It’s now 2 months after my 9 day diving trip
to Bali, but as they say, better late than never. It was a fantastic trip indeed. I spent the first half of the week tech
diving with Leon and
the second half focusing on photography in Tulamben.
It was a very interesting and varied
week. We started out diving in Lake
Batur, a crater lake in northeast Bali.
Our mission was to take some video to help a local government geologist
in his research on what’s going on in the lake.
Our video proved to him the existence of lava flowers at the bottom of
the lake, which was something nobody knew or expected. So the 1m vis and 22 degree water was worth
it.
Leon and I then went on to do a few tech dives
at Gili Tepekong and Padang Bai. I had a
catastrophic wing failure at our 60m dive at Gili Tepekong. I’m thankful for my GUE training and good
buddy, which made the consequences of the failure an inconvenience rather than
a problem. I managed my buoyancy with my
drysuit and SMB and got through the dive and 30 min of deco stops. At Padang Bai, I saw my first ceratosoma
magnificum and janolus sp. just below 30m but could not get a decent shot of
them as I had my wide angle lens on.
Then we did Nusa Penida, which was hugely
disappointing as our dive boat refused to go to Crystal Bay or Manta
Point. Nusa Penida is completely
overrated unless you see mola molas or mantas, which is the whole point of
going there.
Then we went up to Tulamben to dive the USAT Liberty
and surrounding area. The Liberty is one
of my favorite wrecks. It is covered in
soft coral and all manner of marine life have made it their home. There are huge groupers, snappers, sweetlips,
and lots of small critters all over the wreck.
With Leon, we dove the wreck on doubles and stages and did 2 very long deco
dives, which gave us a lot of time to explore the wreck thoroughly.
Finally, my last dive with Leon was a 2.5 hour
staged dive with a 75 min deco, which he calls the Traverse. It starts at the Drop Off in Tulamben and
ends at Macro Point. We spent most of
the dive at 45m and saw some very healthy reefs along the way that rarely get
dived. We saw a large reef shark, a
whitetip shark, barracuda, snapper, and lots of cleaning action.
After Leon took off, I changed gears to focus
on photography. I checked in to the Liberty Dive Resort in
Tulamben. I had reached out to Jeff
Mullins at www.reefwreckandcritter.com
to request a dive guide who was experienced in dealing with photographers, and
I wasn’t disappointed with my guide Tisnu.
We would wake up at 5am each day to do a dawn dive on the Liberty and
shoot the school of bumphead parrotfish as they left the wreck for the day,
then spend the afternoon muck diving and looking for tiny critters. He found me every critter on my list and
more, and planned our diving schedule to maximize the photo ops and minimize
running into other divers.
I am continually impressed by the diversity in
the diving Bali has to offer. From the
deep sloping reefs of the southeast, to the black sandy critter hunt of the
northeast, to the Liberty wreck, every dive in Bali is a totally different
experience. And now that there are
legitimate technical diving options available with Living Seas, there are no
limits on diving in Bali.
