Close encounter with two giants

Two impressive close encounters with a pair of 10-12m humpbacks.


I actually had a sensory overload as once both slowly rose up from the blue right in front of me, my still jet-lagged brain alas rather unable to fully register that overwhelming moment.

Plumes, dorsals & tails

Fortified by a big french breakfast, consisting of an extra-large cup of coffee, home baked bread & jam, baguette, croissant or chocolatine, plenty of fresh local fruit & juice, we set out at 13:30 for our first whale watching tour, together with four other german tourists, boat captain Jerome and Michael, owner of Tauchertraum, accompanying us as guide & spotter.

Basically, whale watching is scanning the horizon while cruising along the coast, in this case the outer reef, until somebody sees a plume, dorsal or tail of one or more breaching humpback whales, then head towards it, wait for one to come up for air, then slip into the water and snorkel in its direction, hoping to intercept it, for a brief look before it plunges down again on its endless journey.

Our first dip was in vain, with no whale to be seen underwater, but on our second try we actually saw two shapes slowly gliding by below us.

Check dive among blacktips

We're picked up at 07:45 by Catherine from Moorea Fun Dive, for the short drive from Linareva to the dive center, where her husband Greg is waiting for us to gear up and board the dive boat.


Moorea's reef suffered a lot of damage when cyclone Oli blew over Polynesia last february and is in a rather desolate state. Luckily the sharks are still there: blacktips, grays and lemons. The latter are currently in mating mood, meaning they're mostly busy elsewhere, i.e. in deeper waters beyond recreational limits. One paid us a courtesy visit though, attracted by the irresistible smell of a frozen tuna head, which Roland, acting as dive guide today to help out his wife's nephew Greg, brought down to get some special attention.

Résidence Linareva

Our 37h journey started yesterday at 6am, by car to Munich, jet to Paris, jet to LA, jet to Tahiti, aircraft to Moorea and finally bus to
Résidence Linareva, our first stop on this three islands tour.


Owned, managed and run by Roland & Edmée, two very hospitable and friendly Alsatians, Linareva is a small garden resort located right at the coast on Moorea's wild south-west side.

Recreational SCUBA gear

Booties, fins, 3mm neoprene suit, hooded vest, swim trunks, gloves, regulator, power horn, DIN-to-INT adapter, SMB, belt, aluminum backplate & harness with utility pouches, weight pockets & two CAM bands, single tank wings* (12l), whistle, strobe light, mask, snorkel, reef hook and pointer... all in all about 12kg of SCUBA gear.

The Underwater Photographer

Ordered online monday morning from amazon.de and delivered at my door today by the postman: "The Underwater Photographer" by Martin Edge (4th edition, ISBN: 978-0-240-52164-0, 25€ incl. free shipping).


Here's what others have to say about it:

→ book review on wetpixel by Steve Williams
→ customer reviews on amazon.com and amazon.de

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UPDATE: And here's my opinion after having read it from A to Z.

Martin Edge's rather heavy 500 pages book isn't quite as encyclopedic as its not-meant-for-traveling weight might suggest, it being more an inspirational guide book to the art of underwater photography than a referential source of dry facts and educational how-tos.

Though not always as detailed or in-depth as I would have liked (*), the text's very easy to read, covering most aspects of underwater photography and always well illustrated with plenty of exemplary photos. (* internet links often point to additional online resources, but on paper these aren't clickable of much help)

I don't know about experienced underwater photographers, but for amateurs wanting to make underwater photos rather than just take snapshots, I'd say Martin Edge's "The Underwater Photographer" is a recommendable book to get started. Without a doubt much more so than e.g. "An Essential Guide To Digital Underwater Photography" (1st edition) by Michael Aw & Mathieu Meur, which I personally found disappointing from every point of view.

Sulawesi, Indonesia, April 2010

Wonderful muck diving in Lembeh's famous strait with Two Fish Divers and relaxed reef diving near Donggala with Prince John Dive Resort.


travel blog

Indonesia - info sheet

Visum	Belgian citizens can get a 30 days visa-on-arrival for 20€ or 25$. [ → Indonesian embassy in Berlin ]
Time	Indonesian time = CEST + 6h
Weather	Air temperature: around 30°C, with occasional tropical downpours. Water temperature: 28°C.
Currency	1 Euro = 11200 Indonesian Rupiah
Language	English is barely spoken by some.

Videoclip: Lembeh critters

It took me about a day and a half to go through my 244 critter clips, sort them down to 193, i.e. 6.4GB or about 70' of WVGA resolution Motion-JPEG footage (taken with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5), rate, import into iMovie 08, select, cut & paste the best passages, edit and export them into a short 6'56" 960x540 MPEG-4 video of 193MB.

Exporting & uploading to YouTube took almost half an hour. For an optimal viewing experience, be sure to watch it in 480p.

— Lembeh Critters (video removed)

Singapore - Sonthofen

Door to door it took me 30h to get back home. I actually arrived early, despite Iceland's volcano outburst having messed up european airspace and as a consequence all flight schedules the previous week.

Donggala - Singapore

One hour sweaty drive from Prince John Dive Resort to Palu's domestic airport (dept.tax: 20'000 Rupiah), followed by a cool 45' flight to Balikpapan (int.dept.tax: 100'000 Rupiah), where five hours later I can board my two hour flight with Silk Air to Singapore.

Note that Singapore-Balikpapan-Palu is the normal route into C-Sulawesi for most divers, e.g. in combination with a stay at Maratua Paradise Resort, off Kalimantan's east coast.

One more time

Dive #15 [ 9:15 | 76' | max.25m, avg.9m | House Reef ]

Last dive of this trip, leaving me with 24h to off-gas, dry & pack my gear, before boarding the first of three planes on my way back home.

Sightings: angelfish, sweetlips, butterfly fish, goatfish & jacks.

Busy night

Dive #12 [ 9:52 | 58' | max.25m, avg.15m | Pasi Pome * ]
Dive #13 [ 14:18 | 68' | max.25m, avg.11m | House Reef ]
Dive #14 [ 18:38 | 65' | max.13m, avg.8m | House Reef ** NIGHT ]

Very nice reef top at Pasi Pome seamount, half an hour away from the resort, with lots of sponges and nine cuttlefish in mating mood.

And another great private night dive straight from the house beach.


Sightings by day: cuttlefish gathering, crocodile fish, moray eel, mantis shrimps, small sea snake and a lone turtle.

Sightings by night: several moray eels prowling around, cuttlefish, tiny blue ringed octopus on the hunt, crab with a sponge plate as cover, camouflage boxer crabs, seapen with two tiny crabs, nudibranchs and of course plenty of basket stars & crinoids.

Back among jacks

Dive #9 [ 9:25 | 64' | max.21m, avg.12m | Natural Reef ]
Dive #10 [ 14:11 | 68' | max.13m, avg.7m | House Reef ]
Dive #11 [ 18:38 | 68' | max.13m, avg.8m | House Reef * NIGHT ]

Back-rolled in again as soon as I could. Got some catching up to do!


Sightings by day: cuttlefish, blue spotted stingrays and my favorite schooling fish: silver jacks!

Sightings by night: lots of basket stars, unknown something, camouflage crab, lion- & scorpionfish and whirling plankton.

Grounded

Three dry days due to a nasty ear infection. With the sea at my feet that's like an eternity.

So I picked up a 900 pages thick book, my first novel in german as a matter of fact, there being hardly any english ones in the resort's library. And I actually sat on the beach, underneath a straw roof, for a few hours every day, thereby getting a shade of a tan while waiting to submerge again below the inviting waves.

By my self

Dive #7 [ 9:17 | 69' | max.15m, avg.9m | House Reef ]
Dive #8 [ 14:40 | 57' | max.15m, avg.9m | Anchor Reef ]

Lost my group again - I must have a knack for it. Probably too independent & impatient to just hang onto a guide's fins without a good reason. The cause this time was lack of communication from the guide's part: no briefing above nor clear signals underwater, poor visibility and current that picked up shortly after we submerged. And of course me refusing to just hover nearby without there apparently being anything interesting to see and thus wandering off...

Housereef by night

Dive #4 [ 9:23 | 62' | max.21m, avg.12m | Natural Reef ]
Dive #5 [ 14:08 | 65' | max.29m, avg.14m | Green Wall ]
Dive #6 [ 18:41 | 63' | max.13m, avg.8m | House Reef ** NIGHT ]

While I quite enjoy the relaxed reef dives here, it's the wonderful encounters by night that really get me thrilled.


Sightings by day: shy napoleon, lots of gardens eels, crocodile fish, various nudibranchs, small sea snake and a cuttlefish a.o.

Sightings by night: two small false stonefish & a juvenile lionfish snapping at sardines attracted by my light, snow white & wine red basket stars hypnotically weaving their numerous arms around, lots of crinoids, several crabs & shrimps, flashy squids, cuttlefish & tiny octopus on the hunt, palm sized nudibranchs, scorpionfish lying in ambush, baby sole, flat worm and loads of micro-organisms.

South atoll

Dive #2 [ 10:33 | 61' | max.32m, avg.14m | viz~10m | South Atoll ]
Dive #3 [ 13:04 | 63' | max.24m, avg.12m | viz~10m | Pasi Kawe ]


Day trip around the corner with the big boat, to a sandy atoll barely sticking out of the sea and a submerged seamount. Visibility could have been better but both sites offer beautiful reef tops and I got to have a peek at a tiny squat lobster, two pygmy seahorses and three leaf scorpionfish.

Prince John Dive Resort

Got a nice hill side category 1 bungalow with private tree shaded sea view terrace and cold water mandi. Electricity only from 6pm to 6am, but for charging purposes there's 24h power in the dive center.


Prince John Dive Resort is currently being managed by Gaby & Alex, a german couple doing a pretty good job catering mostly for german tourists in this relatively remote location.

Took the morning off, just hanging around, enjoying the sunny weather and meeting the other guests.


I actually already passed by here back in 1994, but didn't get to dive then due to financial disagreements with the former manager. The snorkeling however, especially at night, made enough of an impression to get me to return for another look.

Dive #1 [ 14:16 | 64' | max.20m, avg.8m | viz~10m | 28°C | Alex's Point ]

Despite the proximity of Donggala and other smaller coastal villages, the wonderful reef top is still pretty intact and vibrating with an healthy amount of coral fish life. Not to mention trash of all kinds.

Sightings: octopus, cuttlefish, mantis shrimps and a small school of juvenile jacks a.o.

Lembeh - Donggala

It's supposedly possible to fly directly from Manado (dept.tax: 30'000 Rupiah) to Palu in about half an hour. However, the responsible? Indonesian carrier being too unreliable to count upon for getting tourists to their destination on a specific day, a longer journey, via Makassar (S-Sulawesi) with Lion air, needs to be undertaken.

Meaning my transfer from Two Fish Divers to Prince John Dive Resort took 13h in stead of 5h. Both resort-airport transfers take a bit more than an hour by not-for-easily-unnerved-people kamikaze-like taxi.

Note that whereas the plane from Singapore to Manado was mostly filled with international underwater tourists, I was the only foreigner on the plane from Makassar to Palu. In my case, that's a good sign.

Upon arrival around 11pm I'm met by Bruno, a swiss scuba instructor in charge of the dive operation, and shown into my private wooden bungalow, where after a quick mandi-shower I just crash into bed.