Bali - a quest for diversity, October 2004

Bali has a curious reputation as a diving destination. Bali is rightly famous for its terrestrial attractions: a beautiful, volcanic landscape, a unique Hindu culture and a friendly and welcoming people. And these factors seem to count against in people's minds as a dive destination. I guess divers just cannot believe that the island can be blessed underwater as well. How wrong they are. The North and East coasts of Bali have some amazing dive sites - but what really sets Bali apart for me is the diversity of adventures and marine life these offer. There are shallow fish filled reefs, dramatic craggy walls, the famous USAT Liberty wreck, newly discovered muck diving sites filled with rare and exotic critters, and offshore islands ravaged by currents, but where encounters with large creatures such as Manta rays and the enigmatic Mola mola are predictable. To me it was the obvious location for my 2005 Group trip for Divequest.

This visit to Bali was unfortunately a whistle-stop tour. My aim was to get re-acquainted with the island and also to meet and decide where next year's group would stay and dive. This meant hiring a car, taking on Bali's million motorbikes, and zapping round the island! In terms of diving I did a night dive at Padangbai, 4 days diving in the Tulamben area and a day diving at the offshore island of Nusa Penida. Then it was back to the airport and home. Whoosh! But even with such a short time on the island I still saw so much awesome marine life it was hard to take it all in. I will probably be the most excited person on the plane when we return for next year's trip!

Tulamben is a remarkable area. The USAT Liberty wreck just blew me away. I know my fish. But such is the diversity on this site I could not even begin to get my head round it on one dive. There are tonnes of large groupers, snappers, sweetlips, angelfish, rabbitfish, surgeonfish etc. A swirling school of resident jacks. Millions of small fish - with multiple species of Anthias, damselfish, fusiliers, butterflyfish, wrasse. Plus great critters. It takes several dives just to start to feel familiar with the site and even more before you are ready to start working it photographically. Amazing. Pygmy Seahorses are also common in Tulamben. On one fan I found 13. And they are about twice the size of the ones I photographed in Lembeh earlier in the year, making them much more user friendly. Also with so many in one fan I was able to take lots of images without subjecting any individual to more than a couple of flash exposures.

One of my favourite dive sites in the Tulamben area is at Seraya. This new site was only discovered in the last 12 months and is a real critter revelation, particularly for the Nudibranch lover. Christiane Waldrich discovered the site and in the first 8 weeks photographed 120 species of Nudibranchs there. Australian photographer, Michael Aw also visited the site this year a saw 41 nudibranch species on one dive. You get the idea. The site is also home to a rare type of frogfish, that has transparent port holes in its fins. Michael Aw showed his images of this froggie to ichthyologist Dr Gerry Allen who said he had never seen the fish before. On one dive I made there with Christiane I photographed (I saw more but can't remember) 5 different frogfish (including 2 individuals of the weird porthole frogfish - only 4 have ever been known from the site including these two), skeleton shrimps, coral crabs, waspfish, multiple nudibranch species, boxer crabs and many other crabs and squat lobsters, and a bumblebee shrimp. In short - I need a bigger memory card: 1GB is not enough!

On my final day of diving I met up with Robert Delfs, who lives on the island and I know from Wetpixel. The visit also allowed me to see some of Robert's pictures - his schooling mantas and recent humpback whale reaching towards the camera made me v jealous - but I was quickly placated when he offered me the use of his 12-24mm lens for our day's shooting - thanks Robert! Robert organised for us to go diving with his dive school of choice - BIDP. Avandy who co-owns BIDP with his English wife Lucy is an excellent videographer and the three of us set out with Mola mola on our minds. Our location was the offshore island of Nusa Penida that sits in the Bali-Lombok channel and feels the full force of the Bali Through-Flow. Currents here can be awesome and this isn't a place to visit unless your are 100% sure of your dive guides - I was glad I was with BIDP. They no the conditions so well we hardly had any current on any of the dives. But would we get lucky with the Molas? WOW! First dive and we got one. And it was SO big. Massive. I hadn't expected them to be so large. WOW. Then second dive we went to the manta cleaning station and were treated to two mantas circling repeatedly in front of my lens. The picture shows Robert with one of the Mantas. By lunchtime my wish-list was complete.

All in all, ,this trip to Bali was far to short. There is so much to see and photograph and I didn't get up to Menjangen and Secret Bay, where we will also visit next year. I can't wait to bring a group here next year - and have the chance to get back myself. With diving this good I'm sure it will be an amazing trip. You can see a selection of my underwater images from this year's brief Bali visit here.