Bunaken Diving: Day 2

Second day in Bunaken, first dive of the day: Alban

Another day, another wall dive, folks.  

I love the eerie/romantic/Instagram-y feeling of this photo of Colleen and Scuba Steve:

Highlights from the video on this dive include:

1. Some crazy overhangs in the wall that we dove under/through:

2. Lots of purty coral and stuff:

3. Colleen flapping. If I weren't holding the camera, you'd see me flapping, too, but instead you get this lovely back-lit selfie:

4. Lots of funky sea sponges and stuff, including the purple and yellow ones that Steve doesn't like (Steve, I still want an explanation about why these particular undersea creatures are so offensive to you):

5. Tim + underwater peace signs (at minute mark 1:56) = comical.  Almost as comical as Tim + magic wand:

6. Me failing yet again to capture a clear shot of an orangutan crab pointed out by our divemaster (minute mark 2:00-2:04)

7. Some moorish idols (or maybe they're bannerfish?) and long nose butterfly fish (3:18)

8. Yellow fish (which I can't ID) all up in my business, repeatedly (3:16, 4:03, 4:52, etc.)

9. Some jerk snorkelers standing on the top of the reef (the guys from our boat yelled at them) (5:34)

10. A curious crew of black fish towards the end of the dive (6:01):

Second dive of the day: Muka 2

Fewer photos and videos since our backup camera battery failed to charge correctly due to the island's intermittent power.  However, video highlights include us dropping down on some beautiful and fish-tastic reef, Tim gracing us with shots of his own face and knees, and a very pretty anemone:

Stuff seen but not captured on camera:

1. harlequin snake eel (super cool!!)

2. a moray eel

3. puffer fish

4. big schools of blue striped fusiliers

5. long nose butterfly fish

6. Christmas tree worms

Tim says that barely visible yellow stick in the middle of the fan is a trumpet fish:

Moody:

Find that Fish!

Sometimes, while diving, the divemaster points something out on the reef and no matter how hard I look I cannot understand what he wants me to see, either because it is so tiny (here's looking at you, translucent anemone shrimp) or because it is a master of camouflage.  And you can't really ask what he's pointing at because, well, you're underwater.  After the dive is over, there tend to be a lot of conversations like this: 

Me: "So, um, remember when you pointed to something on that reef, halfway through the dive? What was it?"

Divemaster: "?"

In this case I was able to see the camouflaged fish my divemaster pointed out, but only because it moved a few feet on the reef just as I approached it, opening its mouth quite wide.

Can you spot him?

The big reveal is after the jump:

Bunaken Diving: Day 1

Aiiiight, here we go: underwater footage!! Woot!

Please excuse the shaky-cam, occasional hand-in-shot, and the general blurriness of the photos.  Some of that is due to inexperience filming underwater, and some (at least on the first day) is due to quickly changing currents (up! down! hard left!  no, no, no, hard right!), low visibility (lots of floaties, as you'll see) and whatnot.  The photos and video get better as the days go on, I promise, due to both experience and improved conditions!

Also chalk some of the camera shake up to my flappy scuba hands... while diving I have trouble preventing my arms from moving as if I am treading water.  When I saw that Colleen did the same thing, I decided it was an ex-competitive swimmer thing and felt a little less silly about my bad habit.  We could both use a lesson from Scuba Steve, who always has his hands clasped calmly in front of him.

Steep walls are what Bunaken is known for... walls of coral that start at 3 meters deep and dramatically go straight down, up to 600 meters (see how steep they are above).  They're pretty crazy. When you're floating 20 meters down and you look down at your feet floating above the blue abyss, it gives you a weird feeling like you might fall in it, but you continue to hover, neutrally buoyant. 

Our first dive was at Lekuan 3, a steep wall with lots of crevices and ledges.  The currents on this dive were a little erratic... not too too strong, but ever-changing, which was confusing at times.  Back and forth, up and down.  But we did see lots of fish... big schools red-tooth triggerfish (beautiful teal fish with funky propeller-like fins and large, pointy vampire fangs), lionfish, beautiful coral, schools of pyramid butterfly fish, sea turtles...

Our second dive was at Muka Kampung (in front of the village, literally), and was lovely.  Again, schools of triggerfish and butterfly fish, more turtles, teeny little (smaller than a quarter) orange, hairy orangutan crabs (blurry photo above), a squat lobster, regal angelfish, moorish idols, stonefish, anemone shrimp, nudibranches...

Check out the video below from our first two dives.  Highlights include: me awkwardly putting the red filter cap on halfway through (it's supposed to help show true colors underwater where the red in the color spectrum is absorbed), turtles!, me and Colleen peace sign posing, flapping triggerfish, a bannerfish in a big sponge...:

The third dive of the day was just Tim and Scuba Steve...  Colleen and I took the afternoon off to chill out (regretting it a bit I would have hit the 50 dive milestone if I joined!). They tell me the dive was pretty amazing, and the video backs up their story... it looked like an aquarium.  Massive schools of shiny blue-striped fusiliers, more triggerfish and pyramid butterfly fish, more turtles, batfish, trumpetfish, puffers, sea cucumbers...  you name it.  Video and pics below...

Video highlights include Tim torn between pointing the camera at a turtle and following two big batfish that swam into frame.  Also, the cool shot with different schools of fish (fusiliers in the background, pyramid butterfly fish and others in the foreground) swimming past each other just off the edge of the reef and then simultaneously getting freaked:

 

 

Mr. Turtle says, "More to come!"

Bunaken: Surface Shenanigans

As I mentioned, I am in the midst of editing/splicing our underwater scuba videos from Bunaken...  but here are some photos from our above-water adventures getting to and then on and around the island, some mine and Tim's (using our GoPro Hero, which sometimes had its red underwater filter and also got a little foggy, giving many of our photos an Instagram-y feel), some from Scuba Steve's camera (thanks, Steve and Colleen!).

This post is a bit of a photo bomb, so check them out after the jump.

Stand By

So, remember all those underwater photos and videos I promised from our Bunaken diving trip with Colleen and Steve?  Well, there are a lot of them and they're on their way, but they need a bit of TLC (i.e. editing) to be presentable... underwater photography is hard!

In the meantime, while I splice together 47,000 fish videos, please stand by and enjoy these videos of us looking goofy in our scuba gear.  Steve and Colleen have also posted some pics on their blog (including this bathroom etiquette gem), so check those out, too.

Colleen and Steve smile and wave for the camera:

Tim films me doing a ridiculous dance as we surfaced at the end of our dive.  What you can't see, just off camera, is that Steve and Colleen are also dancing...  our lively boat crew had been playing party music in between dives, so we all had this song (warning: inappropriate lyrics) in our heads:

Bunaken Bound

Hey-o!  We're on our way to the airport to meet Colleen and Scuba Steve for some diving in Bunaken National Marine Park, a group of small islands off the north coast of Sulawesi (Indonesia's craziest-shaped island). 

We're also going to try out our new underwater camera, so fingers crossed we are dextrous enough to manipulate it 25 meters under the water's surface and get some good photos and video for you!!  Until then, please ogle these photos, check out the video above, and take a look at the video that Colleen and Steve posted!

Can Tho's Floating Markets

After our Singapore weekend jaunt, I returned to Jakarta and Tim went on to Can Tho, Vietnam for some meetings.  Can Tho is located in the Mekong Delta and is known for its floating markets, where locals buy and sell fruits and veggies on the river from boats piled high with produce. 

Tim got the opportunity to visit one of those floating markets early one morning and take some photos:

Above, a couple boats on their way to the market.  Below, Tim's boat approaches:

Boat with stacks and stacks of pineapples for sale:

Big squash/pumpkins on this boat:

Grilled meat and soup for sale for hungry market go-ers:

Watermelon, anyone?