We couldn’t stop at Manta Point today due to bad conditions and chose to go directly to Crystal Bay. Our guests were more than compensated as at 10.16am at 24.5 meters, they saw their very first MOLA MOLA! To see a Mola in 27 degrees is a treat in the first place as they usually prefer colder water. We also had time to watch all the cleaner fish pecking away parasites and going in and out of it’s mouth to ease the Mola’s irritation. Totally awesome!!!
We travelled to the north of Bali today , and enjoyed awesome views of rice terraces, temples, a volcano and some wild monkeys along the way.
The conditions at PJ, Bali’s top macro dive site, were not ideal with some swell and bad visibility, at times down to one meter. We did however manage to find four octopus, a beautiful juvenile puffa fish, a species of lion fish not found in any other part of the island and a very nice harlequin crab. Diving this site is quite a challenge as everything is camouflaged, you have to look really hard; however when you find something good, it’ can be very rewarding.
Dive Site - PJ (Puri Jati)
Temperature - 28 degrees Visibility - 1-5 metes
Manta rays and black manta rays at Manta Point today (as expected). The mantas are acting strange at the moment, albeit very entertaining. They are doing flips, they are usually very playful creatures and enjoy having divers around, but their activities are different which makes us believe it could be some sort of mating behaviour, courtship maybe? We also saw the regular blue spotted sting rays at Manta Point as well as some cool nudibranchs.
At Crystal Bay we saw a school of harlequin sweetlips as well as moray eels and stone fish; SD we drifted along in the current and enjoyed clown anenome fish, trevally and clown trigger fish. Great day diving as always!
Date: June 11th 2009
Location: Nusa Penida
Dive Sites: Manta Point, Crystal Bay, Sakenan
Dive Guide: Putu
Water Temperature: 27 Degrees
Visibility: 15-20 meters
The vibe in the diving community in Bali is that two mola molas (sunfish) were spotted at Crystal Bay on Nusa Penida on Tuesday 9th June 2009. The sunfish season doesn’t officially start until August so it’s very unusual to see them so early; Bali’s favourite gentle giant has a way of turning up and surprising us, they have made an appearance on the USS Liberty Wreck in Tulamben before now.
We dived Nusa Penida yesterday, in particular Crystal Bay and although we didn’t spot any molas, we did see a nice stone fish (very dangerous species) a cool octopus and some trevally. We saw black manta rays at Manta Point and decided to make our final stop at Sakenan, here we saw another stone fish, clown trigger fish and a bumphead parrot fish – I can’t help but wonder if it was lost as there’s a group of them that live in Tulamben.
Date: June 10th 2009
Location: Nusa Penida
Dive Site Names: Manta Point, Crystal Bay, Sakenan
Dive Guides - Putu
Water Temp: 27 degrees
Visibility: 15-20 meters
IDC Bali – Your Course Director
Before the celebrations started yesterday, the new PADI Instructors paid homage to their IDC Course Director, Chong. If you are serious about becoming a Scuba Diving Instructor then you need to put serious thought in to what dive company you are going to do it with and which Course Director to choose. Chong has been with Blue Season Bali for more than two years and has a 100% IDC Internship success rate.
Maybe you’re thinking, ‘I bet they all say that!”. Well, all I can say is that although the PADI IDC’s are held at each separate dive school, the IE (Instructor Examinations) are all held together so you are fully aware how other dive schools are doing and if students don’t pass; it must be a terrible feeling to be the only one in your group not to succeed when everyone around you is celebrating.
All Course Directors know their stuff, but a lot of it comes down to personality and dedication. Chong is always impeccable, smart and patient; it’s when a problem arises though that he really comes in to his own. The IDC can be intense and on the final few days, candidates can look a little drained. One student that comes to mind, we’ll call him Ian, seemed to be overwhelmed and lacking in confidence as the IE approached. It’s customary at BSB to have a rest day before the IE starts, so that students can recap in their own time, things they might need to brush up on. Ian was struggling and not a shadow of his former bubbly self; he spent this ‘rest day’, one on one with Chong as he is always willing to put the time and effort in for any student that needs extra help. Ian just needed a huge boost in confidence and to refine a few skills – he sailed through the IE getting straight 5’s (the highest) in all of his confined water skills.
Celebrating with a well earned Bintang, Ian thanked Chong for not giving up on him as well as thanking all the other candidates who had supported him (very important to have a good team spirit). Chong, always a modest man, replied that Ian was the one who had put the hard work in. I wonder how a different Course Director would have handled this struggling student, the smile on Ian’s face yesterday was probably all Chong needed to see.
So think carefully about whom you choose to do your IDC with, I can vouch for Blue Season Bali and for Chong. Further information can be found on our new IDC-Asia website, you are also welcome to pm me on the subject, I am happy to give advice to anyone considering this important career change - it’s quite a lot of money to invest in your future, but in life, you sometimes get what you pay for (ask Ian!)
Congratulations to Russell, Igor, Krzysztof, Dave and Jonathon on becoming PADI Scuba Diving Instructors! Also to Chong our impeccable Course Director and Ralph our IDC Staff.
This was always going to be a memorable IDC for Blue Season Bali as it was the first one to be held at our new facility; it will be remembered for a great bunch of guys who formed strong frienships early on and continued to support each other right up until the final day - Jonathons 100% result in the theory will also go on record, simply amazing. Enjoy tonight guys, you’ve earned it!
Krzysztof mentioned to me (while clutching his new Instructor certificate!) that there are good companies and bad companies in the diving industry, which I am already aware of. He has had first hand experience of this, having done his Divemaster with what he calls a ‘mickey mouse’ company; appalled by their lack of professionalism, he decided to join Blue Season Bali to become an Instructor, he said today that it was one of the best decisions he ever made.
Tomorrow I will tell you more about Chong, our IDC Course Director, he is someone that I am in total awe of. This modest Malaysian is the ultimate professional and I have seen time and time again, what a difference he makes to peoples lives.
If you would like to train to become a Scuba Diving Instructor in paradise, check out the Internship section of the Blue Season Bali website. If you would like to join us on the next IDC, 18th July, contact us as soon as possible as spaces are limited.
The IE (Instructor Examinations) are continuing today; yesterday was very successful with all five Blue Season Bali candidates passing the confined water skills examinations in style (mostly 5/5). This was followed by ‘presentations’, again all of our boys did us proud.
This morning will be the final part of the Instructor examinations, the candidates will board our dive vessel, Bali Ocean II, and head out to Dogs Point in Sanur for the Open Water skills challenge. This dive site as a norm doesn’t have good visibility; Jonathon could have an advantage here as he’s used to diving in England, a country not exactly known for it’s crystal clear waters!
Best of luck guys, you’re nearly there!
May IDC – IE
My mind is a little preoccupied today as the PADI IE (Instructor Examinations) started yesterday. Blue Season Bali has five IDC candidates; the course can be pretty intense and I’ve watched our boys work so hard over the last couple of weeks, both in the pool and in the class room. They’re all such nice guys that I’m just willing them all to pass, everyone at the dive school feels the same as we’re pretty close knit.
The first part of the IE (theory) took place at a neutral location yesterday and I’m pleased to say that our guys passed, one of them Jonathon got 100%, the first ever candidate from Blue Season Bali to get a perfect score. Well done!
Blue Season Bali will be hosting the PADI Confined Water Skills examination today, so other dive companies will be arriving to use our facilities at 10am. We are hoping that nerves don’t get the better of our boys and that they will be feeling relaxed, they will after all be on home turf and know that pool inside out. This afternoon the guys will go back to the hotel classroom for presentations.
I’ll keep you posted; the final day will be tomorrow (Sunday). Back to watch them in the pool, I notice Igor has just got a 5 (out of 5). Good stuff!
Our candidates are: Dave, Russell, Jonathon (UK), Kris (Poland) and Igor (Indonesia).
Course Director - Chong (Malaysia) IDC Staff - Ralph (Poland).
It always amuses me how different nationalities look for different things in diving; it’s also very opposite between male and female divers, men preferring the big ugly stuff like sharks and the ladies appreciating turtles and cuties such as yellow box fish. One comment that I always find futile though is when a male diver comes up (women never say this!) and says ‘how deep did you go?”. My first question to any diver would always be ‘what did you see?” Certain nationalities, I’m not saying which, are more guilty of coming out with this frase than others.
Let me explain a bit about deep diving – the deeper you dive, the darker it becomes, almost like diving in fog; the fish are no longer vibrant colours but faded images of themselves. It also gets colder than at shallower depths and the worse thing of all, it uses your air supply up much quicker - as a result, you have a shorter dive time.
It is sometimes necessary if you are looking for something specific, for example we were once looking for a mola mola out of season and thought it would be in deeper water or to try it supervised on an Adventure Dive for the very first time, just for the experience - but to go deep just so that you can compare gauges at the end of the day is still a mystery to me.
Next time you dive, listen out, you’ll know what I mean (and what countries they come from!)
Most divers heading to Tulamben will go straight for the USS Liberty Wreck, and rightfully so; anyone keen on wall diving will probably go in the general direction of the Drop Off, again a beautiful dive especially when the visibility is good; but what about the dive site in between the two? This dive site is known as Coral Garden and it’s one of my favourite dive sites. It’s suitable for brand new divers as it’s a shallow area (only 10 meters) and is a good mixture of big fish and macro. I have dived this site many times and have seen the same two black tip reef sharks on every occasion, I also see blue ribbon eels and cuttle fish every time. There is a small aeroplane shaped artificial reef, the last time I saw it, there was a giant grouper almost the size of the plane happily resting inside, a nice surprise for the Discover Scuba student I was diving with that day.
For macro lovers you can find ghost pipefish, more common at certain times of the year, and I once found some beautiful nudibranchs and a bright red frog fish that can’t have been more than 2 inches long. I have done a 90 minute dive on Coral Garden before now as there is so much good stuff at 3-5 meters that you can amuse yourself for ages and not use up your air.
Most people who dive Coral Garden are either experienced divers who know the USS Liberty Wreck inside out and want to try something new or staying overnight either doing an Open Water Course or Advanced Open Water Course, the latter having stayed to do a night dive on the wreck and wanting to do a different site the following morning. Depending on the current you can also get in at Coral Garden and drift along to the shipwreck, you can then have a brief look at part of the wreck and exit at the beach there.
So don’t forget Coral Garden when you come to Bali, oh and needless to say, it can be snorkeled as well!
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