And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song, and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.
Sea-Fever by John Masefield (1878 – 1967)
This trip is a much shorter than usual trip. Reason, both of us are stressed at work and we need a getaway. Another reason, we have been putting off complimentary weekend trip so it’s been a while and we need our helping of getting wet.
Seemed to me that we are not the only one. On the process of confirming the ticket, we called Leo and Cynthia, and to my surprise, they said YES, ON, COUNT ME IN right away. Too bad Frog couldn’t join us again. But we couldn’t get the ticket on our original schedule, which was early of July, so we settled for end of July.
For five days trip, we tried to squeeze in as many dives as possible, 13 dives.
Saturday : Early morning flight, reach resort
1 day dive and 1 night dive. Stay in Minahasa.
Sunday : Early morning depart for Lembeh.
3 day dives and 1 night dive. Stay in Bitung.
Monday : 3 day dives and 1 dusk dive.
Back to Minahasa. Stay in Minahasa.
Tuesday : 3 day dives before
Wednesday : Afternoon flight back to
The weather everywhere in the world is changing and there are natural disasters. Nearer to our trip, we heard a volcano in Maluku was expected to explode, wave in
FIRST DAY
Friday, a night before the trip. We made wrong decision. We were in the mid of watching a TV serial and we had six episodes to go, so we finished it all and only went to bed about 2 am, woke up about 5.30 am, sleep deprivation!!! Met Cynthia in the airport and learnt that we accidentally have the same wetsuit, again. Diving market is too small lahhhh in
Three and a half hours, reached Sam Ratulangi airport. We met Mr. K and Leo who caught flight from
When we reached La Rascasse, the new resort of Mr.K, it’s already about 3.15pm, so we ate the lunch and went to the room to assemble the gears and camera, it took us some tedious time we could only went to the boat about 4.15-4.30pm. First dive we wanted to go to Megamall, a dive point in front of, uh, Megamall. We didn’t go there before so we wanted to try.
The weather that afternoon was good, although the sea was a little bit choppy, and gasp..we forgot to take the seasick pills. But we decided that it should be okay since we would go for two dives only and the sea didn’t look that scary…but we were wrong again.
Because something was wrong with the DM tank, we had to wait for about 20 minutes while we were already geared up, completed with hood, mask, standing with our tanks and fins. The tank couldn’t be repaired, so Leo sacrificed himself and aborted his dive to let the DM used his tank.
When we touched the water, it was almost dark. Fifteen minutes to the dives only, we saw three different harlequin ghost pipe fish in different spots. One black, one red and one pinkish white. We saw beautiful group of shrimpfish dancing in the soft coral with funny crab went out to check at us, found one big bent stick pipe fish. The water turned dark immediately, and we didn’t bring torches but I had my emergency torch strapped on my shoulder and my buddies had camera lights, but we ended the dive less than an hour.
Coming to surface, the sea was choppy.
For psychological seasickers, they get seasick only because they always think they are going to get seasick.
We have confirmed that our seasickness is not psychological, means even though we are confident we wouldn’t get any seasick, we still got seasick.. So it’s pure!
When we were struggling to take out our equipments and handed it back to the boatman, we had to fight the choppy water and smelt the petrol from the boat, and it made me even more seasick. Tried to sit in front of the boat to calm my nerves, thinking of aborting the night dive. When I thought I was feeling better, I threw up to the sea. It was horrible. Previously I thought if me and buddy aborted the night dive, we could go back to resort, had a nice warm bath and dinner, and had an early night. But the truth, we had to stay in the boat, so thinking about the cold wind, petrol smell and rocky boat, I decided I would be better diving. My buddy aborted and stayed in the boat.
Again, wrong decision lah! I felt nauseous in the water. Sometimes I was fine and took pictures, the other time I felt giddy and cold and wanted to throw up again but I couldn’t. The worse thing, I was the only one taking camera that dive. So the DM and others showed me some good stuffs to take, although it was part of obligation as I appreciated their effort, I also had my own greed didn’t want to miss a chance to take nice creatures and tested our my new added-on macro lens. We saw pretty decorator crab, big crab, pink flowery crab, something like Spanish dancer versus egg cowry (?!?).
The night dive took forever, I have never felt like that before, that I didn’t want to dive anymore, I just wanted to go up and cuddle in the bed, and the time felt like forever…never ending dive. Indeed, it was a long dive, 76 minutes to be exact. Went up to surface, I felt worse; the crew forgot to bring towel (everything went wrong that day ..!) so we had to endure bloody cold journey back to the resort in our wet clothing. It was half an hour but felt like forever. Thinking about how we should pack our bag and depart early morning for Lembeh, I was ready to give up Lembeh and suggested Bunaken instead, I was even ready to give up all divings, dinner, only if I could reach the bed and the shower, soon.
But after taking warm shower, dinner and medicine in long process, I finally felt better when I started packing for tomorrow and cursing myself for being a whinny. Giving up diving, huh, pfft. :D
But lesson learnt, sleep enough and never go diving without magic seasick pills!
Second and third day in Lembeh, we were lucky as the weather was good. No rain, although the water was cold and the wind was cooooolddddd. When we came May last year, we survived wearing 0.5mm wetsuit without a slight feeling of uncomfortable. But this time, in 3mm we still shivering like mad, especially when we hit the surface after diving because the wind was strooooooong.
This morning I just met Leo's friend, Ross who dived in Bunaken yesterday. She joined us until the rest of the trip starting today.We went to some same dive sites, Hairball, TK I, Jahir, Nudi Retreat,It’s nice to be able to recognize
Like in
This time, the creatures in season were flying gunnards, cuttlefish, dragonets, seahorses, mantis peacocks, ornate or harlequin ghost pipefish and weird scorpion fish. As usual, porcupine, flounder, lionfish, sharpnose puffer and fierce clownfish were very common.
I was very happy for this trip because my wish to see Frogfish and Rhinopias came true, Menado was the trip that inspired me to get my own camera so I can take those weird creatures.
First dive in Lembeh, we saw two frogfish, one was dark grey and the other was brown yellow. I was very happy to see these ugly creatures. They are so cute but if they were to be human, they are sure damn ugly. We hit the record high in Jahir, when we found five frogfish in one dive. We were taking picture of a cute never seen before yellow pipe seahorse juvenile when I spot something was looking at me at the sponge nearby. It was a ‘dirty’ grey frogfish. Excited, I called everyone and they abandoned the other project. Same with me, they like frogfish also. The DM circled the sponge to take a look at the frogfish, and he found another one, small dark purple frogfish.
We were happy and took many pictures of them. I also remember in Jahir we saw the most number of cuttlefish, so many of them and they were not afraid of divers. So we were busy, then the DM showed us another bright yellow frogfish in bright yellow sponge. Doh, I was so happy that I kept giggling through my regulator looking at the ugly fish.
As we were reaching the end of the dive, DM found another two frogfish on the seabed. One big bright orange and next to it, quarter of the size in brown color.
The best thing about macro/muck diving, we can actually request to see stuff, because in this type of diving, we can get active and actually look for critters instead of waiting hoping to get lucky.
To see big stuff and seasoned stuff like Manta, Barracuda etc we have to actually hang in there and wait while fighting fierce current, because big stuff usually comes with ripping current.
For small/macro stuff, experienced DM will have knowledge about the habitat of the critter and they can miraculously finds the creature for you. So far, Imho, Indonesian DM-s has world class caliber in macro finding. Our DM in
It was a very shallow coral bottom, very difficult to spot things there because of many stuff scattered on the seabed. In Lembeh and particularly muck diving, I always feel fooled by the creatures there. Everytime I looked at something, I could see some quick movement and they went to hide. It was like, they were there looking and spying at you, but when you looked at them, they hide. It’s funny, but sometimes I feel they must think that we are big stupid fish. :O
The DM was a very experienced DM, and he didn’t disappoint us. Few minutes into the dive, he found the Rhinopias. I was thrilled. Reason being, I haven’t seen this creature anywhere else except Lembeh. So if we couldn’t find it here, we would have to wait until the next time or we have to go somewhere else known as bloody expensive high hill of diving sites like Rajah Empat and Wakatobi in East of Indonesia or
The Rhinopias was bright magenta, the same color we saw last year. So we took turn to take the picture. Not far from that, DM showed my blue ribbon eel, yellow color, it’s the female. So I took the shoot, not far from that, I found the bright pink dotted nudibranch. Since I was still waiting for other to take the Rhinopias picture, I tried to take the nudibranch. But there was a persistent tank banging sound. I thought the DM was showing the yellow eel. I ignored the sound, it went for a while, I decided to raise my head and take a look and found that hubby and DM were looking at me and made a signal for me to come. When I looked at what they were pointing, I saw a pretty lacy red and transparent Rhinopias, it’s even rarer with what I always see in magazine (yellow green algae color). Who-ha, what a nice surprise. Pretty nice dive, we were one lucky group.
There was one time when we saw a mantis peacock hiding in the nest, showing its head. I was hovering there taking picture of it. I didn’t notice that there was a rip-off dead fish in front of the nest. Mantis is actually fierce predator. So I was enjoying my chance to take the picture, then suddenly the DM pointed to my left, a snowflake moray eels was approaching, I thought the DM asked me to take the moray picture, anyway, it was a cute moray, but then I realized something. The moray was swimming at the high speed, passed right through my nose, to the mantis’s nest, and the mantis had gone out and ‘stood’ bravely in front of the nest. Before I got the chance to snap a picture, the eels tried to snatch the dead fish, but of course the mantis wouldn’t allow. They engaged in a very fast-paced fight, silted the sand. In seconds, the mantis went to another direction, leaving its nest and the moray hid in another hole. So I guess it was a lose-lose situation. Each of the opponents thought they had lost. In fact, nobody won but we got the close-up nature show.
Other thing fresh in my mind about Lembeh, the fierce clownfish or crazy nemo. I learnt my bitter lesson when I was bitten last year. Do not underestimate them, their teeth are very sharp and it tore my skin until it bled. The nemo were consisted of many species, from the common nemo to the dark black and white bigger built nemo. They liked to hover far above and out their anemone, so they were quite intimidating and everywhere. We tried to avoid them as much as we could, although I was tempted to take the porcelain crab picture who shared the same anemone, I cancelled for the trauma of being bitten. Sometimes I needed to make grunting sound in order to cancel the nemo’s idea to bit my forehead when I was hovering pass their nests. But even though I tried to be polite, the nasty nemo were quite anti social. One small, little orange nemo suddenly went to me out of nowhere and funny enough, I admit, I was so surprised and tried to avoid until I knocked my self to the rock. Damn nemo! It was shameful enough that I knocked myself, worse it was a single orange nemo, not the ugly black big nemo. Hayah!
But I was not the only one. I saw many of my buddies also played hide and seek with the nasty nemos. There was one hilarious scene where I saw Leo being tough trying to take a picture of scorpion fish, while he was in the territory of nemo, so he was bitten up by many nemos around him, but he was tough, persistent and die-die kept taking picture. Haha..
Night dive in Lembeh, first time for us, we found a lot of nemo eggs. Nemo parents were very protective, but the good thing was, they didn’t hover too far from their nest so we could safely take their pictures. They were taking turn to warmth the eggs I guess, it was a pretty sight and I made peace with these cute creatures straight away.
Before the last dive of second day, we decided to go to Air Perang II, the dive site near the fresh water source. It was natural fresh water spring we could take to rinse ourselves since we were going to ride the car for one and a half hour to reach our resort in Minahasa. Original dive destination was Hairball again, because the DM heard from other, they found hairy frogfish.
Air Perang II, it was almost dusk when we did the dive. I regretted the decision at first, because we didn’t see anything spectacular. I kept thinking of hairy frogfish, hairy frogfish. But twenty minutes before the dive ended, we found mandarin fish. When the DM showed us, the fish went into hiding, I thought the chances were gone, but we waited there, and slowly they showed up again, played hide and seek in between the coral. They were so beautiful, I only saw mandarin fish once in the past, in Kapalai, Sipadan area. So being able to see many of them here was fascinating. Dusk was the right time as it’s their mating time. So we were just hovering there and watched the pretty fish playing around. It was well worth my hairy frogfish then. Happy happy happy.
POOPOH
Last day, we had to make three dives before
Poopoh I, I loved this site in the past and still. It’s a grass sandy landscape. We found a field full of cuttlefish egg but this time we were not that lucky. But we found what I wished for yesterday, although it’s a small version, maybe juvenile hairy frogfish. It was very tiny and very cute. We found two big different species of sea snake. The second one, we never seen before was dark purplish color. It swam slowly to my direction while I was taking the shoot. Nearby, it stopped and laid still. I was still taking picture less than a meter away from its head, then I got to my senses. It looked still, but anytime it decided to snap, I was not in the safe range, so I backed out. I’d say, sometime the sea creature could mesmerized me until I forget about everything to stay with them. I got it many times and so do other divers. The calling of a mermaid.
Half into the dive, the DM showed me something. From far, I could see it looked like garden eel, but where was the garden? To my memory, Poopoh doesn’t have garden eel. Anyway, it was only one eel. So I slowly approached it. It was a colorful smily eel poking half body out from its nest. When I went close to it, it didn’t hide like common garden eel (so it’s not, anyway it was alone so it definitely not garden eel). Instead of hiding, the fellow went out from its nest; the body was probably 1.5 meter long and came to investigate me. It poked my camera and circling around my face. Soon, everyone was gathering on my side to watch this funny brave eel, we were all forming a line like a barricade in front of the nest. The eels felt annoyed by us, it went back to its nest, butt first, again, half body hovering. It thought hard for awhile, then it went out again and this time, it poked at Cynthia’s camera, who was parking on my right. It got braver this time, me and the rest exchange laughter. The eel was still smily but it got bored with us. After poking us for another while, came in and out the nest, it went off angry.
I had never seen Lion fish as many as I saw in Poopoh that day. In one small tree bark, we could find about more than twenty lion fish in many sizes, from small juvenile until the huge big black ones. It was pretty, sometimes taking pictures again can really fooled me. In order to focus, sometimes I need to get my hand and camera closer to the objects, close, close, close and I forgot that the creature might be dangerous or venomous, just like this lion fish.
We found two seahorses, one was pregnant. DM found a big lump of rope full of shrimps. There were at least four different type of shrimp; banded coral, camel, scarlet skunk shrimp and lots of Periclimenes, among them were many emperor angelfish juveniles. There were hundreds and hundreds of shrimps, so we spent sometime there.
On our last dive, three of us only with DM, as soon as we descended, the DM quickly signaled us and pointed to something. I saw this long white thingy but couldn’t figure out what it was. The DM fanned the sand behind the white thing. Slowly I knew what it was, it was a big white trumpet fish laying upside down in an angle, three quarter of the body was buried in the sand. The fish was still alive and breathing in agony. Apparently, there was something pulling it, trying to bury it alive. The DM dug the sand above the buried body, or fanned it away. Once we saw something emerging, biting the other half of the fish. It was brown and big, I thought it was octopus. Everytime we saw the shape, it quickly pulled itself to the sand and pulled the poor trumpetfish even deeper. The DM didn’t attempt to save the trumpet, it’s a circle of life we shouldn’t obstruct, he just wanted to show us what was eating it. Few times same thing happened and finally the trumpetfish was being pulled totally and disappeared into the sand.
At the end of the dive, we returned to the same spot. I didn’t realize it at first, I saw a white trumpet fish in curved weird position on the seabed. It was dead, the trumpet fish was huge, it reached up to more than 1,2 meter at least. Below the curved crooked body, there was a brown head half buried on the sand. It wasn’t like a snake eel, but couldn’t think of something else. I took pictures, and the DM tried to help me by pushing me closer to the creatures and fish. Sometimes he would do that when we tried to take picture from far, it’s actually his sign that it’s okay if we wanted to go nearer, as the creature wouldn’t leave. But this time, there’s no way I wanted to get close to the creepy thing, if it could drag and kill the huge trumpetfish I didn’t see it had any difficulty with my arms either. So I hung on insisted to stay from far away.
It was a different memorable experience to end our dive.
So the holiday had finished. That night, we saw divers diving outside our room. It was the enclosed private water with rocky terrain; we saw quite a lot of coral from above the boat. We should have known, we could have done another dive there previous night.
My favorite enjoyment on diving trip is to see sad faces at departure hall when we just arrived from arrival hall and to laze around on the boat roof top thinking that other people are working in the office. But now, we were the one to be in the departure hall and soon we would go back to office.
Yawnnnn. Shorttttt…, but it’s a nice refreshing getaway….
