Tulamben 24-29 October 2008
THE PREPARATION
External not so rosy factors include few major incidents happened in Tulamben. In two months alone, there are some accidents. Although usually Tulamben is considered as easy-medium and suitable for beginners and discovery diving.
So humble and feeling like newbie, we departed Bali for the much needed medicine of diving withdrawal, being on dry land for so long.
As far as we could remember, the rusty minds, Tulamben is only one hour away., indeed, it’s two and a half hours away. It’s been two years since we last dropped by Bali for transit to Komodo Island and it had been three years since we dived there. We passed through many dark roads, sometime in the middle of the darkness, we saw people sitting on the side of the road with dogs, maybe they were doing night watch. We stopped by McD drive through to grab quick dinner for Leonard, Agus and Made. Two of us had eaten in the airport and in the plane. This time two of us exceed 4 kg baggage. Hubby’s new camera and set is really heavy, we carried the cameras, casings and strobes using backpack, so we had to put the rest inside check in baggage, bladders, regulators, torches, batteries, rest of equipments and tons of camera arms. Lucky they didn’t charged us the extra baggage.
We reached resort around 1 am plus, and went through the agony to assemble the BCDs, torches and cameras under the extremely dim light of Bali hotel until 3 am.
This time, we decided to pamper ourselves a bit and stayed in Mimpi resort. We used to stay in Paradise hotel, a budget diving hotel next to Mimpi. Everytime we walked to Paradise we always envied this beautiful hotel with swimming pool and beautiful garden, so we thought we nailed it by staying there. It should be beautiful, nice, clean, quiet and closer to the US Liberty Wreck. Apparently we were wrong. Mimpi is actually two doors further to the left of Liberty, wrong hotel. Anyway, Mimpi is still a nice hotel, quieter and better than Paradise. Paradise is so called a very budget hotel with almost broken bamboo furnitures, has dirty and dark bath tub that sparkes out electricity. I swear, I was electrocuted when I showered there.
Mimpi has the big, natural and open concept bathroom. For the first two days and especially first night, the feeling is difficult to explain when you sit there in the closet, staring at the black sky with only less than 2 meter height of stone wall dividing you and the neighbor. Every time the wind blew, the tree moved and it created another dimension beyond the unseen barriers from that very point of view, let the imagination run.
After some time, I started to like the bathroom because it was spacious and we could put and wash our thing there, there was no problem like wet bathroom floor as we shower out there standing on natural stone floor. Doing business while looking at the sky reminded me of the times when I used to go to remote island with minimal facilities or no facilities. He..he..
THE DIVES
For the diving, we weren’t disappointed at all. Even though we were papered and expect more than we used to, we had satisfying dives. Although for Liberty especially, we saw more divers this time and less fish.
We didn’t go to many varieties of dive sites, as we were dedicated to stay only in Tulamben.
0 day : Arrive Mimpi resort 1 am.
1st day: 2 dives Drop off, 2 dives Liberty Wreck
2nd day: 4 dives Seraya Secret
3rd day: 2 dives Liberty Wreck, 2 dives Paradise Reef
4th day: 3 dives Drop Off
5th day: Leave for Singapore
First day we woke up tired. Had American breakfast in Mimpi. Agus, our dive master and Made our driver came and picked us to Drop Off.
First plunge to the water, I felt totally like newbie. Uncomfortable and had difficulty breathing. Few days before the trip, I did had some uneasiness in breathing and it goes along the trip. When we descended, it felt funny, together with the 3mm wetsuit that made me felt uncomfortable. I swear, that few minutes brought me back to memory of my very first diving trip when I thought “diving is not my cup of tea/why on earth do I pay to suffer like this” kind of feeling. After around ten minutes, when we already reached the planned depth, ‘settled down’ etc, than the feeling started to come back. Nice, warm, fuzzy feeling, peaceful and freedom of flying that I love and miss so much.
Paradise Reef, I had great memory of this dive sites previously, I remember the shallow area was full of clown fish. Any type of clown fish, you name it, they have it. Clownfish means pretty anemone. Pretty anemone means colorful shrimps and porcelain crabs that come with it. Shallow means wave. Wave and anemone and clown fish mean beautiful swaying of colors and movement that make me wish that I could stay and look at them forever. Paradise Reef also home to many Blue Ribbon Eel. This beautiful moray eel is black with yellow margin when juvenile, yellow as female adult and blue yellow as male adult.
Clown Fish's Eggs
This poor fellow is badly injured on the face..
When I first went down to Paradise Reef, I was quite disappointed, where are the paradise that I remember? Everywhere was hydroids and so not healthy coral. Luckily the paradise was still there in another shallow area, not the entry point. We did one night dive there when we reached the artificial airplane wreck frame.
We did the most dives in Drop Off, including first night dive and last day's dawn dive.
Drop Off has become our favorite site this time. Last time we didn’t try it. It is actually not drop off type as the depth sloped gradually instead of sudden drop like what it supposes to mean. It has black volcanic sand and Tulamben identity of volcanic rocks. When we first entered the site, after clearing the gigantic volcanic rocks area near the shore, it looked like the typical muck diving site. Sands, sands and all those of dirty patches of sands covered small rocks. There were not so much corals but we could always find something on either there or in the sands.
We did night dive on the first day and dawn dive on the last day in drop off.
We saw so many stuff here, yellow pygmy seahorse, yellow and white ornate ghost pipe fish, newly found Leander Plumosus and a lot of nudibranches and even black tip shark.
It was the first time I saw Leander Plumosus, hell I didn’t even know the name, so did Agus. When we went to their office then he gave me a book and we found the name. It was a shrimp with shape like boomerang and beak like platypus. It was so weird that when we saw it hiding inside hydroid, I really couldn’t figure out the shape. It was dawn dive in Drop Off on last day, hubby didn’t feel well and aborted the dive. When Leonard finished taking other stuff the shrimp had gone hiding deeper inside the hydroid. I went down with newly charged battery that died after two shots only of something else. Arghhhhh! All of us went back to the same place for the second dive, the boomerang-platypus shrimp was not there anymore. Hik..hik…
The visibility on the last day was amazing and the water was pleasantly warm that we decided to do the all three dives there. Since it’s so close to our hotel, we just did our surface interval in the hotel. Good choice, because then I had full access to change my battery after every dive, we could dip in the swimming pool and even wore wetsuit in the swimming pool. Anyway, it was very quiet in the hotel dining and pool area, so the rest was a breeze. We could use dry pool towel everytime and had the ginger tea. It helped so much because the last day didn’t start well. I felt nauseous and threw up in the morning. (not THAT sickness!) Frankly, I had never felt this tired in any trip before. Extreme schedule? Don’t think so because previously we also almost always dived for at least a week or more. Anyway, after the dawn dive, the spirit picked up. We discarded the original plan to dive in Liberty again, and spent all time I Drop Off.
Last dive we had to go out of water after 90 minutes just because we already late for check out. We enjoyed the last dive the most because unusual in Tulamben, we saw a pair of black tip sharks. The sharks went to circle around four of us and kept coming back closer and closer. They looked quite curious and at times, they swam directly to our direction until very close before turning around. We hadn’t seen shark for some time and Drop Off was not a place we expected to see them at all. That was why we were quite amused and stayed there with them for over 15 minutes, yet, they never went away. We had to make a move to the shallower area because we only have few minutes of no decompression time. Hanging around in the mid water contributed to the unstable dive profile and the dive computers were close to give us ceiling penalty if we didn’t move from that depth. Although it was very shallow, around 7 meters, there was also limit for the length of time that we could stay after long dives in various depth.
When we headed to the shallower area for safety stop, Agus miraculously found a pair of Harlequin Shrimp hidden in the rock. Harlequin Shrimps are normally found in Seraya, not Drop Off.
So it was another pleasant surprise.
When we hung around with the sharks, I floated inconstantly around 7-8 meters. Because of that, and the fact that I’m more likely to have difficulty equalizing if I have to get down after I already moved to the shallow area, when we found the Harlequin Shrimps I was only one meter above them yet my ears were very painful I couldn’t get down at all.
The Harlequins were very pretty under the penetrating sunlight, even though it lost one of its claw and the spouse went hiding, the color were glimmering like orchids together with the movement of the claws. It was so close yet so far, I almost wanted to scream for the frustration, everytime I tried to go down even an inch, the ears hurt like mad. I was even entertaining the option of just tried and let the ear drum go burst, well, it was a second of thought, won’t let it happen. Actually, we have seen many Harlequin Shrimps the previous day in Seraya, but yet, not so satisfied with the picture and I wouldn’t know when will I see them again, so far in history, only seen them in Seraya and fish shop. Huh.
Even Agus was wondering what I did hovering a meter above, he knew my frustration for a few dives when my battery died just like that during ¾, half a dive and even after two shots. Old batteries, we didn’t know it was that unreliable since we hadn't used the camera for more than a year. Desperately, I naturally tilted my head to left and right and suddenly I felt a rush of water on my left and voila, the pressure and the pain disappeared. Nobody knew how loud was the evil and satisfied laugh I created on my mind, happily I hovered down and took the shots. Hoorayyyy…
Another thing we like about Drop Off is the lack of hydroid, even there were still some scattered around. Not as I remember, this time in Tulamen, it was hydroid season, everywhere, even at the Liberty Wreck, the hydroid was spawning. If it brushed through the skin, it’s very painful and would become extremely itchy. The rash would leave ugly marks and wouldn’t disappear for at least two-three week. That was why I didn’t really enjoy night dive so much, especially the one with current we encountered in Seraya.
Seraya Secret is one of my favorite muck diving sites. It used to be secret and easily accessible only by Jukung, the traditional boat with two legs. We had a blast last time we dived there, the first time we saw Harlequin Shrimps and so many other macro creatures. This time, we came here by car, there was a new dive gazebo, where we could rest, tub to dip cameras, water tap and shower and even power point for emergency charging, which is very important to me who counted on only one good battery.
We did four dives in Seraya. The first two we had to walk a bit further away where fishermen parked all the Jukungs. From that point, first dive we went to the right. Second dive, we went to the left. Third and night dive we went straight from in front of gazebo. Straight mean gearing up in the gazebo, walked down fully geared by the concrete floor, grass patch around the tree and Jukung boats, passed through rocky beach, finally sandy beach and the sea, like other dives. First few dives was hellish, but after a while, well, everything on the back felt much lighter, seriously, even though after few dives we would start developing back ache, shoulder ache and all kind of aches, we got used to the load fast.
One of the things I like diving in Tulamben, every place has a facility to shower, which is very important to me who always develop skin rash ad allergic after contact with sea water. Ironically as it sounds, that was my youngest brother’s favorite mocking fact. Diver who is allergic to sea water. It could be something in the water; I just know there is no exception from sea water everywhere literally. There was one time before picking up diving, my favorite pass time in beach is playing in the water and swim with the wave and I was fine, maybe because I was too burnt to realize. Or maybe the thing that I allergic about exists only after certain depth.
What I can do is fully geared up for every dive; even in warm water I would wear full thin suit and thin hood. Tried to wear short and rash guard before when diving in Tioman, it was very convenient because I can just walk it to any dining area even those with wetsuit restriction. I don’t like the tedious and trouble of putting in and taking off wetsuit after every single dive so normally I just went to wetsuit friendly dining area. But then I went back home with polka dot legs. So rinsing with fresh water after every dive helped a lot. Everything covered, which was literally everything except a bit part of my face was alright. Still, for uncovered area, I got itch and rash from the water and also from the many jellyfish we saw during at night dive. Miraculously, I mean really, the overwhelming hydroid didn’t get me at all. It got Leonard and hubby. For Agus, I think he is immune to those things already, but I was spared. There were many close encounter too, many, many time especially during night dive, I turned around or look around and found hydroid only a thumb away from brushing my whole cheek. If it happens, huh, it would take me agonizing time to heal and so far, healing from rash caused by hydroid took up longest time for me compared to others.
So for that reason (what a long one!) I didn’t really enjoy taking picture when we did night dive in Seraya. Especially with the current, the load that I had to bring, and hydroid literally everywhere, it was almost a task too many. Camera with strobe was quite a pain in the butt, you need two hands to hold, also during night time we need to bring torch light, our torch lights are powered but 8 pc of C battery. It was bulky and heavy. When we want to take an object, we had to shine on it and then stabilize camera and strobe, after getting the focus, which was another pain the butt, for best result, we also need to take away the light source and snap as the camera has rendered the memory of the light or something like that…
(When we took the flight back, our baggage grew from 43 kg to 50 kg. The equipments was half dry, of course it matters, butwhen we took out and threw away a set of battery (which was dying already) and few packs of snack, the baggage was left with 45 kg and Garuda agreed to waive it off..)
Therefore, how I wish that I had four hands during that dive. Or six. I need two hands to hold camera, one to adjust the strobe to desirable position, one to hold the torch light, two to hold and discharge bubble in my hood. This hood of mine had been around since three years ago, exactly when I first dived in Bali. It’s thin 0.5mm silver lining hood, very good in the beginning but I think the elasticity had been stretched so far that it no longer grips my head tightly. So whenever I breath out, bubbles went above my head and went in inside the hood. After few breaths, the hood with bubbles trapped inside would make me look like a smurf. Because it affects the buoyancy and also uncomfortable to have balloon on the head, every once in a while I would need to press the whole hood to get the bubble out. I had to wear my hood, explain previously, but there were many times when I just pulled the top part behind so that I didn’t have another bubble blue head above my real one! So that makes me complete the reason why I need six hands, but I would like to add another, for unforeseen circumstances when we need to ‘park’ and grabbed the rock during strong current or to steady ourselves. The hand is very important especially that night in Seraya we encountered current, this hand is also extra hand to make sure that it’s disposable if we ever grab on stonefish.
Stonefish ware almost everywhere during night dives. Their encrusted skin makes it difficult to spot them. Many times when we grabbed a rock we found that there were stone fishes just next to it. So seven hands it is.
Overall, Seraya is never disappointing. We saw as many as six Harlequin Shrimps during our first dive there.
Harlequin Shrimp eating starfish
There was an artificial dome structure created and sunk in Seraya to be base structure for future coral growth. Three years ago, It was just almost looked like skeleton, but now, there were some coral, although not much, it proved that it takes bloody long to grow coral and those that we’ve seen in dive sites might took hundreds of year to grow. We went inside the dome to look at the biggest Harlequin Shrimp I had ever seen. The length was about 6-7 cm, gigantic! The pair hid inside discarded netting. We found first pair sitting quietly next to some rock with a severed starfish. These Shrimps prey on starfish and they are powerful predator, they can take down prey ten times their size. Second pair hid under a coral on the dome frame, holding a starfish leg and eating it.
Other thing I always wanted to see is frog fish. Agus found this frogfish hanging inside the coral. It was an angler frogfish with a extension of dorsal fin spine that looks like fishing pole and the bait from the mouth. The frog fish would move ‘the bait’ as if it was fish swimming around, while the frogfish itself camouflages into the surrounding. When someone (somefish) take the bait, whuzzz, in some millisecond it would extend the jaw to swallow the victim in one go. This frogfish is white in color and very cute. We slowly shift the coral branch that hid it a little bit, and it hung on, maintaining the leg on each side of the coral. Haha…extremely cute, this ugly guy.
We found the frogfish in open space ‘fishing on night dive, it has moved. Although they look slow, bulky and ignorant, they can actually move quite fast by bouncing around or walk on the sea floor.
Orang utan crab, purple hairy squat lobster, nudibranches, moray eels, decorator crabs, various shrimps, crabs, mantis peacock, octopus, cuttlefish were other stuffs that kept us busy.
Liberty, this time we had magnificent visibility in Liberty. It wasn't feel like raining season at all, in fact, I never feel something like rainy season in Bali, It’s always hot. Anyway, the water was so clear in Liberty and other area in Tulamben.
Liberty is maybe the easiest wreck dive with impressive wreck. Until now, I can’t really figure out which and which part of the ship we were seeing when we were underwater, but at least I could recognize some part of the gun, propeller and rear of the boat. This time we did some penetration inside the ship with very low ceiling. We stayed negative and passed through the small opening along the interior and went out through the same sized hole. I wasn’t really sure which part of Liberty was it.
It was pretty blue inside the ship, any part of the ruin would make my hand itch to press the shutter to record the memory of the beautiful sights. Liberty is not just the source of fish eye and wide angle shots, it’s rich for macro as well. We found pink pygmy seahorse, pair of black ornate ghost pipe fish, yellow green leaf fish and other types of macro.
However, diving in Liberty, we still always impressed with the big picture. We saw one solitary giant barracuda hovering above us during the first dive. On second dive the same giant barracuda was hovering in the shallow, completely motionless, even when we got very near to it. I felt tempted to go near to take close up shot, but then again, maybe not. Giant barracuda, solitary, is bad recipe. They are fearsome predator and they can hurt seriously when they attack. They are also attracted to shining thing that resemble their prey, and camera flash is very well included in its perception of shinning thing. Additional thing, the barracuda was injured; the dorsal fins looked missing replaced by a white patch of exposed fish flesh. Injured animal will more likely to attack. Anyway, the poor guy needed some time for itself. So we moved away.
Big Napoleon Wrasse, was my other celebration. The sexy lips fish moved very closed to us until I almost stopped breathing when it hovered next to me. Hell, even though it’s not known to be fierce, it was still bloody big fish who deserve the respect. The lips of Napolleon Wrasse in delicacy in Chinese country like Hong Kong, China and Singapore, although more commonly found in Hong Kong. Read from somewhere, dinners are willing to pay $10K for the lips. When we were there, we saw it on the restaurant, juvenile only. Hik hik….
Titan triggerfish, peached-face/yellowmargin triggerfish are two type of nasty triggerfish that attacked us many times in the past. Both of them are the biggest in their species and they are super nasty during mating period. They can chase us endlessly although we did our best to swim out of their territory and their bites are known to detached tip of the ear and other body parts. Traumatic, we always avoid them. This time is different, it’s not mating season, known from their behavior. They would either stroll around the reef or eating coral or shells with their powerful beak. They will ignore you totally. If they wanted to attack, when you see them, they would either moved their whole body with war spirit and high speed to your direction or stayed quiet and moved their eyes right to left then… charge…!
Without warning.
So these time we could safely passed by them took their picture and observed their behavior closely.
The peak of the experience in Liberty is the tornado of Jacks, big eye Trevally. It has been awhile when we last saw them. So when we hovered around 20+ meter, Agus pointed above, the Jacks were circling around 8-10 meter, big school of them and they were doing tornado movement. It was difficult for me to look up underwater. The ears could screw up easily. So I would look up, took shots, stabilized and repeated again. When we moved, the fish moved with us, we hovered forward and they were still with us. I felt like I could never leave them behind, I would look up again and again and again or just ‘lay’ down looking up. Speechless.
Looking at them moving, with the shining sun as the background and the glorious wreck surround us is incomparable to many many things.
THE CLOSURE
Last day, we managed to squeeze in three dives before 1.30 pm because we had to check out from hotel. After lunch, we had another long journey to Kuta, made a stop to operator office in Sanur along the way. We checked in to Ramayana Hotel around 6+ and proceed to Jimbaran for seafood dinner. The dinner itself was quite expensive and not so fantastic, but the ambience was very nice. We sat on the sand next to the shore. Behind us was a street band singing with the waves crashing to the shores as background. We were in the second row before the shore. The night climbed in and the water started to go up higher. Soon after, the first row of dinner was moved because the water had reached them. When it was the end of our dinner, I had to eat with legs hanging on the air, but it was fun.
Previous trip, we also went to Jimbaran as closure, that time it was five of us and since then we haven’t gotten the chance to dive long trip together, it was always two, three or four of us only.
Jimbaran also reminded us about the sad second Bali bombing. Since then, Bali had recovered, the number of tourist had gone up steadily. Hopefully nothing that happened in these few weeks can change that, for it is the place that many of people long for. I had many non Indonesian friends who plan to retire there.
I've met many Indonesians who work abroad or even foreigners who are longing to go back someday to retire there, especially in this sunny island of God.
