Do you know how beautiful the ocean is? The sound of the waves, the wind gently blowing our hair, the feeling of sand beneath bare feet, and the warmth of sunlight on our skin. And beyond all that beauty, are the secrets that lie beneath the water.
Today our team went in different directions. Wedi and Lucy joined Uber Scuba to survey Siaba Besar, Manta Point and Tatawa Besar. Vidlia joined Neren Diving to travel to Siaba Besar and Manta Point. Axel, Ida, Willy, Andy and I joined Dive Komodo to survey Batu Bolong, Manta Point and Mawan.
Napoleon wrasse recorded on Batu Bolong
As always we started early, and by 7am we were already at the dive center to prepare our equipment and introduce ourselves to the tourists. Join us on Dive Komodo’s boat Raja Wali today were tourist from Belgium and from Jakarta.
During the journey out to the first dive site, Andy gave us a seminar about oceanography. We learned about the tidal cycle, the influence of the moon and sun on the currents, and how these impact on manta abundance.
Our first site was Batu Bolong. Batu means rock and bolong means hole, and we can recognise this site by the rocky island that has a hole in its center. It was an amazing site, and we descended through clouds of schooling fish that seemed to welcome us. The rocky walls were covered in so many colorful corals, and we saw many moray eels hiding beneath outcrops and tabulate corals. Suddenly, Andy made a signal and called us over. He was pointing at something in a small cave. At first I thought he was pointing to one of the largest moray eels we had seen yet, but as I looked closer I saw that behind the moray, hiding in the dark, were two juvenile whitetip reef sharks!
We swam further around the reef to a rocky wall, and then tried to follow a labyrinth of channels from 10m to the shallows at 2m. As well as whitetip reef sharks, we also recorded Napoleon wrasse and hawksbill turtles in our survey logbooks.
Before our next dive at Manta Point, we gave a manta briefing to the tourists. They were so excited to become citizen scientists and try the manta survey. Manta Point is a divesite in the middle of the ocean, and we could see the beautiful landscape of of Komodo National Park all around us. We met two mantas swimming against the current with their mouths wide open as the fed on zooplankton in the water column. We moved on in our V formation, with Andy in the middle. Suddenly we met another two mantas. They swam passed us interns and approached Andy where they swam beside him for a few minutes. Both of these mantas were pregnant!
For our last dive we moved to Mawan. We entered the water in front of a beach and descended to 26 meters. There were a lot of fish at this site, with beautiful soft corals and sea turtles feeding. We swam a long way searching for mantas, but today we were unlucky and there were no mantas at Mawan. We did record two whitetip reef sharks napping together on the seafloor. Soon after, we suddenly met a current of cold water, and decided to change direction. Then we found two more whitetip reef sharks hiding behind the coral reefs.
Today really made me think that this world has so many beautiful places and amazing wildlife. On the surface and even below the waves, we can explore all of them but we also have a responsibility to conserve their beauty.