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Dear loyal customers, diving enthusiasts,
The Balinese NEW YEAR, “NYEPI” – day of silence – will fall this year on Thursday, March 26th, 2009.
The great festival of NYEPI marks the celebration of the Balinese solar new year. It is held at the spring equinox and announces the beginning of spring and the end of rainy season. But more important, NYEPI is a ceremony of a special nature, designed to clean out the island and to drive out all the evil spirits by magic curses and other traditional customs.
Approaching NYEPI you will notice great excitement all over Bali. Every village would bring out large processions to take the Gods to sea for their symbolical bath. At sunset on Wednesday, March 25th , “Ogoh–Ogoh” – giant effigies – processions accompanied by gamelan musicians and people carrying torch lights can be seen all over the island. These processions are meant to drive away the evil spirits.
Nyepi itself is a day of complete rest which follows the actual ceremony of purification. No fires, no lights, no work, no cooking are permitted on that day. All activities are stopped on the island and the traffic is severely restricted, except in case of emergency. There will be no tours nor transportation available. Tourists and everyone on the island should plan to stay within the hotel compounds or at home for the entire day of March 26th, 2009 from 6 AM until 6 AM the next morning. The government of Bali has also announced that there will be no departure nor arrival flights during that day. The last arrival before Nyepi should be March 25th. In case of emergency, only transiting, refueling aircrafts and medical evacuations are allowed.
On this Balinese Holy Day, we hope that everyone on the island will spend a pleasant and relaxing day. Please be guided accordingly.
Bali, February 2009
Reno Kirtya
Diving the northeastern coastal islands of Kalimantan on the KLM TemuKira
April 30 – May 9, 2008
Diving the offshore islands of Derawan, Sangalaki, Maratua and Kakaban in some ways paralleled visiting the areas of Palau, Yap and Sipadan in that they have an inland brackish jellyfish lake, an area of predictable manta sightings and beaches with egg- laying turtles.
We dived this area on the KLM TemuKira, a deep-hulled phinisi boat that is 89’ x 22’ with a crew of 12 and six state rooms for 12 divers. It is the third and, so far, one of the most comfortable live-aboards that we have chartered. It provides all the necessary amenities, space and comforts that a diver needs along with competent divemasters. We did four dives a day at 7 and 11 a.m. and 3 and 7 p.m. and had ample, tasty meals and snacks in between.
Six divers were in each group with one or two divemasters. Waka and Noak were the regular natives who had been our divemasters in Raja Ampat in 2004 and a third native, Medi, from Derawan joined us and shared his local expertise. They were quite successful in pointing out the critters that we had difficulty finding for ourselves. A single zodiac took the dive groups out and back to dive sites only minutes away, and on occasion we jumped in from the dive platform on the mother ship.
Dive depths ranged from 40-130’, and my mean dive time was 67 minutes with some of our dives going to 90 minutes. The water temperature was mostly 82-83° F, and the average visibility was 39 feet. While there were a couple of dead calm dives, most exhibited a current of a couple of knots with a few a bit more. One hauling current dive estimated to be five knots split our divers and groups up into fragmented parts; but with the aid of safety sausages and dive alerts, no one was inconvenienced.
Sangalaki had the healthiest and most intact reefs, while those of Maratua and Kakaban had considerable rubble and red algae cover from damage due to storms and significant dynamiting. They were also exhibiting about 1% coral bleaching. These disturbances will certainly alter the fauna on a reef, but the successional changes which follow will still support considerable diversity. We heard one dynamite blast while we were under water and found one unexploded bottle bomb tied to a rock.
The inland brackish lake on Kakaban is more interesting and diverse than that on Palau, having very large populations of four different species of sting-less jellyfish, including a box jellyfish or sea wasp. There were also fish, sea cucumbers, sea anemones and sipunculid worms.
We saw mantas on a number of dives, but there were dedicated manta dives on Sangalaki. These were the dwarf mantas, Mobula that are known for their aerial breaching maneuvers that had wing spans of about 8 feet. They were seen breaching from the ship once. We went ashore to visit Derawan City, a rather quiet town of about 1500 inhabitants dependant mostly on fishing. Drying shark fins were seen in the dock area and drying sea cucumbers in the town. These are sold to Asian markets to be eaten under the name of beche-de-mer or trepang. We saw large fruit bats or flying foxes, eagles flying overhead and monkeys in the trees.
About half of our group spent an evening on Sangalaki with park naturalists and were able to witness and photograph the digging of the nests and laying of the eggs of the green sea turtles. We saw lots of turtles on our dives, including the greens, hawksbills and loggerheads, and several of our group saw a leatherback.
Besides the mantas and turtles, other large pelagics seen included sharks: white tips, black tips, grey reefs, leopards and one 30-foot whale shark. We saw a marble ray and lots of eagle rays as well as numerous other smaller pelagic fish. About five pods of spinner dolphins were seen from the ship, and a pod of sperm whales surrounded us, allowing a snorkeler to jump in and get underwater photos.
The large diversity and large number of smaller fishes and reef critters in this area parallels that on other Indonesian reefs and this tends to overwhelm a typical naïve diver. On any dive trip over there one can’t help but see a number of species in a number of groups that he/she hadn’t seen before -- and that surely was the case with me, most notably seeing the Hallimedia leaf scorpionfish and the blue-ringed octopus for the first time. Other rather rare species we saw included the tun snail, spindle cowries, twin-spot gobies and the ghost pipefish.
One of the most memorable parts of the trip had to do with the many very large cuttlefish we encountered and interacted with on the reefs. We spent 20 minutes filming a female placing her eggs in a branching coral while her 30-inch mate stood guard close by. After a new egg was placed in position, we were closely observed as we went near to film it. I learned to talk with the cuttlefishes by being very patient and approaching them slowly with my arm and fingers at approximately the same angle as their bodies. By slowly moving my fingers I could predictably touch their tentacles, and they would touch my fingers. This happened on a number of occasions, and several times I was then able to pet the cuttlefish like one would pet a dog. I had not been able to do this before this trip.
Another memorable experience on this trip was being guided through a very extensive cave system on Kakaban. Due to the risks involved not everyone participated. The cave system was huge, and in places the sheer vertical walls dropped out of sight as our lights couldn’t penetrate to the bottom and/or top -- and likewise some horizontal extensions of the system exceeded the beams of our lights. A fixed rope had been placed as a guide line to lead us through this mammoth underwater cavern. We entered near the surface, dropped to 130 feet, then veered upward to an exit point on a sheer wall at 100 feet, the whole traverse taking 12 minutes. It was an awesome and humbling experience.
On Sangalaki, as a finale for our 10 nights on the ship, the crew hosted a beach bar-b-q with great food and traditional Indonesian folk songs.
For a prelude to our Kalimantan (Borneo) adventure, all 12 of us took a four-day riverboat excursion into the interior of the country, seeing among other things 6-foot swimming monitor lizards, freshwater dolphins, monkeys and lots of birds. We learned about the native culture and were entertained and took part in native dances.
Mel Cundiff
Cundiff@Colorado.EDU
July 7, 2008
The Best Coral Reef Diving So Far Komodo in May 2007 on the MV Tarata
The MV Tarata is a 79-foot Indonesian Bugis-style wooden live aboard ship with a 17-foot beam and six cabins for 12 divers below deck. The cabins are of moderate size and have AC and ensuite bathrooms/showers with ample hot water. The two dive masters, among the 11-person Indonesian crew could speak good English and were very helpful in locating fish and critters for us…
The main deck housed: the mess hall; galley; a public bathroom/shower; a dive deck with a camera table, gear storage baskets and two compressors; and a large bow area with FW rinse tanks for cameras, etc. Four steps down from the dive deck was the dive platform for giant stride entries or, more often, loading into and out of the large zodiac used as a dive tender. An additional hot water shower was located here. One full wall cabinet in the mess hall was used as a charging area for cameras and lights with both 220V and 110V availability, and the cabinet contained a library of fish/critter ID books. The dining area had a small TV monitor for showing images and videos shot during our dives. No Nitrox was available. The sun deck which was half covered by an awning had padded benches and deck chairs, the bridge and captain’s and crew quarters and the crew mess/lounging area.
Dives were regularly scheduled at 7 & 11 am and 3 & 7 pm, with meals being served after the dives. Moving between dive sites never interfered with our dive schedules, and the only dives we missed during the ten days were to take the Komodo National Park tour and because a high-pressure compressor hose blew and had to be replaced. On the standard ranger-led Komodo NP excursion we saw four large dragons, a poisonous yellow-bellied tree viper and several tropical birds. The Komodo dragon is the largest known reptile inhabiting the world today and can grow up to 10 feet long.
Each night and many times during the day we were anchored or moored in calm, quiet, protected harbors. On many occasions divers snorkeled to the shallow fringing reefs near shore, beach combed or climbed the hill tops for the view. The zodiac was also commonly used for shore excursions. On one occasion on Rinca Island, a Komodo dragon was prowling the beach and divers approached cautiously. Close by were about a dozen monkeys playing on the beach. Most sites where we stayed had permanent moorings in place. We had calm seas except for one rain storm while we slept and one afternoon storm confining us to the mess hall. The ship’s configuration did not allow easy access from one area to another without going outside – a minor inconvenience in a storm. We encountered a half dozen other dive boats during our trip but found no interference with their divers.
The buffet-style meals were very tasty and plentiful. They were mostly rice-based Asian dishes accompanied with fresh fish, shrimp, chicken, pork, beef or tofu. There were always mixed vegetables and a fresh salad of lettuce, tomatoes and green, yellow and red sliced sweet peppers. There were either prepared desserts or assorted fruits. Snacks and banana smoothies were served between our 3 & 7 pm dives and hot coffee, tea bags and powdered Tang were always available with both hot and cold water. Cold soft drinks and beer were available for an added cost. It would have been helpful to have bulk quantities of a light, mixed drink such as lemonade or an orange drink to help keep us hydrated. Before our 7 am dive, cereal, toast and drinks were available, and after the dive a mostly American hot breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon, etc., was served.
Unlike when I was in the Komodo area in 1996, we had only a couple of dives with a strong to moderate—but manageable—current. The zodiac tender was always close by when we surfaced, and the Dive Alerts and safely sausages we all carried were never used. In the northern part of the greater Komodo area the water temperature averaged 83? F (28.3? C), but in the south of Rinca Island bordering on the Indian Ocean the temperature was a much brisker 77.8? F (25.4? C). The average over-all visibility was 52 feet (16 m.)
For biologicals, how does a whale shark, a Rhinopius, an Inimicus and 15 Spanish dancers sound? I have done both land-based and live-aboard diving in Raja Ampat and must yield to Dr. Gerald Allen and colleagues that RA has the greatest diversity of marine organisms found anywhere in the world. But the diversity in so many other areas of Indonesia is so great that we generic divers have a hard time telling the difference. Among the 12 divers on this trip, 6 have an accumulated total of over 40 weeks of diving experience in the western tropical Pacific, and our whole group is unanimous in stating that this trip provided the most enjoyable mix of small and large fish, critters and big pelagics of any other area we have ever dived. The reefs were dominated by hard and soft corals interspersed with huge numbers of feather stars and tunicates. Most dives had bulldozer shrimps and gobies, nudibranchs, anemones and clowns, vermetid snails and cushion stars with symbiotic shrimps. The night dives brought out hundreds of huge basket stars and about 15 Spanish dancers.
The 24-foot whale shark appearing on our last dive and swimming among us was, of course, a high point. We saw a 10-foot eagle ray; about 20 sharks, one each black-tip and nurse and the rest white tips; Napoleon wrasses; bumphead parrots; huge brown sweetlips; a world-class 8-foot barracuda; lots of tunas, mackerel and trevallys; about 15 hawksbills, greens and Ridley’s turtles; and 9-12 cuttlefish, over half of which had an 8-inch or greater diameter. Among other notable sightings were a lavender weedy scorpionfish; a devil scorpionfish; 5 juvenile pinnate batfish; 7 frogfish with 5 being 14 inches long; two 9-10 inch diameter ornately colored stonefish; a leaf scorpionfish; pygmy seahorses; about 7 blue ribbon eels, clownfish on coralliomorphs; about 6 orangutan crabs and a sea spider. Among the many nudibranchs and flatworms, there were 8 species of nudibranchs and 2 of flatworms I hadn’t seen before. Of course, it goes without saying that there were hundreds of other species of common reef fishes and critters seen. I would highly recommend diving in this area and also recommend Grand Komodo.
Mel Cundiff, Boulder, CO (Cundiff@Colorado.EDU),
June 11, 2007