Blue Season Bali

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.

Tasty is a description you will hear at times when people are describing there encounters while diving in Bali with the legendary Mola Mola, But let us clarify, as in clear up, not butter up, what we mean. Mola Mola Season is coming and i can’t wait!

I finally get to dive Nusa Penida after almost 2 months!

It was an early start to a freezing day. With the weather looking a tad gloomy, we headed for the beach anyway. On the boat was myself (Cheryl), Big Wayan, Kenta, Jan, Andy from Singapore, Sato-san from Japan, and 3 other guests from Bandung, West Java. The swells were looking potent, but nearing Manta Point the seas were more or less appeased.

SPLASH! Back-rolled into the water and nearly SCREAMED out loud. As icy water rushed into my 6.5mm wetsuit, my teeth started chattering. It was funny to watch the guests come into the water one after another and yelping once the chill hit them.

Descending… Brrrrr…. Following Big Wayan’s lead, we scouted the area for manta rays until we heard that familiar tank-clanking sound. As we finned towards the cleaning station, we saw the first one cruising just above the boulder like a feather in mid-air. The excited guests were racing towards the manta rays with their cameras, and Wayan started clanking his tank to ask them not to go too close. The rest of the dive that I could remember was that 2 other mantas came flying over and one came really close as it glided past me… Nice. But it was still too cold!!! (Hey, I live in the tropics you know…) 22 degrees celsius!

En-route to Crystal Bay, we were all trying to warm up by sunning ourselves at the sides of the boat. Upon turning that corner, the vista was filled with… boats? And at least 10 boats in Crystal Bay. Must have been the recent sightings of sunfish that brought the sudden flurry of divers.

Crystal was really crystal-clear today… Dropping into the sea, shivers went up our spines although it was slightly warmer than Manta Point. Dropping under the surface and deeper, thermoclines were coming at us like the fog. I was thinking to myself in jest, how cruel the thermoclines were. Crossing our fingers (or fins) and hoping to see the majestic sunfish, we sailed past the reef and stared into the blue. Turning around, we went even shallower and Jan was excitedly banging his tank and pointing at something. I finned quickly over, hoping it was a fantastic stylish-looking nudibranch or something exotic, and found a lazy scorpionfish. Haha… There were lots of fish everywhere on this dive… 23 degrees celsius.

The much-awaited lunchboxes were snapped up in no time. Cold water certainly makes your stomach want more… Third and final dive of the day was at Toya Pakeh, one of my favourite dive sites in Penida. This time, the temperature didn’t disappoint; it was so much warmer! We saw several creatures underwater; squat lobster, a beautiful flatworm (Thysanozoon nigropapillosum ‘Gold-speckled flatworm’), Banded sea snake, Nudibranchs ‘Chromodoris magnifa’ and ‘Chromdoris annae’, several scorpionfishes, moray eels, etc. Fantastic dive as always, that lasted 63 minutes…

I really really enjoyed this day diving Bali and I think all of us did too!

Yea we have a blog for Bali Diving !

Now to figure out how to transfer Bali scuba diving to the little screen. First i will try some scuba diving pictures from Tulamben and Nusa Penida to dive in and see if I understand how to work this.

Back to the drawing board as I do not have permission to upload Bali scuba diving pictures or any pictures for that mater. Bummer! But I am sure that thios will be a short term setback and the powers that be will get this straightened out.