Friday, December 5, 2008

Wakatobi, Sulawesi: the Diving - Part II

Monday 13 October, 2008:  This was an awesome diving day.  All three sites are well worth hitting again.
Pastel - 29.9m; 71 minutes
My one and only wide angle shooting dive.  Great sponges, whip corals, fans.  Plenty of wildlife, too.  Would be better later in the day as it was pretty dark when we were there.  I'd go back.










Sprial Corner - 21.8m; 76 minutes
The beginning of this dive site was better for me and I should have just hung out there instead of trying to catch up to the guide.






Teluk Maya - 22.2m; 76 minutes
This site ROCKS!  I could have spent days here and wish we would have been offered the chance to go back.  The only purple hairy crab I saw all week; shame he was way down at the bottom of the sponge!  It also has resident batfish, many with parasites stuck all over them. We found two juvenile many spotted sweetlips, a razorfish wafting his way across the sand, cuttlefish and jawfish. Puffers, parrots, butterflys and several kinds of anemonefish - including one species (saddleback?) that we were only going to have the opportunity to see on this site.








Tuesday 14 October, 2008: Another great diving day.
Conchita - 27.6m; 70 minutes
This could have been a top dive, but we covered too much ground.  The beginning of this dive was tops...I found a variety of small shrimps hanging out in a little hole right on the corner of the reef and should have spent the whole dive on that point as it was teeming with life.  Later in the dive was a giant cuttlefish, so that was cool.







On the way to our second dive site of the day, we saw whales. According to our crew, it is very unusual to see whales so it was a nice bonus. The whales didn't do much, but, boy, did our fellow divers get excited about catching a glimpse of them!

Another Wakatobi dive boat watching the whales


Pinki's Wall - 24.1m; 70 minutes
Love this site.  We dropped in too far before what I would consider the main dive site and it would have been a bummer, but I dropped down on to a curious sea snake who entertained me for a few minutes.  Then there was a big meh portion before we came to more goodies.  Two big frogfish (anglerfish) on this dive - one pale and one black.  If we had started just before the frogfish, this dive would have made the top four, I think.  I would dive this again.







Teluk Waitii - 22.5m; 73 minutes
Great fun with all manner of critters including my first ever ribbon eel - and I found him all by myself!  I'd go back.






...part three coming soon!

1 comment:

Marcus Lorenz said...

Wow, wow, wow! We knew diving is good there and we knew that you're a good photographer but we didn't know HOW GOOD you are! Extremely impressive stuff - awesome! Marcus & Fran