Blue Season Bali

PADI IDC Bali - A huge congratulations for Jan, Kenta, Neil, Marina, Daisuke and Matoko who all passed their PADI IDC and PADI IE in Bali over the weekend.

The PADI IE was conducted by George Wegmann from PADI Asia Pacific who did a fantastic job for all the IDC candidates in Bali.  Thanks George!

Over the three days, all our Bali IDC candidates proved the fantastic training put in by our Course Director, SF Chong, and our Staff Instructor, Taka, was not wasted.  Superb performances from all meant that Blue Season Bali keeps their unique 100% success rate in all PADI IE’s in Bali.

The success of the latest bunch of PADI Instructors come as no surprise given the huge amount of effort put in by the PADI IDC Bali team of Course Directors and PADI IDC Staff Instructors.  For anyone out there who wants more information about the PADI IDC in Bali email us.

The PADI IE success was celebrated by all in grand style.  Just don’t remind Jan about it!  It is still too painful for him to remember.

Well I’ve been waiting to see my first mola mola and yesterday I was finally rewarded with one. The conditions were great the water wasn’t very very cold probably right around 24° at Crystal Bay on the first dive I got to see a shadow of a mola mola which was in the deeper water and then as the diver I had with me was low on air or we had to start heading back towards the boat. On the way back we got to see a flame angel fish which are always a favorite of mine. They are called flame angel fish because the middle of the fish is reddish orange and then it’s surrounded on the fringe by blue so it looks like a flame hense the name.

On the second dive as soon as we got out towards the canyon which is the reference point for you to start looking for the mola mola’s one of our very experience Indonesia dive instructors started rapping on his tank to let us know that there was something there, sure enough just a little bit deeper than we were was a mola mola being cleaned by some schooling banner butterfly fish and it was amazing as the sunfish made the butterfly fish look as if we were far away because of the enormity of the sunfish. When we got back on the boat the Indonesian dive instructor let us know that it really wasn’t even a very big one only around 2 m which only makes me want to go on Mola Mola dives in Balimore often so that I can go and see a really big one. As I understand it we can anticipate seeing many more mola mola’s as we are now in the mola mola season so sightings of the sunfish in Bali should be regular occurrences on the dives until the end of September. You know I remembered everything about that dive the only thing I forgot was a camera so really my first one doesn’t count as I don’t have proof I quess I will just need to get back out there and do it again!

Yesterday also was the end of the IDC and Blue Season Bali had the most instructor candidates in the IE and all of them passed so the 100% pass ratio for Blue Season Bali is still intact. The next IDC will be in September and I can’t wait to work with Chong as I will be a student learning to be a IDC staff instructor. So now that I have seen a mola mola the last thing I have that I really want to see scuba diving is a whale shark who knows maybe one will be sitting at Manta point watching a manta getting cleaned and have one bump into me while I’m in the water, or maybe I’ll be on a mola mola dive and a whale shark will come cruising through!

The days are ticking by and the 8th August will be here before we know.  The 8th August is the day when our six PADI Instructor candidates will begin their three day PADI IE in Bali.  The three day instructor examination will cover dive theory and standards, confined water teaching, open water teaching and rescue evaluations.

Blue Season Bali has a 100% success rate at the PADI IE so the next time you come into Blue Season Bali you will most likely find six very happy PADI Instructors!

We don’t wish them luck as they do not need it!  Join us at Mago on Sunday 10th for some celebration drinks and dinner.

If you want information on the PADI IDC in Bali then you can find it at PADI IDC.

A few days ago I finished my first PADI RESCUE DIVER course with an English gentleman, named Desmond. This course is always good fun! First of all, you get to learn some great new skills that are extremely helpful for diving and secondly, something terribly funny always seems to happen. We were in the pool on the second day of the course learning the skills. Scenario practice with Louise as the victim; she was tired at the surface and Desmond attempted to throw the tow line for her to grab. Instead of getting it behind her, he hit her on the head! It was perfect because I wanted Louise to end up an unconscious diver anyways, but we all had a good laugh after she groaned and collapsed in the water!

So, on the third day of the course, I took Desmond to Sumawan Beach, right here in Sanur. Thankfully, one of our Japanese instructors was conducting an OPEN WATER COURSE at the same time as my rescue course; so we were able to take out the Bali Ocean 2, our company’s boat and home away from home! After less than a five minute ride, we reach the dive site location. We couldn’t have asked for better conditions for the day. Visibility was incredible and there was absolutely no current to be seen. I gave a thorough briefing about what the day may have in store; hinting at the fact that he needed to be prepared for any and every scenario we were going to throw at him (and of course it was going to be every scenario!) Then I let the fun begin! We started off with an easy pleasure dive; exploring the site and being rewarded with some great finds. We found two stonefish, a baby blue spotted stingray, a banded snake eel, a moray eel, plenty of puffer fish, and as always lionfish galore. It was a very nice and relaxing dive, when all of the sudden Louise started breathing hard and panicking. Desmond reacted immediately and went over to check on her. She pulled up the sleeve of her wetsuit to show a black slash line with stitch marks on her arm and the word “cut” written below it. He knew exactly what to do; calming her down, he assisted her at the surface and applied first aid once we got her into the boat.

After a short surface interval and some miraculous healing by Louise, I discreetly sent her and Mangku into the water to place our “missing diver”, who always seems to have a blue weight belt on! When they came up, incredibly enough, Louise was tired and Mangku was panicking. You would hope that they could handle themselves better in the water! But luckily for them, Desmond was there to save the day again! He entered the water and towed them back to the boat. Minutes later we all descended together in search of the “missing diver”. Success, we found the diver with the blue weight belt!! Then Mangku became our unconscious diver and was carefully brought up to the surface, where Desmond proceeded to give rescue breaths, undo both his own and Mangku’s equipment, AND tow the victim back to the boat. I’m glad he can walk and chew gum at the same time or else that task might have been a little difficult! All in all, it was a great day and as always, a great course! It is still my favorite course to be part of and I can’t wait to do another one!

I was guiding today. We were going to dive one of my favourite dive sites in Bali, Padang Bai. Having just been out there in less than a week ago, I was hoping today would be better conditions.

And indeed, the sun rays peeked out of the cloudy sky and by 0900hrs the sky cleared into a calm blue. After setting up our dive gear, my guest Yousef (Kuwait) and I set off on a small dive expedition on a jukung. The sea was literally quite flat, and it was Tanjung Bungsil we were headed for.

At Tanjung Bungsil, surface conditions were perfect. Looking over the jukung, crystal clear visibility was staring at us in the face. We were revved up to descend, and down we went… bloop bloop bloop…

Schools of wrasses and a giant puffer fish was hovering in a nice bommy with a tiny swim-through… As sunlight hit the sea floor my vision expanded and I spotted two really pretty Chromodoris magnifica nudibranchs. Love nudibranchs! And then almost all the creatures I mentioned in my dive briefing were spotted: Giant cuttlefish, blue-spotted stingray, more nudibranchs, spotted boxfish, etc… BEAUTIFUL CORALS, BEAUTIFUL REEF LIFE!

Second dive after our surface interval was at Blue Lagoon. This dive we were going to dive the wall. As the mild current pushed us towards Kepala Penyu and Jepun, it was ultra cold with the thermoclines rushing into our faces. AARGH! Nevertheless, great great dive! Another giant cuttlefish, a snake eel, cleaner shrimp (huge ones), a school of juvenile barracudas, more nudibranchs, another blue-spotted stingray, etc… BEAUTIFUL dive again…

What could be better to end the diving day than a fantastic lunch at Puri Rai restaurant? The fish sate there is excellent, so I recommended it to Yousef. I myself had the tasty chicken curry… It was heavenly YUMMY!

Great day, great Bali diving, great guest…

It was overcast on the boat trip over to Nusa Penida, and myself and the boat crew had high hopes that we were going to see the majestic mola mola on our first dive at Crystal bay. As we arrived, the conditions looked good from the surface and only a handful of dive companies were there. As I geared up with Wayan we went through how we were going to guide the site and with that, back rolled off the boat into the crystal clear water.

I was pleasantly surprised with the water temperature - a warm 25 degrees celsius - which was nice especially for a hardened nothern hemisphere lad who is used to diving in 10 degrees celsius. As we made our descent with a group of four, 2 lads from Singapore, 1 from Malaysia and 1 from western Australia, everything looked good. Visibility was around 15-20M and marine life was the usual; what you come to expect from a world class dive site in Bali. As we hit 25m ‘Big’ Wayan signalled to me to look in front; he has become so experienced in dealing with these gentle giants he now knows the clanging of tanks to draw attention can scare this very timid species. Now, can I just say in all of my 5 years of diving I have never encountered a better looking fish than this one; the sheer beauty of it overwhelmed me. It was probably about 2m from top to bottom and as the currents picked up he got closer and closer and didn’t seem fazed by all the divers; if anything he just seemed to love the attention we were giving him.

I was so pleased to get at least 5 minutes play time with him before the currents picked up even more and we had to make our ascent. As we all managed to get back safely, which can only be explained as a challenging dive, but to get the opportunity for the first time in 5 years to spend some quality time with such an amazing creature is something i will never forget. This fills me with excitement for the mola mola season ahead.

Bali Diving reports from major Bali Dive Resorts all point to one thing - The Bali Sunfish are well and truly here and in big numbers again!

Over the last week we have had numerous sighting of Bali Mola Mola with the largest group of Sunfish so far being nine sighted at Crystal Bay in Nusa Penida. The water temperature has drastically dropped but the big fish action has just begun!

During the next few months Blue Season Bali will be sending out divers every day to meet with these amazing Sunfish. Our daily dive trips depart from Sanur and give you three superb dives with the Sunfish. It is important to remember that not everyone gets to see the Mola Mola. It is really important to have a good operator who knows where and when to put you in the water and then has professional dive guides who will give you the best opportunity to spend time with the Bali Mola Mola.

Our day trips to Nusa Penida cost USD145 per day inclusive of all hotel transfers, dive equipment, lunch, drinks, towels, insurance and Bali’s most professional dive guides! Call us on 0361 270852 or email us at info@baliocean.com for more information.

What a great day of diving in Bali at Nusa Penida.  We started the day off at Manta Point and were rewarded with 2 or 3 Oceanic Manta Rays that stopped by for a quick clean at the cleaning station.  I have not gotten to the point that I can tell which one is which, Oceanic Manta rays all have distinct looks and if you see them enough times you can tell them apart.  I use to do the night dive in Kona and they had the same group of Mantas coming on a regular basis and they had names for all of them.  The Kona Manta Night Dive is always rated as one of the ten best dives in the world, so I guess that The Bali dive sites should be on the list of best dives in Asia as the Mantas and the Mola Molas if you are lucky can be seen on the same dive trip!

The water temp at Manta Point was 21 degrees according to my Gecko dive computer I notice that all of the instructors at Blue Season are diving Suunto in one form or another I would say that the Gecko is the most popular followed by the D9 then the D6. I saw for the first time today a Scuba Pro dive computer and man you can use that thing as a extra weight very heavy but it has a big face which I like and another feature that i noticed was a graph bar that shows the residual Nitrogen that you have long after you are done diving as well as a no fly countdown clock I like the idea of a graph I would feel more comfortable if for instance I needed to drive over a hill that was in the 1000 meter range, In Hawaii we use to drive home from Hounounou and we would have to cross a 1500 meters halfway back to Kona town it would have been nicwe to have that graph then.  We actually knew a instructor that got bent crossing that little hill when she had been diving alot of days in a row.

At the beginning of the last paragraph I mentioned the temp the reason I mentioned the temp is that the falling water temp means that the Mola Molas will be coming more frequently.  

Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching a great PADI instructor in the water. Chong a PADI Course Director was working with Gabriel on his Confined Open Water skills in preparation for Gabriel to do the IE in a couple of weeks. Chong makes all of the demonstrations and explanations so clear and with a minimum of effort and it is very easy to see that anyone that is trained by him is going to be a great open water instructor, if they take what he is teaching and use it the way he presents it. I am really looking forward to participating in the Next Blue Season Bali IDC in a couple of weeks towards the end of July.

I am also waiting to get out and see the Mola Molas there have been a few sightings recently as we head into the sunfish season here in Bali. I was scheduled to do a reef clean at Nusa Penida which had to be postponed as we were very busy, getting to be that time of the season where you want to book early to make sure you get your preferred days.

The weather here in Bali I have to say has been perfect I just cannot get over how much like Hawaii this place is from the friendliest of the locals to the great weather. One area where it is different is the prices Bali has to be the cheapest paradise around, I have traveled all over Asia and this is so far the best place I have seen for hanging out.

Video of a Bali Dive

One can only describe Peter as Blue Season Bali’s luckiest Instructor!

Imagine this:

• A place where you have a beautiful dive resort perched on the hills overlooking Bali’s best muck diving site.
• Your own luxury room with the largest bath tub in Bali plus a host of cute spa girls to rub those feet after a hard days work.
• A dive pool that meets the ocean and makes you feel like you could giant stride into the sea.
• Freedom to work or relax at will, dive when you want, spa when you want.

Only Peter could be this lucky!

In all seriousness, Blue Season Bali’s latest adventure in opening the Blue Season Dive Resort in Zen Resort Bali gives me great excitement. The Bali diving sites in PJ, Menjangan National Park and Secret Bay will allow us to add another dimension for our diving guests.

We have Bali Dive and Spa packages already in place along with some great rates for day diving in PJ for macro lovers along with our new Menjangan diving rates. This can all be seen at Bali Dive Resort.