Continued from yesterday”¦ The water clarity was comparable to Komodo. Our dive instructor said the clarity was awful compared to normal. We saw a lot of new sea life we have never seen before. There was some sort of coral that is a bioluminescent blue. It was stunning to look at. We saw a sting ray with purple spots that was really neat. We saw a lot of trevalli, wrasse, surgeonfish, sweetlips and butterfly fish, just to name a few.

Christi had a hard time equalizing, as usual, but eventually got down with no problems. Eric had no issues during the dive. Once the dive was over, we went to a small restaurant on the beach, and lunch was included in the dive package. The food was OK.

The next site was maybe a third of a mile down the same stretch of beach. It is a wall dive. The wall was created from lava flow from a volcanic eruption. When we first entered, it was all black sand. We saw several little nudibranchs in the sand. Usually, we have a hard time seeing these little creatures, but against the dark soil they looked almost neon in color. We saw at least four varieties. There were green and white ones like the black and white one pictured in a previous post (don’t ask us which post). There was a blue and black with a pattern like one we had seen before. There were white ones we had never seen before. There was also a weird big species with a tuft sticking out on top that had never seen before.

It was a short distance to the wall. Just like the wreck, the wall is completely covered in a diverse amount of coral and sea life. We saw a lot of varieties of starfish, including pincushion starfish in white and pillow starfish in white. We saw several green 6 pointed starfish. We saw several 5 pointed skinny starfish in green and light blue like the royal blue ones we have posted pictures of in the past. There were also a lot of the spider looking starfish.

Most of the fish were the same as what we had seen at the wreck, but we did see a couple of colorful puffer fish, one spotted, one striped. There were also a ton of fish at this spot. Overall it was a spectacular day of diving between the two locations.

Christi again had a hard time equalizing. This time Eric had a most bizarre problem occur. Eric had the exact same amount of weight as he had on the earlier dive, yet about 2/3 of the way through the dive he began floating away. He grabbed a big rock and carried it with him the rest of the dive. Even with the rock, he was still struggling to stay down. Some air must have been in the BC that would not get out despite trying all the escape values. Oh well.

As great as the diving had been, as beautiful as the drive up and back had been, we have to say that the most fascinating part of the day was conversing with the dive master, Abdullah Saheem. He is originally from the Maldives and lived in several countries before settling in Bali. He is a brilliant guy, well versed on a huge variety of topics. Lately it seems that most of the conversations we have with others are get to you know kind of small talk. It was nice to have such in depth conversation. He provided a lot of insight on politics, government and general life in Indonesia, the Maldives, as well as other countries in the world. He is also an environmental activist. While the climate change conference was going on, we had read that Bali is suffering from serious erosion problems on its beaches, which we had asked him about. Interestingly enough, he had just completed a survey of the coral around the entire island of Bali and found that 90% of it had been destroyed. With nature’s protective barrier gone, it is no wonder the beaches are eroding. He is planning on doing a similar coral survey this year going from Malaysia down to Indonesia. You can check out http://www.boilingearth.org for info on both trips. Also, divers, you may want to contact him about diving on some new sites he found while doing the survey, including wrecks and a shark breeding ground.