My Equator Adventure: Life is the bubbles under the sea

May 5-10, 2018

Day 1: Manta Point and Crystal Bay
Our first day of diving we hit the ground running (or I guess it would be the water) and took a boat across the water to Manta Point on the side of Nusa Penida. The visibility wasn't great, but we still got to check swimming with manta rays off our bucket list.

They came gliding out of the murk, flapped past us, and disappeared back out of view.

We saw maybe 20 or 25 of the huge creatures. I estimated them with an average wingspan of 10 feet, they were incredible. Our guide Arya said there was an underwater rock mound that they like scraping against to clean themselves, which is why so many of them tend to be in the area.

We spent maybe half the dive with the mantas, and then moved a little ways away to see other things. One of the things we found was a turtle munching on sea vegetation.

We also found an octopus!

Our second dive was a little farther up the coast of Nusa Penida at Crystal Bay.

Kind of a trippy picture, the little fish in the middle is one of my favorites, a variation of a file fish.

Giant clam

Day 2: North Nusa Penida
We were back on the big boat the second day headed across the water again. This time we had two dives on the north side of Nusa Penida where there were some stronger currents, so both dives were drift dives. It's fun to kick where you want when you want, but also to just float and let the current carry you along so all you need to do is look at stuff.

A decent picture of the camera-shy parrot fish

Up in shallower water the light gets better and the colors really start to pop

There were lots of crinoids around, which are kinda prehistoric plant-animals. They stay stuck to the rocks and look like some kind of soft coral, but they swim around sometimes too.

A big ol' puffer

Another crinoid. I like the colors.

We found another turtle munching on the bottom.

It's not pretty, but it's a turtle selfie

It's really hard to smile with a regulator in your mouth

Our dive boat, as seen from the water with a red filter on the camera (helps with color correction at depth where everything looks blue) The boat was the Dipe Boot Too, and only the owner knows the significance.

Day 3: Blue Lagoon and Shark Point
Just off of the Padang Bai beach we had our first of two dives at Shark Point, hoping to find sharks. That didn't happen, but we did find some current to fight for the second half of the dive. The most exciting part was finding two giant cuttlefish.

Angel fish

The most exciting part of the dive was finding two huge cuttlefish. I saw the fluttering of it's mantle, but still looked right at it for about 3 seconds before my brain processed that it was a creature, and not part of the rock. It's camouflage was on point, to say the least.

There were also trumpet fish, which I think are super fun. I like how they're business on the front half and party at the tail.

In a clear sandy part of the bottom we found some catfish rooting around with their whiskers in the sand for things to nibble.

This blue stuff on the rocks was super iridescent, enough so that you can kind of see it in a terrible quality photo like this

Day 4: Tulamben
On the north coast of the island is Tulamben, and the wreck of the USAT Liberty. To get to it we had to drive up and over the island to the north coast.

We passed a bunch of pretty paddies along the way

And got some great views of Agung

Our shore area was a beach-side resort, which wasn't a bad deal

The Liberty was a US Army cargo ship that was sunk in 1942, and then in 1963 the volcanic eruption on Bali moved it off shore to it's current position. At 125 meters long it's the largest wreck I've dove so far. Though it's all covered in corals and plants now, the man-made straight lines are still obvious.

Tunicaids. We work to clean them off things while diving in Edmonds, but these blue ones are native and pretty

Lots of chances to swim between, under, and through different parts of the ship

One of the coolest areas was what I'm guessing is a cargo hold area, not enclosed anymore but still feels like it.

Selfies are hard with a Go-Pro

see?

At the end of the dive on our way back to shore, this titan trigger fish decided that it wanted us out of it's territory.

Sargent majors, one of my favorites

Right at the beginning of the second dive, the red filter broke off of the Go-Pro in my pocket. Thus, all the photos are way more blue tinted.

The resort as seen from the water, right before heading down

Back in the cargo area we found a huge bumphead parrotfish. He's probably a good 3 feet long.

There was a steering wheel from something

So naturally this photo had to happen

Close-up clams

Oriental sweetlips, we saw a bunch of large schools of them across all the diving days

Leaving the wreck to head back to shore, these garden eels were hanging out, but would pull their heads back into their holes if you got anywhere near them. They kinda reminded me of the Little Mermaid Poor Unfortunate Souls song.

We also found a stingray friend

Day 5: Manta Point and Crystal Bay
We changed one of our dive days around and got added to the boat going back across to Manta Point. There weren't as many mantas as the first dive there, and conditions were just as bad, but we did get to swim with more of the giants.

On the boat over

We got some pretty views of the side of the islands too

First off we ran into a shark hanging around on the bottom.

Shark selfie!

And found more mantas, as hoped

My dad asked after the first day if I could get a manta ray selfie. Since I came upon another opportunity, I tried. This was the best one I got. Aiming is hard...

We didn't see as many mantas as the first dive with them, but I wasn't really complaining

I got a pretty good video, of what I can only assume is a manta sneeze...

Later in the dive we came to a whole bunch of stingrays all together. I thought they were adorable, all snuggled together on the coral.

The second dive we were back up in Crystal Bay, with much better visibility

Frogfish are super weird looking. We found this one under a ledge. The photo doesn't do it's weirdness justice. Google it.

There was more of the iridescent blue coral, it was spectacular in the sunlight.

And right at the end as we were doing our safety stop and hanging out 15 feet down for a couple minutes, a turtle decided to come say hi. He just swam right through the middle of our group like there was nothing to it.

Day 6: Mimpang and Tepekong
A little farther down from the Padang Bai dive sites, but still close enough to go by small boat to are the islands of Mimpang and Tepekong. They are fairly small little rock islands sticking straight up out of the water, and we had two great dives down around the bases of them.

I was so excited to find a swimming crinoid at the end of our first dive. They usually look like plants on rocks, but when they decide to move, they're super trippy.