18th October 2006
This was the last full day dive. Again, I failed to catch my sunrise. The sunrise should be around 5.30. After few times I failed to wake up, I woke up that day when the alarm sounded on 5.30, but the sky was already bright, so continued sleeping.
After briefing, we went down to Castle Rock, this is one of my favorite dive sites. When we were waiting for others in the surface, I faced down to look at the bottom, and around me was school of thousand blue fusiliers, so many of them. Upon descending, the big fish was everywhere, many of them came in school, like very huge giant black trevally. Some gathered together as odd shape, some just hovering around the horizontal line, some played on the bottom. It was glorious to see school of huge fish meeting medium and small ones. Fusiliers, various sweetlips, various snapper, various unicorn and triggerfish, butterflyfish, angelfish and many that I couldn’t identify. It’s not many dives we saw this type of scenery! Except the fish, I also love the scenery. Table corals and big rocks were creating unique landscape with a lot of terrain. It was a mass cleaning station. I read a lot about cleaning activity and that time, I saw the life show of them. Fish queue up on the table coral, while cleaner fish busy attending the their clients. I saw giant moray eel floating vertical below a table coral while the cleaner fish served it, so did an emperor angelfish with ‘merem-melek’ satisfied look.
We also did our secret mission, anniversary party. He he he he he he..
On this trip, we saw a lot of big reef octopus, but they were shy and only showed us the head. On the safety stop there was one octopus too. I guess Cynthia and Froggie were trying to wait for it to come out. I played around the big rock, where a pair of very friendly Moorish Idol came to entertain me. They brushed very close; sometimes they bumped into me, chased after each other, or just played around me. It was so close that it’s difficult to take their pictures. There were some lined surgeon fish playing around too, the environment looked like a kindergarten, friendly fish, school of blue surgeon hanging calmly around, except there were a lot of scorpion fish around. I’ve never seen them so lively. One big one was swimming to me, I was almost choked trying to avoid its spine, then it settled, right below me, wanna poison me? Then it moved again to my right, settled for a while, and moved again. I had to closely watch for its position, then I found another scorpion. At that time, my two Moorish Idol came back and played with me again.
I really love this dive.
Second dive, we went down to Crystal Rock, it had a lot of fish too, again, we saw a star puffer following the wrong herd, the puffer was very huge, same with what we saw in Bali, the one who followed batfish, this time, I guess it follow surgeonfish. We also saw one turtle, hawksbill (?), busy eating something on the coral. Headup, head down, shaking but, diagonal, I spent minutes watching it because I was waiting for my buddy. We found pigmy seahorse again, and fat one again. I only took two shoot from far, as Cynthia wanted to take also. I accidentally caught a hairy (jabrik) one in my picture. Because I don’t have macro lens, I could only position my camera quite far from the object, I caught three pigmies in one picture. Too bad, the quality was not really good.
At the end of the dive, the current started to picking up fast, so we hung around the rock. From below, we could see the wave crashing to the reef. When we were on the rock, the current became very strong but we hung in there. I found a pretty-eye goby in the hole, so with one hand, I tried to snap picture of it, it was very difficult to get a focus. After the dive, we climbed back to the dingy. Felt quite nauseous when we had to endure the choppy surface, I only took one pills a day, instead of usual three, but so far, so good, a bit pale-faced though.
When we were already in the dingy, while we were approaching the big boat, a school of dolphin swam by, EXCATLY ON THE POINT WE DID OUR SAFETY STOP! We wanted to jump back, but we wouldn’t make it easily because the current was flowing to our direction. So, we just said bye bye to the dolphin and regretted why we didn’t stay five minutes longer in the water.
Third dive we did at The Light House, I think I mixed up many things. There was fierce current in this dive also. Maybe second dive, we saw huge nurse shark laying motionless on the sea bottom. Sleeping? Maybe, but it was sure photo friendly, found huge white tip under the rock also.
At night, we arrived at Gili Banta island. From the bay, we saw the mountain standing in the dark. We always did our night dive in secluded bay, so far we had experienced the famous Komodo current, no way I wouldn’t respect that!
Night dive, we saw lots of nudibranch, sea star, shrimps, fish, cowry, Spanish dancer, it was a nice and relaxing night dive. I’m beginning to like night dives more. When we were sitting in the dark in the dingy, everywhere was silent. We couldn’t really talk anyway. Looked around and I saw four black shape funny human around me, all clad in heavy and dangling equipments, faces hidden behind hood, mask and regulator, somehow it hit me funny to see us like that with the frog leg-wearing long fins. It’s like we were going to mysterious secret mission. Kekeke.
I found weird sea star with one leg much longer than the other four. It was very challenging also trying to catch pictures of crabs and shrimps which just jumped away just before the camera clicked. Pelit. It was an amazing night dive and puzzled how, I came out with 125bar still left on my tank, so I only sucked 90 bar for one hour dive (?!).
This was the last full day dive. Again, I failed to catch my sunrise. The sunrise should be around 5.30. After few times I failed to wake up, I woke up that day when the alarm sounded on 5.30, but the sky was already bright, so continued sleeping.
After briefing, we went down to Castle Rock, this is one of my favorite dive sites. When we were waiting for others in the surface, I faced down to look at the bottom, and around me was school of thousand blue fusiliers, so many of them. Upon descending, the big fish was everywhere, many of them came in school, like very huge giant black trevally. Some gathered together as odd shape, some just hovering around the horizontal line, some played on the bottom. It was glorious to see school of huge fish meeting medium and small ones. Fusiliers, various sweetlips, various snapper, various unicorn and triggerfish, butterflyfish, angelfish and many that I couldn’t identify. It’s not many dives we saw this type of scenery! Except the fish, I also love the scenery. Table corals and big rocks were creating unique landscape with a lot of terrain. It was a mass cleaning station. I read a lot about cleaning activity and that time, I saw the life show of them. Fish queue up on the table coral, while cleaner fish busy attending the their clients. I saw giant moray eel floating vertical below a table coral while the cleaner fish served it, so did an emperor angelfish with ‘merem-melek’ satisfied look.
We also did our secret mission, anniversary party. He he he he he he..
On this trip, we saw a lot of big reef octopus, but they were shy and only showed us the head. On the safety stop there was one octopus too. I guess Cynthia and Froggie were trying to wait for it to come out. I played around the big rock, where a pair of very friendly Moorish Idol came to entertain me. They brushed very close; sometimes they bumped into me, chased after each other, or just played around me. It was so close that it’s difficult to take their pictures. There were some lined surgeon fish playing around too, the environment looked like a kindergarten, friendly fish, school of blue surgeon hanging calmly around, except there were a lot of scorpion fish around. I’ve never seen them so lively. One big one was swimming to me, I was almost choked trying to avoid its spine, then it settled, right below me, wanna poison me? Then it moved again to my right, settled for a while, and moved again. I had to closely watch for its position, then I found another scorpion. At that time, my two Moorish Idol came back and played with me again.
I really love this dive.
Second dive, we went down to Crystal Rock, it had a lot of fish too, again, we saw a star puffer following the wrong herd, the puffer was very huge, same with what we saw in Bali, the one who followed batfish, this time, I guess it follow surgeonfish. We also saw one turtle, hawksbill (?), busy eating something on the coral. Headup, head down, shaking but, diagonal, I spent minutes watching it because I was waiting for my buddy. We found pigmy seahorse again, and fat one again. I only took two shoot from far, as Cynthia wanted to take also. I accidentally caught a hairy (jabrik) one in my picture. Because I don’t have macro lens, I could only position my camera quite far from the object, I caught three pigmies in one picture. Too bad, the quality was not really good.
At the end of the dive, the current started to picking up fast, so we hung around the rock. From below, we could see the wave crashing to the reef. When we were on the rock, the current became very strong but we hung in there. I found a pretty-eye goby in the hole, so with one hand, I tried to snap picture of it, it was very difficult to get a focus. After the dive, we climbed back to the dingy. Felt quite nauseous when we had to endure the choppy surface, I only took one pills a day, instead of usual three, but so far, so good, a bit pale-faced though.
When we were already in the dingy, while we were approaching the big boat, a school of dolphin swam by, EXCATLY ON THE POINT WE DID OUR SAFETY STOP! We wanted to jump back, but we wouldn’t make it easily because the current was flowing to our direction. So, we just said bye bye to the dolphin and regretted why we didn’t stay five minutes longer in the water.
Third dive we did at The Light House, I think I mixed up many things. There was fierce current in this dive also. Maybe second dive, we saw huge nurse shark laying motionless on the sea bottom. Sleeping? Maybe, but it was sure photo friendly, found huge white tip under the rock also.
At night, we arrived at Gili Banta island. From the bay, we saw the mountain standing in the dark. We always did our night dive in secluded bay, so far we had experienced the famous Komodo current, no way I wouldn’t respect that!
Night dive, we saw lots of nudibranch, sea star, shrimps, fish, cowry, Spanish dancer, it was a nice and relaxing night dive. I’m beginning to like night dives more. When we were sitting in the dark in the dingy, everywhere was silent. We couldn’t really talk anyway. Looked around and I saw four black shape funny human around me, all clad in heavy and dangling equipments, faces hidden behind hood, mask and regulator, somehow it hit me funny to see us like that with the frog leg-wearing long fins. It’s like we were going to mysterious secret mission. Kekeke.
I found weird sea star with one leg much longer than the other four. It was very challenging also trying to catch pictures of crabs and shrimps which just jumped away just before the camera clicked. Pelit. It was an amazing night dive and puzzled how, I came out with 125bar still left on my tank, so I only sucked 90 bar for one hour dive (?!).
posted by aping at 3:44 AM
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