Blue Season Bali

On the first dive of the day 13th July the conditions looked great at Crystal Bay, perfect for Mola. As we back-rolled into the water off Bali Ocean II and hit the water, a cold flush went down our spines….’these are Mola temperatures!!’

With very little current during slack tide it is possible to get round the western point of the reef at Crystal Bay where the cold up currents bring in the Mola. We seemed to time our dive to perfection, just as we were at our deepest point and about to turn the dive, suddenly again out of the blue a beautifully marked Mola Mola appears with half a dozen banner fish swimming around it removing its parasites. As it approached it adopts the position that any Mola enthusiast loves to see; head up towards the surface, giving the cleaner fish a signal that it is safe for them to approach, this positioning also indicates to our dive guides that it is OK for the divers to approach slowly from the front to with 5m of this amazing creature. He stayed around for a good few minutes, with many of the Divemaster Trainees who were on the dive a great opportunity to get some photos to take home.

Photos will follow on facebook soon.

http://www.facebook.com/blueseason.bali?ref=ts

Mel’s Geburtstag – also haben wir einen tollen Tauchtag in Amed verbracht. Es herrschten super Bedingungen, strahlender Sonnenschein (nach einem anfangs verregneten Morgen), tolle und ruhige Atmosphäre in Amed und das tauchen war einfach super! Das ganze Blue Season Bali Team wünscht dir nochmal alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

Eine zweite Gruppe hat sich anch Nusa Penida aufgemacht und ist tatsächlich 3 Mondfischen begegnet!!! Ein toller Abschied für unseren Divemaster Praktikanten Quentin, der seinen letzten Tag in Bali getaucht ist da sein Praktikum nun zu Ende ist.

Und dann noch der krönende Abschlus – England hat sich in die nächste Runde der WM geschossen! Nach tagelangem Zittern und Bangen aller Engländer bei Blue Season Bali endlich die Gewissheit – England ist weiter! Und bei ca 10 Engländern in unserer Tauchschule…auch für alle nicht Engländer ein gutes Ergebnis (außer Tom, da die USA je jetzt raus aus der WM sind). Jaja, im Moment steht die allgemein herrschende Stimmung bei Blue Season Bali doch in sehr engem Zusammenhang mit den Fussballergebnissen bei der WM. Also danke an Englands Fussballer für das gestrige Ergebnis vom gesamten Blue Season Bali Team! : )

Ja bald ist es wieder soweit und die lang ersehnte Mondfisch Saison beginnt! In nur 2 Monaten – schon im August – ist es soweit und die Mondfische halten sich wieder in der Region um Nusa Penida und Nusa Lembongan auf. Blue Season Bali’s Vorbereitungen laufen auf Hochtouren – angefangen von unserer speziellen Mola Mola und Manta Tauchsafari bis hin zu täglichen Tauchtrips die wir nach Nusa Penida anbieten…wir bringen unsere Taucher an die Plätze wo die berühmten Bali Mondfische sich gerne aufhalten. Die Saison geht bis Ende Oktober, also an alle die in der Zeit von August bis Oktober ihren Baliurlaub planen – die Plätze sind rar in der Saison also am besten jetzt schon für unsere Mondfisch Tauchen Programme anmelden!

Unser deutsches BBQ gestern Abend war ein voller Erfolg – Grillwürtsel, Bernerwürstel, Kartoffelsalat, Bier und die Live Übertragung vom WM Spiel Deutschland – Serbien (was das Spiel angeht gehe ich jetzt wohl nicht näher ins Detail…sagen wir einfach ohne Kommentar). Aber abgesehen von der Fussballpleite war es ein wirklich toller Abend. Die ganzen Office Angestellten, Instructors, Divemaster, Praktikanten, Gäste , Freunde und Bekannte sind gekommen und wir alle hatten wirklich einen lustigen Abend. Vielen Dank an Blue Season und alle die gekommen sind. Wir feruen uns schon auf das Englische BBQ nächsten Freitag…mal schaun was ihr so serviert!

Ein toller Schnorcheltrip nach Nusa Penida! Bei strahlendem Sonnenschein haben sich Ezra und drei Gäste auf den Weg nach Nusa Penida gemacht um dort schnorcheln zu gehen. Bei angenehmen 28 Grad Wassertemperatur, milder Strömung und toller Sicht (bis zu 20 Meter!!!) haben wir beim Schnorcheln im kristallklaren Wasser Manta Rochen, Langnasen – Nasendoktorfische, Nemos, Kaiserfische, Seenadeln, Drückerfische und viele andere Unterwasserlebewesen gesehen.

In Nusa Penida bekommt man einfach eines der schönsten Riffe von ganz Bali zu sehen und es ist immer wieder toll dort schnorcheln zu gehen! Und wo sonst bekommt man beim Schnorcheln schon Manta Rochen aus nächster Nähe zu sehen?

A rainy day on Bali, which dropped the air temperature down. After passing through the massive swell on Nusa Penida we landed in Crystal Bay. On the south-facing wall we found a big black frogfish sitting on a clump of coral. The visibility was spectacular, but no mola molas…

The next dive took us to Toyapakeh, where we were greeted by a banded sea snake and the usual suspects – masses of butterflyfish, angelfish and blue queen triggerfish. Close to the end we found a tiny stonefish hiding underneath a coral head. The current carried us past the Quicksilver boat, and our trusty captain Sutama picked us up. The last dive of the day took place on S. D., which had unusually nonexistent current, but lots of marine life and one of the prettiest little turtles I’ve seen.

Yet another day of brilliant diving with our DM interns, next up: open water course with a Finn. We’ll see if he sinks or swims…

- Eeva & Heikki

On 22nd of April, so Thursday this week, we’re organising a beach clean-up in Sanur Bay. Half of our interns will be diving and cleaning up under water, while the other half starts on the beach. We’ll swap the teams after the first dive, so everyone gets a chance to get wet. On our dive trips our Divemasters are also given bags to collect trash into, and it all will be weighed in the end of the day.

In the evening we’ll have a barbecue with an auction of diving-related gear and a competition for the best underwater photo. We will have awards for the largest amount of trash as well as the strangest piece of rubbish found. All our guests, interns, staff and colleagues are cordially welcome to both the clean-up and especially the barbecue. Any money we manage to raise will be donated to Project AWARE.

Join us to make it a memorable day for everyone! – Eeva & Mandy

Tulamben on Friday was fabulous as always – on the wreck side we found a juvenile sweetlips, nudibranchs, minuscule shrimp and the usual potato cod. The drop off provided us with hingeback crabs, black saddled tobies, scorpionfishes, mantis shrimp, a napoleon wrasse and yet more nudibranchs.

A sweetlips in its early days...

...and a grown up one. Same family, completely different appearances.

On Saturday we took our divemaster interns out for a DSD workshop, and boy was it fun! It’s not every day that you get to do inwater bicycle kicks for training purposes, but today it was necessary to create realistic scenarios. The interns faced various problem situations such as runaway free-flow regulators, unintentional buoyant ascents and feet-first surfacing attempts in a safe, controlled environment -BSB’s highly skilled instructors took tremendous care of safety in the roles of DSD students. Several of them needed their newly acquired mask clearing techniques as a result of laughing at each other too much – training dives at their very best!

- Heikki

(more…)

Having already had a fantastic dive at Manta Point last Friday, we weren’t expecting the day to pull out anything more remarkable. I mean 12 Mantas dancing above your head, does diving get any better than this??? Apparently yes…. 25 minutes into our second dive at Crystal Bay, Nusa Penida after seeing numerous Giant Trevallies and other large pelagic fish, not only 1 but 2 Mola Mola appear from out in the Blue. The first one, about 2.5m tip to tip has large defined spots on its back, and the second swam in from the depths up to only 10m head on, creating a strange and ambiguous silhouette. So shocked to see them, it seemed quite unbelievable that they would be here at this time of year so it didnt really sink in straight away until it turned at the unmistakable form of the Oceanic Sunfish was shown, there was no denying it this was Blue Season Bali’s first and second Mola Mola of 2010!

Both the Mola swam East up into the shallows of Crystal Bay, shallow enough that even the boat crew said they had seen fins slicing the water.  Then again they passed as they disappeared back to the cool depths out to the Ceningan Channel. The fact we had seen them so out of season and so shallow was priceless…especially for the 6 lucky guests who had been told in the dive briefing:

“This is Crystal Bay, a cleaning station for the Oceanic Sunfish during the Mola Mola Season here in Bali, but you would have to be one of the luckiest divers in the world to expect to see one at this time of year, especially with this warm water we have now and the fact that we have Open Water divers on board the boat so our maximum depth will only be 18m”

Who knows what your going to see when you dive with BLUE SEASON BALI

BSB