Day 1
First dive of the day was MAkawide 2. Somehow, that name sounds really familiar. I think it's probably because I've been there before, from last year's dive trip here; but I'm not too sure if we went to Makawide 1 or Makawide 2. Well, I just can't wait to get started. We gathered around f briefing at 8:10, and went straight on the boat at 8:15; before I coould realise we arrived at the dive site. I quickly put on my wetsuit and checked all my equipments. As soon as I got the "clear" signal, I did a backroll and waitfor the oes a t sce. Once eery body is in the water, we began to descend. My buddy is my mum, and our dive guide was Mr. Iwan Muhani. So those are the people I need to stay with. The first thing I saw was a thorny seahorse, I approached it gently hoping to snap a picture. I got my camera ready and snap. For some reason my strobe won't flash. It took me awhile to realise that the optical fibre got unfastened. I fixed it up in no time, I took a picture of the seahorse and was quite happy that the strobe has succesfully worked; but unhappy at the same time because I only had one shotat the seahorse before it swam away. We swam along and found an octopus, it was quite big and quite far away from us. Then my mum pointed out something, I was too busy taking pictures to realise that it was a mimic ocopus. After I was done, I followed my mum and saw this beautifel octopus, it;s orangey yellow with black stripes, and it has long tentacles- much longer than most of the octopus I've seen. As I got closer, it swam away, for a second then it looked like a flounder. It is one of the mimic octopus's main features to mimick other canimals. Then I saw it hide in a hole. Its head and two of its tentacles pops out, mimicking a mantis shrimp. I was quite amazed by this. I spent awhile taking pictures of this magnificent creature,. However what I didn't realise was that I have gone too deep, far beyond my limit. I'm only allowed 21 metres, but I went until 29 metres, and if I stayed any longer I would have gotten decompression. So unfortunately I had to leave and ascend to a shallower area. At least I got some good shots of the mimic octopus. Later on, we saw a mantis shrimp, hiding in its hole, its head popping out and lurkiing about. It was so cool, because it reminds me of the mimic octopus. As I look closer, I realised that there was some kind of purple tiny balls attached the mantis' under belly. I take it the mantis was pregnant. It's quite rare for me, to see a pregnant mantis shrimp. I've seen loads of mantis shrimps before, but not while they're carrying their eggs. After I took some pictures, we moved on and found 2 pegasus sea moth. One was larger than the other. One was brown, and one was red. I could swear that I have seen them before, and taken pictures of them. This is just freaky. I'm pretty sure fishes swim around, and not just stay in one same position. Moving on, I saw an ocellated dragonet. Then I saw a family of clown fish, it was beautiful. I took some pictures, then I saw a couple of banggai cardinal fish swimming behind the anemone. I approached it gently, I came close and found more of these cardinalfish, then more and more and more. There were so many, probably 20 or even more. I love the colours and patterns on these particular cardinal fish, it kind of looks like batik. This was at quite a shallow area, and I happen to meet my sister and my dad. SO I showed them the colony of the banggai cardinal fish. It was pretty cool. I then saw a juvenile swwetlip swimming around nearby. I love the way it moves, it's so awesome because it wriggles around like a worm- well almost. The fish just never stops swimming, it's so annoying. To end the dive I saw a cuttlefish, quite big and stays stationary. It's much easier taking pictures of this cuttlefish than the juvenile sweetlip. After 65 minutes we ascend and head straight back to the resort. We took a rest for the upcoming dive at 11:15.
I went to get ready at 11, I checked on the board and looks like we're going to Tandu Rusa. AS we descend I saw a cuttlefish awaiting us. Then I saw a NUdibranch laying eggs. It was so cool, because I have never seen it before. I've seen nudibranches lots of time, and I've seen their eggs many time sas weel. However, I have never seen a NUdibranch in the process of laying the eggs. As we move on I saw two emperor shrimps hitching a ride from a sea cucumber. I was kind of left behind, so I quickly stormed afterthem. Fterwards, I saw a Frogfish, it was blue-ish purple. I loved the colour, except for the fact that it's a bit covered by sand. Well, I took pictures and moved on. Then we came to a special encounter. I saw this beautiful flamboyan cuttlefish, it's got such wonderful colours: black, white and yellow. I love how it moves its colours around, I took a great video of it, it was just magnificent. As I was busying myself with the flamboyan cuttlefish, I heard our dive guide tapping his tank with his stick repetitively. It's kind of annoying, but i know he's calling us. What really bothers me is that I am lookingat something that really interests me, what could possibly be better than this, that our dive guide screaming trying to get our attention to. After one last shot, I head towards the sound, and there I saw our diveguide waiting and staring at this tiny octopus. When I look closer, it was a blue ringoctopus. The most venomous animal in the whole world. You can find them in Lembeh strait, but it is still very rare to see them. So the piercing noise was worth the sight. It is so beautiful, I have never seen anything like it. I took some great shots, but as more and more divers crowd around it, its blue ringstarted flashing. Apparently it is a warning that it is scared or angry. So we backed away a little. It ran towards a red bottle, suddenly it changed colour to red. When it was on the sand, it was grey-yellow. Seeing the transformation was really cool so I decided to take a vdeo, and it was kind of okay. Not bad but not really good either. This was such an awesome dive, I will always remeber this dive site: TAndu Rusa. We then had luch and had some rest. For our next dive at 14:15.
This afternoon, we head for Nudi Falls, I expect to see lots of Nudibranches from the name; but we only saw 6. Well, that's kind of a lot. Anyways, we saw some orangutan crab and many flounders. It amazes me what can hide underneath you. I mean I was swimming around, looked at the bottom, and thought it was just sand. I moved a bit, then saw some thing moved as well. This happened like loads of times duringthis dive. I also saw a group of juvenile catfish. theyaresuch messy eaters, it's so annoying because the sand gets everywhere, amking it very difficult to take pictures of, well GOOD pictures anyways. Next I saw a peacock mantis shrimp, when i came close to it, it went back in its hole in a blink of an eye. it's so rapid, that i couldn't catch it. Finally we saw a pair of juvenile sweetlips, these were slightlybigger and moves less. Still cute buut kind of weird. As we arrived at the resort I quickly went to the room and went to sleep, I was so tired, looks like we're not going to do a night dive today.