It's been a while since we've been diving. Ever since I took my certification in 2004, I've been diving quite actively. Year 2005 was the golden year, in which I did 91 dives including in Bali, Ambon, Berau Sea (Derawan) and North Sulawesi. But then I moved to Singapore and my diving trips were cut down. And it was cut down even more when I had to have a knee operation. Hence 2006 was a bad year, and for 8 months from end of 2006 to March 2007 I only had a mere 4 dives! :O  (see dive log)

So it's been a while since we've been diving and with a long liveaboard coming (Kapalselam trip) we decided that we needed some brushing up and so we took a long weekend diving trip in Bali. Menjangan was the area we chose.

Menjangan

Menjangan Island is located in the north-west corner of Bali, not far from the eastern end of Java. In fact in a clear day we can see two East Javan volcanoes, one of which is Mount Raung (3332 meters), looming majestically in the west. But the nearest volcano is Mount Prapat Agung (310 meters) in a peninsula just southwest of Menjangan. Menjangan Island is part of a national park (Taman Nasional Bali Barat) and there's no resort there, so we have to stay in the mainland.

To go to the Menjangan island you can take boats from Labuan Lalang a fisherman port in the mainland, or a smaller fisherman's port to the east, in Banyuwedang area just next to Mimpi resort. The nearest places to stay in the area are some expensive resorts such as Mimpi  and Gawana Novus in Banyuwedang, which have their own piers. The cheaper alternative would be to stay in Pemuteran, about 20 minutes drive away east. Kapalselam had done trips whereby you don't stay around the area at all but drive at dawn from Denpasar, do two dives in Menjangan and then drive east to Tulamben. But it's a looooong and tiring trip.

Thursday night we flew from Jakarta in a 7pm flight, but it was 30 minutes late, so we arrived in Denpasar at 10pm (the flight is 1.5 hours but Bali is one hour ahead of Jakarta). Well, if you ever want to do this I can tell you now, don't fly too late at night. Take half a day off and fly in the afternoon. We learned this the hard way. The drive from the airport to Mimpi resort near Menjangan where we stayed at took 4 hours. Hence it was 2am when we arrived. We were obviously knackered.

However when a dive instructor who came with us in the car asked if a 9.00am start would be too early we said no. She was shocked, it looked like she was hoping we'd use the whole day resting and dive the next day. No way. We came all the way here to dive, not lazying in the sun. Besides, we'd have at least 6 hours of sleep and I'd been sleeping in the car along the way anyway :)

 mangrove lined bay in Banyuwedang

Dive 1 Menjangan slope

That morning we had Wayan, a divemaster from Mimpi, to guide us (didn't see the dive instructor from last night at all). The boat ride from Mimpi's pier took about 30 minutes. We stopped at the narrow strip of shelf north of Menjangan Island, geared up and backrolled into the gently dipping white sandy bottom dotted here and there with small patches of corals.

A few fin strokes later we were at the edge, a steeply dipping reef front and wall covered with healthy hard and soft corals, various sponges, ascidians and algae. There were a lot of gorgonian fans and big clams were strewn here and there in the shallower depths. Reef fish are abundant – from the small ones like anthias, damselfish, many small wrasses, lizardfish and occasional blennies and dartfish, to the bigger ones like butterflyfish, angelfish, huge batfish, many tangs and surgeonfish, parrotfish, occasional groupers and lone snappers, and schools of fusiliers.

We found a Periclimenes imperator or Emperor Shrimp on a huge sea cucumber of the genus Holothuria and saw a big Bumphead Parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatus). But the highlight of the dive was a green turtle (Chelonia mydas) with two remoras (Remora remora) riding belly-up on its back. Wayan the guide tried to look for pigmy seahorses in a gorgonian fan at around 15m depth but to no avail. He found them 4 days ago, he said, but apparently they've moved away.

 Green turtle with two remoras on its back

The sun was shining brightly and the water clear resulting in a visibility between 25 and 30 meters, horizontal and vertical. It makes you feel giddy when looking down and see the bottom a long long way away. We didn't dive deep, the maximum depth was only 20.4 meters and we dived for 57 minutes.

Dive 2 Pos 2

After more than an hour of rest in the narrow stretch of sandy beach at the southeastern point of the island, we dived at Pos 2 just off the pier, wearing the gear in the calm water. Again the bottom profile was the same; it started as a very gently dipping shelf covered with white sand and rare patches of corals, followed by a sudden drop at the reef front – a wall covered with healthy marine life offering an explosion of colours.

The creatures are similar to the first dive: anthias, damselfish, gobies, anemonefish, wrasses, lizardfish, blennies, butterflyfish, angelfish, rabbitfish, batfish, cardinalfish, file fish, pufferfish, tangs, surgeonfish, parrotfish, groupers, snappers, and schools of fusiliers. We saw some fierce looking Titan Triggerfish (Balistoides viridescens), a lobster (Panulirus versicolor) and a Yellow boxfish (Ostracion cubicus) pairing with trumpetfish (Aulostomus chinensis).

  Devil scorpionfish

The highlight of the dive was a strange looking fish just below the pier at around 15 meters of depth. I think it was a Devil scorpionfish (Inimicus didactylus) though it's difficult to be sure as it was all covered with sand. We dived to a maximum depth of 20.1 meters but mostly stayed at around 12 meters. The total dive time was 61 minutes.

Dive 3 Coral garden

In the afternoon we started the third dive at 3 pm. The weather was still the same – sunny. That time the moon was in the waning phase. The water was calm at surface, and not much current either underwater. The temperature was 29 deg Celcius. Another nice and calm dive. The visibility was also still great, around 25 meters. We dived for 59 minutes, with maximum depth at 18.9 meters and average depth at 11.9 meters.

This dive site was located at the northeastern part of the island. We didn't dive anywhere near the wreck off the northwestern part of the island because Wayan thought the current was bad there. We also didn't go to Eel Garden because Wayan said the week before a fisherman had done a bomb-fishing in the area and most of the garden eels have disappeared. Very sad!

We encountered similar bottom profile and similar abundant marine life. Just as we began to descend in the wall a remora tried to hitchhike on Wayan. He shooed the fish away and it decided to hitchhike in my buddy's leg. Remora (Remora remora) is also called suckerfish because the first dorsal fin above its head has adapted into a flat-like structure that can open and close to create suction for the fish to hold on to other animals. Hence it benefits by using the host as transport and protection and also feeds on materials dropped by the host. Remoras are commonly found attached to sharks, manta rays, and other large fishes. Apparently though, they are also known to attach themselves to divers, perhaps confusing them with large fish. This may not be flattering to my buddy but the remora kept attaching itself to him during most of the dive.

 a remora hitchhiking on my buddy

At a depth of around 17 meters Wayan observed a pinkish gorgonian fan and found 3 tiny pigmy seahorses of the species Hippocampus bargibanti. He was very happy.

Puri Jati

That night we wanted to do a night dive near the mouth of the bay in Banyuwedang. We heard some mandarin fish have been sighted there. But the guide told us these fish have disappeared and he didn't seem to be too keen on doing a night dive. He said visibility is usually bad there. Well, it's a night dive, it doesn't matter, but he looked reluctant so even though disappointed we didn't push.

We decided to do a different dive the next day. There are other dive sites beside Menjangan in the area. There's Pemuteran which is a reef slope off the mainland a few minutes east of Banyuwedang. But the description didn't seem to be too exciting. We wanted to do muck diving, which can be done in Secret Bay at the channel between Bali and Java, and in Puri Jati which is located about 30 minutes drive east of Pemuteran. We chose Puri Jati.

 black volcanic sand of Puri Jati

Dive 1 Puri Jati East

The car dropped us at a tiny village on the beach surrounded by rice field and vinyard. Under the trees there were several bamboo benches and two tubes of fresh water for divers to use. There was a sizeable temple among the rice field and the grapes from the vinyard was deep purple in colour, smallish and not too sweet. The most interesting feature of the area is probably the duck farms. Hundreds of ducks were kept in coops under the trees in the beach. They kept moving here and there in a harmonious group moves, but their sound wasn't harmonious at all and it never stopped. Quack quack quack quack......

 duck farm in Puri Jati

It's a shore dive so we had to walk with our gears across the beach to the water. Luckily the beach was sandy, unlike the gravelly beach of Tulamben, and the waves that day was small so the entry wasn't too painful.

The bottom was very gently dipping, covered with soft black volcanic sand. Marine-life wise, compared to Menjangan this is a desert. The black sand was very soft so a few uncareful strokes of fins could cause quite a storm. The visibility was only about 5 meters without those sand storms. But, it's perfect for muck diving. We're excited and hoped to find the strange creatures that characterised areas like this.

 a porcelain crab and anemone fish on the anemone host

The sand was dotted with hundreds of small corals Cyathoceras sp of the Caryophylliidae family. Here and there we found some sea pens (Pteroides sp and Virgularia sp), sea grass (Halophila ovalis and Cymodocea serrulata) clumps, anemone (mostly Haddon's sea anemone or Stichodactyla haddoni but there were Beaded sea anemone or Heteractis aurora and Leathery sea anemone or Heteractis crispa too) and tube anemone. Very rarely we stumbled on some sponges and ascidians.

 Armina sp nudibranch

The sea anemones commonly play hosts to several different animals living harmoniously together. These include several types of anemonefish (Amphiphrion sp), juvenile Three-spot dascylus (Dascyllus trimaculatus), cardinalfish (Apogon cyanosoma), anemone shrimps (Periclimenes brevicarpalis and Thor amboinensis) and porcelain crabs (Neopetrolithes maculatus).

There were a lot of Threadfin sand divers (Trichonotus elegans) swimming in groups low near the bottom. Some were perched on the sand bottom but disappeared into the sand in a fraction of a second as soon as we got near. We found a type of Lizardfish (Synodus sp), a crocodile fish (Cymbacephalus beauforti), a nudibranch (Armina sp.), a Leopard flounders (Bothus patherinus), a Comb star (Astropecten polyacanthus) and a moray eel which I can't identify.