu tidak bisa dilakukan terlalu lama. Selain ada batasan jumlah udara di dalam tangki, juga tubuh kita memang secara biologis dikondisikan untuk hidup di darat dengan tekanan udara yang rendah. Ketika dibawa ke dalam alam bertekanan tinggi seperti di bawah laut, ada banyak penyesuaian harus dilakukan oleh tubuh.

Dari 83 penyelaman itu ternyata 52% kulakukan di sekitar Jawa saja, yaitu di daerah Kepulauan Seribu dan Selat Sunda. Ada banyak lokasi penyelaman di Kepulauan Seribu, yang paling sering kukunjungi adalak di sekitar Pulau Kotok, kemudian Pulau Pramuka dan Pulau Sepa.

Di Selat Sunda lokasi-lokasi yang sering dijadikan tempat menyelam adalah di sekitar Pulau Sanghyang 10 km di lepas pantai Anyer, kemudian daerah kompleks Krakatau dan di sekitar Ujung Kulon. Beberapa lokasi penyelaman lain yang tidak terlalu populer yang pernah kukunjungi di daerah ini adalah Pulau Tempurung yang terkenal kejam arusnya dan berada di tengah jalur pelayaran kapal feri Merak-Bakauheni, Pulau Sebesi dan Sebuku yang menyimpan sisa-sisa kapal Belanda Evertsen dari perang Selat Sunda antara Sekutu melawan Jepang di jaman Perang Dunia ke-2, serta bangkai kapal perang Amerika Houston yang tenggelam sebelum Evertsen.

Di luar Jawa lokasi-lokasi yang pernah kukunjungi dalam rangka kegiatan menyelam adalah Lombok (Nov 2004), Ambon (Feb 2005), Laut Berau di Kalimantan Timur (Mei 2005) dan Bali (Mei 2005). Rata-rata kegiatan menyelam di tempat-tempat ‘jauh’ ini membutuhkan waktu antara 5-7 hari termasuk perjalanan, bahkan bisa lebih. Sedangkan menyelam di Kepulauan Seribu atau Selat Sunda bisa dilakukan bahkan hanya dalam satu hari, tidak perlu menginap. Tetapi karena banyak faktor, antara lain karena di sekitar pulau Jawa penduduknya sangat padat dan dengan demikian polusi juga lebih tinggi tingkatnya, keindahan bawah laut di tempat-tempat ini juga sangat kurang dibandingkan dengan daerah-daerah ‘jauh’ tadi. Di Kepulauan Seribu misalnya, lautnya sangat hijau, beda sekali dengan Laut Lombok atau Laut Ambon yang biru. Di Kepulauan Seribu dan Selat Sunda jarak pandang bawah air seringkali hanya mencapai 5 meter, sedangkan di laut-laut di Indonesia timur bisa mencapai 20-30 meter, dengan jarak pandang terburuk 10-15 meter.

Masih banyak lagi daerah tujuan selam indah yang ada dalam ‘wish list’ ku. Taman Laut Bunaken (Sulawesi Utara), Komodo (Flores), Raja Ampat (Papua) adalah tempat-tempat yang ada di bagian paling atas di daftar itu. Lalu di bawahnya ada Kapoposang, Selayar dan Wakatobi di Sulawesi, Ternate, Halmahera dan Laut Banda di perairan Maluku, serta pulau Weh di Aceh. Indonesia adalah negara kepulauan yang besar dan luas yang terletak di daerah tropis, jadi wajar kalau di sini memang banyak tujuan wisata menyelam.

Ada banyak yang bertanya mengapa aku bisa tergila-gila pada olahraga menyelam. Jelas kegiatan ini beresiko, lalu kulit dan rambut jadi rusak karena banyak terbakar matahari, dan jelas kegiatan ini cukup mahal. Ada teman yang heran aku senang menyelam padahal kegiatan in cuma nyaman sebentar (rata-rata penyelaman hanya sekitar 1 jam setiap kali), padahal persiapannya panjang dan kegiatan yang harus dilakukan sesudahnya (seperti mencuci dan merawat alat) cukup menghabiskan tenaga dan waktu.

Mungkin alasan paling utamanya adalah karena keindahan bawah laut bisa membuat kita tergila-gila. Ketika kita ada di bawah air, kita disuguhi berbagai warna dan bentuk yang tidak biasa dijumpai di darat. Koral yang walaupun sering tampak seperti tumbuhan tapi sebenarnya adalah sejenis binatang sederhana itu ada ratusan jenisnya. Belum lagi alga, spons, berbagai siput dan ulat laut, belut laut, ketimun laut, bintang laut, dan beratus-ratus jenis ikan. Setiap kali berada di tengah-tengah keajaiban alam seperti itu aku jadi tertunduk kagum pada kebesaran alam, dan harus mengakui betapa kecilnya manusia.

Indahnya kehidupan bawah laut sulit hanya digambarkan dengan kata-kata, maka sekarang aku mulai mencoba membagikannya dengan bentuk gambar. Semenjak Desember 2004 aku mulai belajar fotografi bawah air dan mencoba menangkap keindahannya untuk ditunjukkan pada orang-orang di sekitarku, sehingga makin banyak orang yang tertarik, atau paling tidak sadar bahwa Indonesia punya kekayaan alam yang sangat besar yang tidak mungkin bisa disamai oleh negara-negara lain, yaitu kekayaan bawah lautnya.

Jakarta 17 Juli 2005

Sanghiang island, which administratively is part of Kabupaten Serang and Banten Province, is located about 10 km off Anyer, one of the main resort area in the west coast of Java. Sanghiang is also written as Sanghyang, which means 'deity', usually connected with the Hindu religion. My small research in the internet did not turn any information on the origin of the name of the island, whether it's something left from when West Java was still a Hindu kingdom or whether it has an altogether different meaning.

As the satellite image below shows, the island is located in the Sunda strait between Java and Sumatera. Further to the west there is a string of small volcanic islands, active and inactive. The Krakatau complex comprises of three dead volcanic islands left over from previous volcanoes and the active Anak Krakatau volcano, growing in the middle of the caldera formed by the big blast of 1883. North of this complex are the extinct Sebesi and the older Sebuku island.

Just like its neighbours Sanghiang island is also a volcanic island, formed of a submarine volcanic activity, probably about 800000 - 1.5 million years ago. This was shown by the basalt pillow lava, breccia and other volcanic rocks found in the island and in the nearby Merak area in the mainland. After the volcanic activities died out about 200000 years ago, corals and other marine invertebrate life began to take over and as a consequence the eastern part of the island is now covered with stacks of coral limestones and the beaches are formed of white carbonate sands.

Just as the 780 hectare of the island is covered with lush vegetation, the underwater around the island is also covered with lush marine invertebrate life. Both hard and soft corals cover the gentle slope, and they in turn are covered with algaes.

On Saturday 2nd of July, joining a Kapal Selam Diving Club trip, I had another chance to witness this myriad of underwater life. This was my second diving trip to the island. The first one was a fuzzy and blurry memory since it was done only a week after I obtained the open water (beginner diver) certification. I was still a novice then and was still more concerned about how to survive the dive than to actually enjoy the spectacle of the marine life. This time I was a lot more experienced and was even carrying a camera to capture underwater pictures.

That morning we, a group of 15 people of which 10 would dive, sailed for about 1 hour to the island using a wooden boat from Paku Pier in the mainland. Our first dive site was Batu Mandi, south of the island. The sea was very calm, the sky was blue with not even a speck of cloud and the sun shone brightly. We dropped our equipments into the sea and put them on in the water. Then we went in.

The water was greenish and there were lots of particles in it, so visibility was not great. I think it reached about 8 meters at the best. I dropped down to 24 meters. The reef was sloping gently to a white sandy bottom. It was covered with lush coral growth, both hard and soft, interspersed with various sponges, sea squirts, the nasty hydrozoas, feather stars and some sea fans. Little damselfish and anthias swam in and out of table corals. They shared places with some squirrelfish. There were several anemones with Clark’s anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii) living in them. These little cousins of Nemo were my favourite photo objects. Some of them could be quite vicious; they tried to attack my camera.

I was not in the best mood to take pictures that day - which was quite surprising. Usually I'm quite keen on underwater photo hunting. But lately I have been a bit disappointed because I can never get as good pictures as I want. Especially those macro pictures. The night before Jerry and Tom who are two of the very experienced amateur underwater photographers that I know, gave me a few tricks and tips to get good pictures. But after trying several shots I gave up. It's just too difficult for me at that time.

We saw several nudibranches of the family Phyllidiidae, a flatworm, some sea stars, including cushion stars (Culcita novaguineae & Choriaster granulatus) and a seashell of Cypraea sp. The highlight of the dive was a yellow nudibranch with big black dots, which I could not identify. I tried to take pictures of it but failed to get any decent ones. The rather murky sea did not encourage me to try harder, so I switched to taking snapshots of the other divers. Just at the end of the dive Mia pointed out a huge grey moray with two cleaner fish swimming around it. Then we surfaced after a 65 minutes of dive.

Back on the boat my stomach was grumbling wildly and I needed to go to the loo very soon. Luckily it was decided to have the lunch in the island. As soon as the boat touched the old wooden pier I jumped out and went inland looking for a secluded grove under a thick bush which could pass as an emergency loo. After the business was over I joined the others sitting on the white sandy beach enjoying a boxed nasi Padang lunch. Then some of us joked and talked while the other snoozed a bit.

At around 1 pm we went back to the boat and sailed to our next dive site Tanjung Bajo which is located in the north of the island. The water was a bit wavy by then and I had to drank a few gulps of water while putting on my gear in the choppy sea. Then we went down.

The visibility was a bit better, up to around 10 meters, but there was a medium current. Still buddying with Teres I went down to around 22 meters and then drifted along the reef. Here the reef growth was also quite good. The gentle slope was covered by both hard and soft corals. I identified some Acropora, Montipora, Fungia simplex, and Echinopora hard corals. They were interspersed with Lobophyton, Sarcophyton, sea fan, whip coral, organ pipe coral, Dendronepthya and Xenia sp soft corals.

There were more fish here than at the first site. There were the usual damselfish, anthias and squirrelfish. There’s a school of small fusiliers, and a bunch of butterflyfish and batfish. I saw two anemones with some false clown anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris) residents. I got a shot of a giant clam (Tridacna squamosa), a pair of yellow christmas tree worm and of a Chromodoris sp nudibranch, which I was happy about. But my best shot that day was of a hairy nudibranch Flabellina rubrolineata.  This was definitely the best dive of the two we did that day, as we also saw a green turtle (Chelonia mydas) gracefully swimming running away from us.

At the end of the dive just before surfacing we saw two crown-of-thorns (Acanthaster sp.), a type of sea stars which is notoriously infamous as coral killers. Indeed the corals around those two animals looked bleached and dead. Some divers think that we should kill every crown-of-thorn that we see, to prevent it from out breaking and destroying all the corals in the area. Some others think that we should leave it to the nature. However there are a lot of cases where these animals do bloom out of control with devastating consequences to the coral life.

Some researches show that the blooming was caused by human interference in removing their predators. Some other researchers seem to think that the outbreaks are caused by the excessive amount of agricultural run-off. In any case, when there is an outbreak of growth of crown-of-thorns, human interference is needed to clean it up and prevent more coral destruction. Where there have not been uncontrolled outbreaks we should make sure that there are predators around which could help preventing an outbreak. According to an article about Acanthaster planci in a marine biology site the predators of the crown-of-thorns are a type of Annelida called Pherecardia striata or fire worms, harlequin shrimp (Hymenocera picta), a crab from the genus Trapezia, a type of mollusk called the giant triton Charonia tritonis, and some fish variety such as napoleon wrasse, triggerfish and pufferfish.

The dive ended the trip that day. After 66 minutes we surfaced and sailed back to the mainland, ending the day by frolicking in the pool, drinking some vodka and enjoying the sunset in Oka’s villa in Anyer.

Jakarta, 7 July 2005

Malam itu tidak gelap, cahaya bulan berpendar-pendar dan pantai putih memantulkan cahayanya. Laut surut jauh sekali,  masih kuingat betapa susahnya esok harinya ketika kami harus melintasi dataran pasang-surut itu dengan berjalan kaki dari pantai menuju kapal. Jaraknya jauh, dan harus melewati pasir, permukaan karang yang tajam-tajam dan air setinggi mata kaki atau kadang sebetis. Tidak mudah, berat. Untung kami tidak perlu memanggul sendiri peralatan menyelam seperti di Ambon. Seandainya harus, mungkin aku sudah menyerah setengah jalan.

Tapi malam itu kami hanya berjalan di sepanjang pantai di atas butiran pasir karbonat putih kekuningan yang berasal dari hancuran koral dan cangkang binatang laut. Kami berjalan hanya dibantu cahaya bulan yang hampir purnama, supaya tidak membuat takut penyu-penyu yang hendak bertelur yang bisa mengurungkan niatnya bila melihat sumber-sumber cahaya seperti lampu atau senter.

Ya malam itu di pulau Sangalaki kami hendak menyaksikan salah satu peristiwa alam yang menakjubkan - penyu bertelur. Pulau Sangalaki adalah salah satu pulau yang tumbuh dari terumbu karang di lepas pantai muara Sungai Berau di Laut Sulawesi. Pulau ini secara administratif merupakan bagian Kecamatan Derawan, Kabupaten Berau, Propinsi Kalimantan Timur. Di lepas pantai muara Berau ini lautnya begitu indah, dan pulau-pulau di situ menjadi salah satu tempat favorit di Indonesia untuk menyelam, seperti pulau Derawan, Pulau Maratua, Pulau Samama dan Pulau Kakaban. Pulau-pulau ini bisa dicapai dengan terbang dari Balikpapan dengan pesawat kecil menuju Tanjung Redeb di Berau, lalu dilanjutkan dengan berperahu selama kurang lebih 2 jam di sepanjang sungai Berau yang lebar dengan hutan bakau di tepiannya menuju ke laut lepas.

Pulau Sangalaki sendiri adalah pulau kecil, yang bisa habis dikelilingi dalam 20 menit. Di situ ada dua institusi – yang satu adalah Sangalaki Dive Lodge yang menjadi tuan rumah kami selama kegiatan menyelam, dan The Turtle Foundation sebuah LSM yang seperti jelas terlihat dari namanya bertujuan menyelamatkan hidup penyu. Mengapa penyu perlu diselamatkan? Karena penyu yang sudah hidup di bumi sejak jauh sebelum Homo sapiens alias manusia ada, diperkirakan akan punah dalam waktu 10 tahun bila tidak dilindungi. (Penyu diperkirakan sudah berevolusi dan hidup di bumi sejak 150 juta tahun yang lalu, malah nenek moyangnya sudah ada dari 210 juta tahun yang lalu – jadi sempat hidup berbarengan dengan sepupunya, yaitu dinosaurus. Homo sapiens alias manusia baru ada sekitar 150000 tahun yang lalu, walaupun nenek moyangnya, genus Homo yang tertua yaitu Homo habilis, sudah ada sejak 2 juta tahun yang lalu, tapi itupun masih jauh lebih muda dibanding penyu.)

Setelah berjuta-juta tahun hidup tenang di bumi penyu jadi terancam punah setelah manusia berevolusi, memiliki kecerdasan dan akhirnya berkuasa sebagai ujung teratas rantai makanan. Bukti arkeologi menunjukkan bahwa manusia sudah suka menyantap penyu sejak dahulu sepanjang sejarahnya, maka bagi penyu, jenis binatang yang sukses mengarungi bumi selama jutaan tahun, agen pemusnahnya memang manusia. Yang menyebabkan jumlah mereka menyusut banyak selain karena menjadi santapan manusia dan diburu untuk kulitnya atau dicuri telur-telurnya, adalah karena aktivitas manusia banyak mengganggu kehidupan mereka. Penyu betina haus pergi ke darat untuk bertelur dan membutuhkan tempat di pasir untuk memendam telur-telurnya. Dengan makin banyaknya kegiatan manusia di sepanjang pantai, daerah yang bisa mereka pakai untuk bertelur jadi sangat banyak berkurang.

Malam itu kami menyaksikan sendiri usaha seekor penyu hijau betina berukuran panjang hampir satu meter untuk bertelur dan memendam telur-telurnya agar telur-telur itu terlindung dari predator dan memiliki kelembapan dan suhu yang tepat untuk melangsungkan pertumbuhan mereka. Butuh waktu satu jam untuk si ibu penyu menutupi lubang tempatnya bertelur. Itu dilakukannya dengan mendorong pasir ke belakang dengan siripnya. Setiap 3 kibasan sirip yang melemparkan pasir dengan kuat ke belakang, si induk penyu terengah-engah menarik nafas, lalu melanjutkan lagi tugasnya. Betul-betul mengharukan melihat perjuangannya.

Dan menyedihkan juga bila diingat bahwa di banyak tempat setelah si induk pergi para pencuri datang menggali telur-telur penyu untuk dijual. Lebih menyedihkan lagi di banyak tempat kegiatan pengambilan telur penyu memang dilegalkan. Sebuah artikel Kompas di tahun 2000 (http://www.kompas.com/kompas-cetak/0003/17/iptek/adu19.htm) menunjukkan kegiatan pengambilan telur penyu yang memang dijadikan sumber resmi pendapatan daerah di Derawan. Mereka menyatakan bahwa 10% dari telur-telur yang diambil dibiarkan menetas untuk menjaga kelangsungan hidup penyu. Padahal banyak penelitian menyebutkan bahwa hanya 10% dari tukik yang menetas akan mencapai usia reproduksi. Bila pengambilan telur oleh manusia ikut dihitung, maka dari usaha keras para induk penyu untuk bertelur, hanya akan ada 1% yang nantinya kembali untuk bertelur di pantai ini! Tidak heran kalau mereka hampir punah!

Saat ini hanya sebagian kecil spesies yang masih ada, dan hitungan individu per-spesies juga kecil sekali. Maka barulah sebagian sadar dan mulai menggerakkan usaha konservasi. Salah satunya adalah The Turtle Foundation yang adalah LSM asal Jerman yang salah satu proyek perdananya adalah di pulau Sangalaki ini. Menurut mereka sekitar 20-30 tahun yang lalu masih ada sekitar 200an penyu permalam bertelur di pulau ini. Sekarang 50 ekorpun tidak ada. Maka mereka berusaha membuat agar penyu-penyu tetap tertarik bertelur di pulau ini dan melindungi telur-telur dari pencurian. Sejak Januari 2002 penyu-penyu di Sangalaki sudah resmi dilindungi. Ini berarti kegiatan pengambilan telur penyu di Sangalaki seperti yang tertulis di artikel Kompas tahun 2000 tersebut sudah dihapus. Tidak jelas apakah kegiatan penjualan telur penyu masih dilakukan di pulau-pulau lain. Semoga sudah tidak lagi. Yang jelas malam itu para petugas The Turtle Foundation mengambil ke 98 telur yang dikeluarkan sang induk penyu dan memindahkannya ke tempat yang lebih aman, karena di daerah tempat sang induk bertelur, pasirnya akan terendam air bila pasang naik tiba. Lokasi baru direkam posisinya dan dicatat dengan baik. Dari situ akan muncul tukik-tukik dalam 1-2 bulan.

Paginya kami mendapat kesempatan untuk menyaksikan lagi sebuah fenomena alam yang menakjubkan – para tukik, anak-anak penyu mungil muncul dari dalam pasir di bawah salah satu pondok tempat kami tinggal. Sangalaki Dive Lodge memang bekerja sama dengan baik dengan The Turtle Foundation. Pondok-pondok mereka yang dibangun di pantai dibangun sebagai rumah panggung sehingga pasir di bawahnya masih bisa digunakan oleh penyu untuk bertelur. Pada malam hari kami juga diminta untuk tidak menyalakan lampu di teras agar penyu-penyu tidak mengurungkan niatnya untuk bertelur.

Lagi-lagi kami harus merasa terharu menyaksikan perjuangan para tukik, yang setelah 2-3 hari menggali pasir yang memendam mereka saat menetas dalam telur, masih harus berjuang keras melintasi pasir pantai yang panjang dengan tumpukan dedaunan kering dan jalaran tumbuhannya untuk mencapai laut. Tapi para tukik berjalan – atau tepatnya – berlari dengan cepat sekali, dalam satu garis lurus menuju laut. Mereka menerjang semua halangan dalam gerakan panik seolah sedang dikejar musuh. Dan memang musuh mereka banyak – camar laut, hiu dan berbagai jenis predator menanti mereka. Heran juga melihat mereka bisa otomatis menemukan jalan ke laut. Para peneliti belum bisa mengetahui dengan jelas apakah ini mereka lakukan berdasarkan pantulan cahaya yang banyak sekali dari permukaan laut, atau karena mereka punya semacam built-in kompas yang membantu mereka menentukan arah dengan bantuan medan magnet bumi.

Sembari menjepretkan kamera berkali-kali, kami sibuk menyemangati para tukik yang berlari-lari menuju laut. Saat kaki-kaki mereka menyentuh air – terharu sekali rasanya. Gerakan panik mereka ketika berlari-lari di darat langsung berubah menjadi gerak renang slow motion yang anggun. Selamat jalan kawan, good luck, semoga sukses, selamat dalam hidup, sehingga kalian bisa datang ke sini untuk bertelur 30 tahun lagi. Dan juga sampai jumpa di bawah laut sana, saat nanti kami menyelam, jangan takut pada kami. Kami tidak akan mengganggu kalian malah kalau ada yang mencoba mengganggu kalian, akan kami tempeleng orang itu.

Balikpapan, 25 April 2005

The People
Wisang: Bubbles diving instructor, organiser and leader of the trip. The only bloke in the group. Very very typical Javanese and very kind hence he was an easy teasing target for us.
Oudy: The Menadonese camerawoman, energetically taking pictures underwater and abovewater with her Olympus camera. And keeping us entertained with her funny stories and laughter.
Fiona: The girl with a mosquito on her forehead, that is, according to Wisang :) A Chinese-sundanese mix girl, Oudy’s work colleague, Oudy’s roommate and diving buddy in this trip.
Theres: Another Menadonese, loves traveling. My roommate and buddy.
Maria Louie: A Filipino girl, my beer-drinking friend, loves shopping :)
Anupama: An Indian girl, non diver, left alone by us most of the time to roam the beach by herself. Broke three pairs of sandals during the 4 day trip.
And me, the writer. How do I describe myself? I can’t, so I won’t.

Friday, 12 November 2004. Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Indonesian style

3 pm: sent a text message: “I’m still in the office, getting ready to go.”

That Friday afternoon I planned to bog off the office at 3 pm, but as usual, I chickened out and made my brother waited in the car downstairs until 3.30 pm, the official end of office hours. Earlier I asked him to drive me to the airport and he agreed readily. Of course, since this meant he’d be able to use my car to drive his girlfriend around for a few days.

Since it’s the last weekend before Idul Fitri I thought the roads to the airport would be jammed and the airport itself in chaos. Turned out that the roads were clear and we drove there in 40 minutes. Check-in and all that were done in a matter of minutes and I sailed down to the waiting room.

5 pm: sent another text message: “In the waiting room at Cengkareng Airport”

Wisang from Bubbles who was our trip leader texted me saying that there’s an Indian girl who would be joining us and she would be in my plane. Him and the rest of the group had left in the morning. I looked around and saw an Indian looking girl but I didn’t dare to say hello in case I was wrong.

Boarded the plane and things started to go downhill from there. The Lion Air plane was full and the aircond not functioning properly. It was hot and the guy next to me was really smelly and I had to hold my breath most of the journey. Luckily it was only a 1-hour flight.

8 pm: sent a text: “In Surabaya Airport, having somay dinner”
10 pm: more text: “Still in Surabaya Airport. The plane is late. Don’t know when it will arrive. Met the Indian girl so I have a companion.”

Just before touching down the soil (or tarmac) of Surabaya I heard the Indian girl asking questions to the stewardess, so I dared to ask her if she’s Anupama. Turned out she was. So we ended waiting together in Surabaya airport, which was a good thing since the plane was late. No apologies and no announcement at all from Lion Air. The gate simply did not open on time and instead of a queue for our flight there was a queue for some other earlier flight, which was also late.

12 am: a text: “In Mataram Airport waiting for the bags.”

Landed in Mataram at midnight, waited for the bags for a long time, with the horror thought at the back of my mind – what if my gear bag was missing? But I was lucky, got the two bags and met the driver who picked us up.

We drove along a stretch of small road in the middle of a forest. Anu began to feel uncomfortable because the road was deserted and it felt like we were deep in the middle of nowhere.

12:15 am: sent a text: “In a car driving through a dark forest. No other cars around. A bit spooky.”

Then after what seemed to be an eternity we reached the beach. Another deserted place, just a sandy beach with a few shacks and huts here and there. Anu said if her family ever found out she were doing this they would kill her. Well, seeing it from her perspective, a stranger in Indonesia, and not used to adventures she’s right to be concerned.

1:00 am: then more text: “At a strange beach with only a few shacks around. And what looks like a small boat.”

Turned out that a boat was waiting for us, a small wooden outrigger fishing boat, and we had to wade the water to reach it. Then the boat left the shore slowly and we just sat there quietly watching the stars. The sea was totally black, but I could see a little bit of wave. A bit spooky to cross the sea at night like this in such a small boat with complete strangers. I thought I began to feel worried too.

1:10 am: more text: “In the small boat, crossing the sea. Very dark. Spooky. The night is starry though. I can see Orion.”

Landed at Gili Air and again we had to wade through the water. Everything was dark and quiet, except a horse with a two-wheeled cart behind it, which was our next vehicle to reach wherever it was we were supposed to reach. As we swayed in the cart, I swore to myself. After being so used to plan my own journeys and knowing every detail of them, to completely put myself in the hands of strangers guiding my trip was a bit unnerving. I should’ve asked Wisang the details of the trip.

1:35 am: a text: “In a horse cart, swaying here and there. This is scary. I’m so afraid the cart would just flip over to its side every time we hit a hole in the dirt path.”

When we reached Coconut, a series of bamboo bungalows owned by Elaine, a Scottish lady, and Kamil, her Indonesian husband, I was dead. However the helpers didn’t know where to put us in. Anu knew she was supposed to share with Louie the Filipino girl, but which one’s her room? As for me, I didn’t even know whom to share the room with and of course we couldn’t knock each room to find out which one was Louie’s and which one was the other one with only one person inside.

But then Louie called Anu on her cellphone hence Anu got a place. And me? Wisang’s phone was off and we didn’t know which room he was in, and my level of patience was getting low. In the end they gave me a temporary room to stay in that night.

2 am: final text sent: “Finally got a room, I’m going to get shower and crash out. It’s been a long journey.”

Saturday, 13 November 2004. Three-dive day

Woke up early that morning and went to the restaurant. After sitting alone for a while two girls came out – Oudy and Fiona. Then Wisang came. Then Theres. Turned out she’s one of the girls I went with to Semarang in a Sahabat Museum trip, and she’s the one I would have to share a room with. Then Anu and Louie came as well. So it’s an all girl team. Anu was not a diver so there would be 5 girl divers and Wisang. Blessed was he among women :)

We had breakfast then took horse carts to Reefseekers, the dive center. Elaine, the Scottish lady who owned the Coconut resort we stayed at was going to be our dive guide. She took our data and certification proofs, and then gave us a briefing. After that we changed, picked up our equipments and headed to the boat.

Charlie’s Reef
Our first dive site was called Charlie’s Reef, which is about 10 minutes boat ride to the east of the Gili Air island. It was a gently sloping sandy bottom, with a belt of reef along the shore and two mounds of reef growth further to the sea at around 22m depths.

The reef condition was not good. The corals were brown and dead and broken. Elaine said that dynamite fishing was a big problem in the past, which finally managed to be wiped out in the end. However in 1998 the El Nino brought heat wave, which warmed the water and finished off the reef. Some were still alive though and some started to grow back so I could see small patches of colours here and there in the mounds.

Despite the dead corals, the water was teeming with life; fishes everywhere. Visibility was also good, about 18m so we could see all the biota clearly. We saw many different angelfish – emperor, regal, six banded. They lent colour to the environment with their bright blue and yellow. Saw some butterfly fish too, some Moorish idols, and a lot of little three spot dascyllus, black with three white spots on them, dancing merrily among the corals.

Elaine pointed out a silvery coloured flutemouth to us. Also a scorpion fish attaching itself to a clump of reef and looking exactly like its host I had difficulties spotting it. She also knocked on the sand around where a mantis shrimp buried itself. The thing peeped out and looked at us, his guests, for a few seconds, then quickly popped his head back in again.

While everyone was swarming above something my eyes were caught by a bright blue object among the brown coral and white sand. At first I thought it was a blue fish poking its nose in the sand but it kept going on like that for a long while so I got suspicious. No, it wasn’t the backside of a fish I saw. In fact what I thought as the fin was actually the mouth of the creature, opening and closing. Nobody was around, until my buddy Theres came by but she also didn’t know what it was. So I swam to Wisang, caught his wrist and wrote in his slate, “There’s a blue animal over there.” He swam by with me to the blue thingy and wrote, “Ribbon Eel.” Then everyone came and observed my ribbon eel. I was proud.

Then I spotted a moray eel, a yellow margin one, hiding under a clump of coral, and Elaine showed us an octopus. The octopus looked just like a clump of dark coral, but when I looked harder I could see his eyes, warily watching us. And then it started changing colour, grey to black, grey to black. Obviously it didn’t feel comfortable having us noisy big strange fishes flying around him.

We dived for 66 minutes that time and then we surfaced, had lunch and got ready for the afternoon dive.

Ribbon Eel Point
The weather was still sunny, the tide still low but unlike in the morning which was calm, the surface was now a bit wavy. The boat ride was about 25 minutes from the beach and Elaine gave us briefing on the boat. We put on our gear while she checked the current. Then we back-rolled into the sea. I was glad I could back-roll already. I remembered the times when getting into the water was still the most stressing time for me. I didn’t dare to back-roll then, and I hated giant stride. Most of the time I would put on my gear in the water even when it’s wavy. But now I could back roll comfortably and didn’t find entry too stressful anymore.

There was a bit of an incident – Theres lost her weight belt and Elaine had to recover it first and so we had to wait while bobbing up and down on the wavy surface. I didn’t like that, as soon as I touched water all I wanted to do was to dive in straight away. Especially when it’s wavy and I had to swallow lots of seawater during the wait.

This second dive site was a place called Ribbon Eel Point, which was located at the northwest of Gili Trawangan. Again it was a gently sloping white sandy bottom, but a bit far from the beach. The reef in this site was in a better condition than in the first site. There were more bright colours around, and less broken branches covering the bottom.

I like this second dive. It was calm, with no current at all. The slope was very gentle and the water very clear – visibility was around 20 m – so I could see far into the distance. It’s like swimming in a great big aquarium. Again, this area was also teeming with life forms. There were batfish, sweetlips and several lionfish. There were also schools of thumpback snappers. I was happy to just swim among those fishes. I remember thinking that when I die I would want to be born again as a fish. But then again maybe not. No, maybe not, because if I were just a fish with no consciousness then I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the beauty of this huge aquarium. But if I were a fish with consciousness then I would be frustrated to be just a fish. So I changed my mind.

We saw a hawksbill turtle that was busy eating and he ignored us completely. He was nudging the broken corals to look for food. Nearby there was a small nudibranch – Phyllidia varicose, I think it was.

There were also some moray eels. Wisang pointed out to me a lone unicornfish swimming above us and Fiona pointed out a huge triggerfish. I saw some dark coloured fish with bits of bright yellow at its tail. And the tail had two small blade-like additional side fins, later on I was told that they were surgeonfish.

In this dive I met my favourite marine creatures: Nemo – false clownfish living with an anemone. I loved watching them swimming in the anemone, darting in and out like playing hide and seek.

We dived for 59 minutes and my maximum depth was 21 m with 13.4 m average. A beautiful dive, I enjoyed it.

Night Dive
Our third dive that day was a night dive at Charlie’s Reef. Kathrin was our guide. She’s young, English, born in Hongkong, and owned a set of interesting tattoos on her right hip. Maria (that’s how we call Louie in this trip) decided not to come so there were only Wisang, me, my buddy Theres, Oudy and Fiona. We went in at 7pm after the boat guys finished their fast breaking. This was the last night of the Ramadhan month so the feast would be tomorrow. Already we could hear the Takbiran chants from the radios.

As soon as we touched bottom I saw a huge sea cucumber. It was white and pink in colour and at the mouth of its anus there’s a tiny crab. I wasn’t sure what it was doing there whether looking for food or hiding, maybe both. We watched it for a long time. It’s so funny that we were so fascinated by a sea cucumber’s anus :)

I like night dives. In night dives we can see many red eyes flickering in the darkness, like having hundreds of eyes watching us. Spooky but fascinating. The red eyes belong to shrimps and crabs and there were many that night. Some hermit crabs were running around here and there and we followed, hovering quietly above them. One ran to a place where we saw a spider crab, and near it a small bobtail cuttlefish was swimming. Great.

We also encountered banded boxer shrimps, a hinge-beak shrimp, some false fire sea urchins, a calamari sea urchin, some more hermit crab, swimmer crab and a reef lobster which were hiding from us so I could only see it’s long antennas.

When I was left a bit behind I looked back and pointed my torch to my body, covering its light. I was curious as to how black it could get. But the sea wasn’t completely dark. There were silvery points blinking here and there all around me, it was like swimming among the stars. Planktons? The sea was teeming with life, I told you.

Then just before surfacing we were given one of the most wonderful performances on earth, an underwater flamenco by a Spanish dancer. I was gobsmacked by its beauty, as it was swirling and moving its pinkish body in a wonderful ballet choreography.

This was the longest night dive I’ve ever done, 58 minutes. So I was happy. Then to top it all as I was surfacing I didn’t forget Kathrin’s advice to look up so when my head went out of the water the first thing I beheld was the beautiful beautiful gorgeous star studded night.

In the boat I continued to look up and saw a shooting star, a meteor, flashing by. I made a wish.

Fish Dinner
I thought that after taking diving and falling in love with the fishes and other marine creatures I would not want to eat fish again. But no, I still love sushi, sashimi and grilled fish. So that night along with the others I ordered fish and squid at Simple, a restaurant along the beach with rows of open-sided thatch-roofed huts with low tables and some cushions on it.

Anu and Maria were there as well and we ate and chatted and joked. At one point Wisang told Fiona that there’s a mosquito on her forehead and that he would’ve tried to kill it if it wasn’t on her forehead. Fiona gaped, then mentioned coolly that it was a mole on her forehead, not a mosquito. Wisang was totally embarrassed while the rest of us were paralysed with laughter. We told him we would compile for him a book on good chat up lines, and the do’s and don’ts when trying to appear heroic to a girl.

Poor Wisang, he couldn’t say a thing and was just sitting there with a face the colour of a boiled lobster. We wouldn’t let him forget this one for a long long time.

Sunday, 14 November 2004. The story teller

This was the first Lebaran day, so we couldn’t start too early. Everywhere in the island the resorts and dive centers were short of staff. Coconut still have staff though, so it wasn’t too bad for us.

Symbiosis
At Reefseekers the owners Ernest Lewandowski and his wife were back from their trip to the UK. Ernest loved to tell stories about the marine creatures and once he started there’s no way to stop him. That morning he sat with us and told us long stories about the symbiosis life in the sea. There were three main types of symbiosis and he asked us to watch out for them when we dived.

The first was symbiosis mutualism, which was the ultimate symbiosis where the two kinds of creatures working and living together would not be able to survive without each other. He likened it to a marriage. The example he cited was the symbiosis of goby fishes and shrimps. The goby provided the shrimps with eyes and danger alarms. As they sat on the bottom of the sea they watched out for predators and gave the shrimps signals when they saw one. The shrimps, or the wives as Ernest put it, dug holes for both of them to hide in. They also caught little animals for the goby to eat.

Ernest joked that some shrimp and goby couples lived like normal married couples, one shrimp to one goby near one hole. But some were polygamists and some even polyandrous, while others were complete swingers.

The second of the symbiosis was commensalisms, which according to Ernest meant ‘eating together’ and therefore the two types of animals lived together to eat better. My encyclopedia defined this symbiosis as an interaction between two kinds of creatures, in which one member of the association benefits while the other is not affected, which was the description I remembered from my biology lesson in high school.

But anyway, Ernest cited the example of anemone and clownfish. He asked us to open the guide-book on fish types on the page of clownfish and blink and try to look for the pattern and general similarities. It turned out that most of them have white stripes across their bodies, contrasting with their colour. According to Ernest most sea creatures saw contrasts better. With the contrast coloured bodies, the clownfish would dance and wiggle above the anemone and look like lures to fishes. When these fishes lunged to eat the lures the clownfish darted back into the anemone to bait them in and get them poisoned by the anemone. These then become the dinner for both the anemone and the clownfish.

The Wikipedia by the way, cited the relationship of the clownfish and anemone as an example of a symbiosis mutualism, whereby the territorial fish protects the anemone from anemone-eating fish, and in turn the stinging tentacles of the anemone protects the anemone fish from its predators. Maybe just like in Geology (I’m a geologist, by the way), in Marine Biology it’s also all about interpretation and educated guess.

Ernest didn’t have time to explain details about symbiosis parasitism, as his wife and Kathrin kept reminding him that we were there to dive not only to listen to him :) But he did mention a type of fish, which attached itself onto a bigger fish and suck its blood out.

Reading more about symbiosis from the web, I remember that one of the hermit crabs we saw during the night dive had several small anemone clumps on its back. Apparently it was also a type of symbiosis mutualism, with the crab benefiting from the camouflage and the anemone benefiting from the hitchhike ride to get more food.

Chalkies Reef
Ernest’s stories lent some more colours to the marine creatures that we saw in the dive. Everything started to look like they had personalities and we got more interested in them. It’s like we came to their world to look for some more gossips about their life.

When we dived that morning in Chalkies Reef (east of Gili Air) and descended slowly to the gently rolling white sandy bottom immediately my eyes were drawn into a goby sitting quietly in the sand. I hovered slowly over him and saw its shrimp partner pushing sands out of the hole it was digging. After watching this pair for some time I hovered to another pair and then went down quietly to look at them more closely. The goby immediately flicked its tail and the shrimp stopped the digging, hiding inside. The goby had obviously noticed me and conveyed the danger sign to the shrimp.

I spent quite a while watching the pairs of goby and shrimp and as I hovered away to the clumps of reef build-ups I noticed a group of two goby fishes with one shrimp and a group of two shrimps with one goby, the ‘polyandrous’ and ‘polygamist’ ones :)

Nearing the reef growth, which was good in this area, I saw some grey boring looking dascyllus. But to me then they weren’t boring anymore because just before we boarded the boat Ernest still managed to tell us to watch also for these boring looking fishes which he said would appear dancing above clumps of coral growth. He said some would be doing mating dance whereby the male danced to attract the attention of the females and when he got one, both would be dancing together and then the female would be putting the eggs under the clump and the male fertilised them. He would attract some more females and repeated that and then when he’s tired he would be swimming around guarding his offspring. What a bloke – a promiscuous playboy with many women, but very responsible afterwards, taking all the children with him :)

So I hovered some distance away from a few couples of dascyllus and watched them dancing. Some seemed to be darting in and out from under the clumps of corals but I wasn’t sure if they were mating or not. Still, to me they looked more interesting now.

What more did we see down there? I noted a silvery coloured trumpet fish, swimming quietly above some algae growth. Then there were lots and lots of Moorish Idols, with their bright yellow colour darting here and there among the corals. Many lionfish were around waving their ribbons and I like it very much to make their sign with my two hands.

A huge starry pufferfish lay quietly on the sand; the pale grey and white colour blended it with the environment. Its eyes watched us warily for our every movement. There was a yellow boxfish as well, and some pallete surgeonfish, also a lot of regal angelfish.

In the reef build-up we found some anemone clumps, big and small, with the false clownfish, pink and clarke anemonefish. As usual it’s fun to watch them darting in and out from among the anemone dancing tentacles.

In a cavity below a clump of brain coral we spotted a moray eel, bluish in colour. It opened and closed its mouth, breathing. Then there was something that excited me very much – a blue spot mask ray swam by us and I watched it, fascinated. This was better than watching rays in the Sea World aquarium.

As you can probably tell, I’m still new to diving. This was only my 30th dive and before Lombok, all I have ever dived in were around Java – the Thousand Islands (Kotok and Sepa), Krakatau, Sanghyang Island, Tempurung Island and Ujung Kulon. This is why everything was so exciting to me. This was even the first time that I really took care to learn the underwater hand signals of the fish, how to make signs for lionfish, trumpetfish, pipefish, angelfish, butterfly fish, turtle, moray, cuttlefish, octopus and all that.

Even the concept of spotting the types of marine biota during a dive and noted them down was still comparatively new to me. I used to just dive for the sake of dive. I liked swimming among bright coloured fish and floating pass clumps of colourful reef buildups, but most of all I just loved it to be underwater. Just to be able to hover and pretend I was flying was enough for me. I felt like Harry Potter already. Just like when I still did lots of volcano hiking – for me I didn’t have to reach the top to enjoy the hike, top pocketing wasn’t the point at all; it’s the walk outdoor that mattered. This was the same, I didn’t have to experience anything exciting or meet some exotic creature because I just loved it to be underwater. But now I began to understand the rules of the game, and enjoyed the spotting of the creatures. And one thing I learned from Ernest – I got to enjoy watching their habits and activities. Not to just spot these underwater celebrities but to gather gossips about their lives and learn their habits. So now diving became much more exciting to me.

Anyway, we dived for 68 minutes here in this site, with 18m of visibility. The weather was sunny and the sea calm. As we sailed back to the beach Oudy’s red t-shirt was blown by the wind and couldn’t be recovered.

Pedaties Reef
There was no restaurant opened that day, everywhere in the island people closed their businesses, wore their nicest outfits and went around visiting. This was the Lebaran day. So we ate the sandwiches that an Australian lady sent us, while filling in our logbook. Kathrin had put the data on the board and we tried to identify and discussed the fish and other creatures we met during the dive.

Of course we also continued to tease Wisang and made him embarrassed. He wasn’t too happy about it and tried to make us stop but we continued to mercilessly remind him of Fiona’s ‘mosquito’ :)

Then Ernest sat with us and told us stories about how divers had taught the animals to be aggressive. He said that when he first came to Lombok with his wife many years ago the triggerfish were not as aggressive as now. Continued close encounters with divers who weren’t sensitive enough to understand to back off when the fish tried to shoo them away made the fish learn to attack. Only the attacks would keep the divers away, that’s what the fishes had learned from us.

Ernest also cited an example of anemonefish. When we got near a clump of anemone the resident clownfish would protect it by darting out to shoo us away. If we didn’t back off when they did that then the anemonefish would learn that their efforts were fruitless and they would learn to run away and left the anemone unprotected. While originally they would be fearless and persevered, and continued to attack, like some clownfishes which Ernest observed one day attacking and biting the neck of a turtle that was trying to eat their anemone home. So he rammed home to us the message to care more about the marine creatures and their habits. And I promised myself I would from now on only watch clownfishes from afar and would not play with them with my hands again.

The site we dived that afternoon was called Pedaties Reef and was located in the west of Gili Trawangan, so it was quite a while before we reached the place. It was very sunny and I applied more sunblock to cover my skin. The sea was a bit wavy but there was no current and the visibility was around 20m.

The bottom was coral covered, or to be more precise, dead coral covered. It’s sad to see all the dead coral branches covering the gently sloping bottom. But here and there we could find clumps of live coral growth, mostly acroporas and brain corals.

We saw another hawksbill turtle that was busy eating and ignored us completely. We also saw some starry pufferfish, yellow boxfish, spotted boxfish, yellow trumpetfish, and some different kinds of sweetlips – harlequin, oriental and giant sweetlips.

There were different types of residents of anemones – pink anemonefish, Clarke anemonefish, clown and false clownfishes. There were some small crabs and shrimps as well in between the anemone. I tried to think about the type of symbiosis between these crabs and shrimps with the anemone. If I followed the definition from Wikipedia this could be classified as a symbiosis commensalisms since the crabs definitely benefited from living in the anemones safety wise and probably also food wise, while I couldn’t see how the anemone benefited from them.

I saw some nudibranches from the Phyllidia genus, and we spotted a mantis shrimp, greenish in colour. There were some titan and boomerang triggerfish, a lot of angelfish (emperor & regal), and a lot of butterfly fish. And of course, the ever present Moorish Idols.

Among the brownish coloured dead coral branches Kathrin saw a creature that looked like a skinny nudibranch, but a closer look revealed that it had no antennas like nudibranch. So she asked our camerawoman Oudy to take pictures of it. Later in the surface we checked the books and found out that it was a kind of holothurian that mimicked a toxic nudibranch. Wicked!

Then we spotted a young white-tip reef shark. It was scared of us strange big black fishes with colourful fins, and preferred to hide in a cavity under a table coral. Poor thing. And we continued to try to peep into the cavity and shine it with our torches. I saw the thing looking at us worriedly and I took pity and swam away.

Another creature got scared of us - a blue spotted fantail ray, which immediately hid under a brain coral as soon as it saw us. We could see part of its body sticking out from the small cavity, and the two eyes that were watching us.

After that we took group photos underwater. By that time though my tank was very low on air and I had difficulties going down to get near the group. I kept floating up and then my mask was also filled with water, which made it difficult for me to concentrate and control my buoyancy, while the others kept pulling me down. As a result we got very funny pictures with me appearing to struggle with my hands and legs all over the place and they told me I got Hanoman style :)

After 72 minutes underwater we surfaced. This time Fiona’s weightbelt fell down and Kathrin had to dive in to recover it. Wisang went after her. After that we teased Wisang about it and we set about matchmaking him and Kathrin. As usual he was embarrassed but couldn’t do much. He tried earlier to take our things and hold them in ransom, hoping to exchange those with us stopping to tease him. It didn’t work. We just laughed and continued to make fun of him.

That night we had dinner in Coconut, which restaurant turned out to serve good food, better than Simple, the restaurant we visited the night before. After the dinner we looked at the photos that Oudy took, both the marine creatures and us. We laughed at our funny underwater photos. Then we watched the DVD that Ernest lent us. It was a video shot about the underwater creatures in Komodo, where Ernest’s other dive center is located. It looked really wonderful and we talked about planning to go there next year.

Monday, 15 November 2004. Frogfish’s Lure & Romantic Octopus

That morning Theres and I woke up late. Earlier I heard Theres moving about and saw that it was still dark so I went back to sleep. Apparently Theres did as well and none of us had the alarm on. At 8 am Wisang woke us up and told us to get ready as soon as possible. So we changed while he ordered our breakfast. Then after breakfast we took the horse carts to go to Reefseekers.

Another storyteller
At Reefseekers Elaine had been waiting for us. We prepared our equipment then sat in the porch for her briefing. It turned out that Elaine was also a storyteller. She told us about the underwater dentists, the shrimps, which found leftover food from among the teeth of the fishes. There were flosser types that floss the teeth, and clipper types which clipped parasites from under the scales. I wished I could see them at work; it should be interesting.

Then she told us that if we’re lucky we should spot a frogfish that day. Frogfishes had fins that looked like the feet of frogs, complete with what looked like painted toenails. They also moved about by hopping, hence the name.

According to Elaine a frogfish was a type of anglerfish, from angling which meant fishing. At the top of its head there’s a bump, which could pop out a fishing rod-like structure, with the fish line and a lure at the end. A frogfish could have a lure resembling a shrimp while others had lures resembling crabs or fish, both in form and smell. This lure would be used to lure fish and as soon as the fish got near the frogfish would grab and eat it.

Listening to stories like this made me marvel at the wonder of evolution. How many thousand or million years of mutation and adaptation finally created a rod and lure structure like this? How many thousands of years did it take for the simple tiny sea cucumbers to “learn” to mimic poisonous nudibranch to survive? Obviously a long long time ago those sea cucumbers that had colours like the toxic nudibranch were the ones that survived. And these were the ones which produced offsprings, which as time passed by more and more resembled the nudibranch. However, what had triggered the genetic mutation in the first place, so that one sea cucumber ancestor suddenly had a small likeness to a nudibranch? The creativity of nature always makes me wonder. This creativity must be born out of the need of life to survive. Like Ernest said, it’s a jungle out there, it’s difficult to survive.

There should be some octopus around as well. The octopus, according to Elaine, could appear romantic while mating. The male would put one of its long tentacles around the female and then it would gently shove a scoop of sperms with another tentacle into the inside of the female’s mantle to fertilise the eggs. Very much unlike the energetic human lovemaking. However after the romantic gesture it would just bog off and leave the lady and its eggs. Very much like human playboys :)

The female octopus will then put the eggs in a den and waited for them to hatch, which could take 42 weeks. All that time she wouldn’t leave the den, and would not hunt for food. Therefore at the end of the time she would become very weak. Just before the eggs hatched, the lady octopus would leave the den, and of course in her weak condition she would be devoured easily by the predators. This according to Elaine, was some sort of way for luring the predators away from its children. Very touching.

Moray eels were octopus’ main predator and a struggle between the two could get very brutal. The eel would use its body to wrap around the octopus in a knot while its head tried to lung and snap the octopus’ head. Scary. I don’t like to hear or see stories about predators at hunt.

Henry’s Reef
That morning Elaine took us to a place called the Snapper Point west of Gili Air, which actually wasn’t too far from the south beach where Reefseekers was located. However since the wave was strong and it was difficult to sail west, we had to circle the island taking the long route to the east.

Once we got there Elaine checked the current while we geared up readying for our dive. However suddenly one of us found out that he had left his fins in the dive center. It was a very embarrassing moment for him obviously, considering his experiences in diving and all that, so to save him from further embarrassment I won’t mention his name :)

Because of this fin incident, we had to go back south of the island to the dive center to retrieve the fins. So there we were sitting in front of the boat completely geared up baking in the sun all the way back to the island. We decided we wouldn’t ever let him forget this incident :)

After retrieving the fins Elaine decided that we should dive east of the island instead of going all the way back to Snapper Point. So we went to Henry’s Reef at the northeast of Gili Air. The weather was sunny but the sea was rather choppy. Fortunately no other incident happened so we didn’t have to stay too long on the boat. We back-rolled and met at a point in front of the boat and immediately went in.

The bottom was a gently rolling white sandy area with clumps of coral growth here and there. The visibility was great, around 18m and there was no current, so although the surface was choppy underwater it felt like a huge calm aquarium. We dived to a maximum depth of around 22m.

We spotted a green turtle from afar. I wondered why it was called a green turtle it didn’t look green to me. Later Elaine explained that the inside, which appeared when somebody cut them up, looked green. Ugh, that’s horrible. People shouldn’t eat turtle. They’re so cute and they look old like grandfathers. Like a very ancient animal, one of our ancestors.

There were schools of yellow coloured 5 lined snappers, lots of lionfish, small starry pufferfish, and some oriental sweetlips. We also saw a black robust ghost pipefish.

We met a big greenish purple mantis shrimp, which was lying on the broken coral covered bottom. It went scurrying away hiding in a cavity in a coral growth when it sensed that we were all hovering above it.

I watched amusedly at some garden eels at the sandy bottom at the foot of a coral growth. There were three garden eels peeping out of their respective holes, which formed a line. There’s another hole beside the three, but no eel head peeping out of it. The garden eel kept popping in and out as divers went near, while I just hovered above them. Suddenly one of them swam out of its hole and backed into the other hole. It was fun to watch them popping in and out it was like that game in the game centers where plastic creatures popped in and out of holes and we were supposed to knock them with a big plastic pickaxe. Unfortunately suddenly Wisang swam by and all the garden eels disappeared into the holes :(

Then in a gap between two coral build-ups about a man’s height we saw thousands and thousands of tiny baby fishes. They were transparent with some flickering eyes. It’s fascinating to watch them and I tried to swim among them. Wow.

In this place we also saw a leaf fish, and behind the coral growth a big grey sea cucumber – Thelenota anax, was lying calmly. I couldn’t stop my laughter watching what it was doing. It was poo-ing! Behind it there were trails of long curling faeces and as I looked again, it was calmly secreting a long faeces out of its anus :) No manner!

Again Oudy took some group pictures of us. We tried to form a cheerleader triangle formation in the sandy bottom area, but it proved to be quite difficult. We dubbed ourselves the Mosquito Cheerleading Squad, to honour Wisang’s mosquito incident :)

Snapper Point
We had a big lunch that day. Four big fried fish for the 6 of us. Afterwards we felt too full to dive.

Elaine took us to the place we originally about to dive at, the Snapper Point. Along with us Kathrin brought a Greek guy who were doing a refresher course.

The weather was still sunny and the sea still choppy. We went in right away, descending into a sandy gently sloping bottom. The visibility was around 15m and we could see that there were several groups of live coral build-ups around. The biggest was a big coral build-up at a maximum of 24m depths.

As we came near it Elaine pointed to us a big cuttlefish hovering near a soft coral growth. I watched it for a while but then my eyes caught Kathrin signaling for frogfish. I swam near them and tried hard to look at the area she pointed at but couldn’t find anything that looked like a frogfish. In fact, I wasn’t even sure how it would look like though I had seen it in the picture at Reefseekers. All I saw there was a clump of sponge. After a while finally I saw it. It looked like the sponge it was resting on. But as soon as you made out the outline you could see the “legs” and their cute tiny toes. The purplish blue coloured frogfish was just sitting there quietly while we observed it.

After that I hovered away and saw a starry pufferfish lying quietly on the sand. In a big cavity under a table coral Elaine pointed out multibar pipefish. There were several sweetlips swimming around.

We also found some nudibranches – the usually found around this area Phyllidia varicosa and some more exotic ones – Reticularia halgerda with a big black body that had orange cross stripes, and Roboastra gracilis.

There was one octopus as well. It was sitting among coral clumps and changed its colour from light to dark, again and again as we watched it. We couldn’t see its tentacles as they were kept under him. Later on that day after the dive as we were standing around the dive centers we heard some commotion and the word “gurita!” which meant octopus. Then we saw some kids running towards the village. Behind them two teenagers carried between them a pole, with an octopus hanging from it. I wanted to cry when I saw that.

After leaving the last big coral build-up we just drifted with the current above a gently rolling bottom covered with algae. Just before we surfaced though, we found some sandy area again with small clumps of coral growth. In between them as we did the safety stop I saw several juvenile false clownfish swimming with no anemones nearby. I was quite surprised since I recalled that in one of the books it was said that clownfishes were never found without anemone. Later I asked Ernest about that and he said not to trust every book totally. We should read several sources for a subject. He then explained that the anemone could get too crowded once the fish bred. So the juveniles would be kicked out to find their own anemone homes. Made sense to me.

On the boat we found out that the Greek guy and Kathrin saw a white tip shark that we didn’t see. But it was still a fun dive for me with lots of things to observe, and I was happy. So that was our last dive. Before we left the boat Kathrin gave us a message on reef conservation, how we should take care when we dive not to touch anything because our touch may kill something that took a very long time to grow.

Drinking Night
After washing our equipments and hanging them to dry we went back to Coconut. Again we had dinner there and looked at the photos. It turned out that the triangle formation we made underwater was quite decent. And of course funny.

We planned to get some drink in the pub further south after the dinner but Oudy was not feeling well so we just ordered our drinks there and sat and watched another DVD from Ernest. As the night wore on and we got more drunk we started to tell stories about ourselves. I couldn’t remember exactly what I said I hope it wasn’t anything embarrassing :O

Tuesday, 16 November 2004. The Road Home

That morning I woke up early, packed and left my bag with Theres. Then I walked with my camera on. Snapping the beautiful landscape. I intended to walk from Coconut, which was at the east coast of the island, to Reefseekers, which was at the south of the island. Normally we used horse carts but I wanted to walk so that I could capture some portraits of the people as well.

The dirt path was dusty and dry. So were the coconut and mango groves along the path. Rain rarely reached these strings of island. But they’re hoping it would arrive later in December. I hope it would. It’s sad to see the dry grass and leaves. They need water.

On the beach in the southern part of the island near the jetty I managed to take some human-interest photographs – fishermen busy working on their boats and some little kids playing.

Then I had to wait for some time in the beach near Reefseekers for the others to arrive. After they arrived we packed our gears, said goodbye to the storytellers from Reefseekers and headed to the boat that would bring us to the mainland Lombok. After that it was a car ride across the hills and the monkey forest, and two plane rides before we were back to the real world. And thus ended our lovely tropical dream.

Jakarta, 21 November 2004