First Underwater Photos Published!

I used to want to be a marine biologist but I realized in college that I had more of a knack for languages than lab reports. Still, I have always loved the ocean and I have always loved swimming. The diving I have done these past two years in Indonesia has reignited my love affair with the ocean and has shown me that even though I am not a professional marine biologist, I can can still be passionate about the ocean in other ways. I have done 168 dives to date, I am a certified PADI Rescue Diver and I have also fallen in love with underwater photography. At this point in my life, if you asked me what my absolute dream job would be I would say a freelance travel writer and underwater photographer since this job would combine my loves of writing, traveling, diving and photography. Therefore, it's perhaps no surprise that I consider the publication of my first dive article and underwater photos to be the unofficial highlight of my two-year fellowship in Indonesia.

Rantje first asked me to write an article for 'What's Happening?', the free North Sulawesi tourism magazine, more than a year ago near the end of my first fellowship year in Gorontalo and now it's finally been published in the Spring 2011 edition of the magazine. And he really surprised me by submitting two of my own photographs with the article! I knew there would be the photo of me with the Salavador Dali sponge because we did a special underwater photo shoot for that last year but I had no idea my own photos would be published! I was thrilled when Rantje sent me the hard copies in the mail last week. However, my photos were extremely dark because the publisher got the printing saturation wrong on the first run. Fortunately, this mistake was corrected in subsequent printings and in the online version of my article that you can read here on page 18.

Although I've been fortunate to dive in some pretty spectacular places like Komodo, Nusa Lembongan, Bunaken, Lembeh, and the Togean Islands, Gorontalo will always be my absolute favorite diving destination in Indonesia for all of the reasons that I listed in my article. Since leaving Gorontalo, I've been back twice to dive - once in December with my sister and Mark and once again in March with Megan and Christina. I love diving there, I love diving with Rantje and the gang and I love introducing Gorontalo to other divers. That's why I was thrilled once again when Rantje unveiled Miguel's Diving's new t-shirt design:

Miguel's Diving t-shirt

The diver with the wavy blond hair admiring a Salvador Dali sponge while a whale shark passes overhead? That's me!!

My diving days in Gorontalo have come to an end (for now) but I find it beyond fitting that my departure from Indonesia is marked by the publication of my article about diving in Gorontalo and the introduction of the new Gorontalo t-shirts with my likeness!

I hear there will be a new ELF in Gorontalo next year. I really hope that person is a diver too so he or she can enjoy Gorontalo's hidden paradise! 

Gorontalo...Again!

Here are some images from my most recent trip to Gorontalo. In all likelihood, it was probably my last trip there for a very long time but that's kinda hard to think about. So, I'll just call it my most recent trip.

Blue starfish

Detail of ruby-lined sea cucumber

Gorgonian crab

Unidentified crab

Lionfish

Shrimp

Randall's sailfin goby

Tiny shrimp on blue starfish

With Christina and Megan

Diving the Gili Islands

I remember first reading about the Gili Islands in a travel memoir before I even moved to Indonesia. The three islands of Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air were described as little-known rustic outposts for road-weary travelers looking for a place off the beaten track to put down their heavy backpacks. Days easily turned into weeks and months as travelers languished in hammocks, swam in the turquoise sea and enjoyed life on the traffic-free islands.

Today these islands are a major tourist destination in Indonesia - especially Gili Trawangan, which has gained a reputation as a party island with all-night raves and easy access to 'shrooms and pot. And although the diving opportunities were said to be plentiful, I had also heard that a lot of the coral around the islands had been damaged by El Nino beaching. For these two reasons, I had never been particularly interested in going to the Gilis but when I started researching places to dive with Henry, I reconsidered the Gilis because they're relatively easy to get to from Jakarta; they're tourist-friendly and offer a mix of Indonesian and Western food; and several friends had described Gili Air to me as a particularly lovely and romantic island with private bungalows and bamboo lounge chairs on the beach. So, we went to Gili Air and it was exactly as promised - I would recommend it to anyone looking for a little romantic getaway. However, things with Henry didn't exactly work out and I found myself finishing out the rest of the week by myself on Gili Trawangan - the one island I had been avoiding for the past year and a half.

Although I would never have planned a trip to Gili Trawangan for myself, it ironically turned out to be a pretty great solo travel destination and not nearly as much of a party island as I had feared. The island pretty much consists of one main street lined with dive shops and beach-front restaurants offering a good variety of food. Actually, it was pretty ideal in that way. I booked myself into a vaguely Indian themed hotel two doors down from the Blue Marlin dive shop and in between dives I went to a place called 'The Deli' that had excellent European style sandwiches and protein shakes. And the diving itself was much better than I had expected too. I have never seen so many sharks and turtles in my entire life! On practically every dive I saw one or the other. The coral, of course, can't compete with Gorontalo, but it was fun to see the bigger stuff. There was also a shipwreck and an interesting artificial reef called 'biorocks' that hosted a ton of marine life.

Yellow boxfish

Giant clam

Coral crab

Sea urchin

Turtle

Sharks under rock

But without a doubt, the best diving experience I had in the Gilis was an exploratory muck dive with one of the Blue Marlin instructors. After a few days of seeing lots of sharks and turtles, I found myself getting restless and longing for a good macro muck dive but 'Hans Reef', the muck diving site off Gili Air, wasn't being dived that week because the water was green. After a bit of discussion with the instructors at the shop, Donna mentioned a brand-new site called 'Magic Pier' off the mainland of Lombok. This site was so new that Donna had never been to it. In fact, only one person on staff had ever dived it and he was out sick. Donna warned me that she had very little information to go on but she had been wanting to check out the site too for some time. So she agreed to take me there provided I understood she couldn't guarantee me anything and there was a good chance we wouldn't see anything at all. But being a newly certified Muck Diver, I was more than up for it and found it thrilling to be heading out for a real underwater exploration.

Once we got to the site and figured out which buoy corresponded to the rough sketch we had gotten from the shop, we splashed in and dropped down along the buoy line to 17 meters. There was only about a half meter of visibility!! Good thing Donna had her compass with her - she successfully led us towards the jetty despite the poor vis but I had to be extra vigilant about keeping my eye on her. I didn't want to get separated in half a meter of vis! After a good 20 minutes of poking around in the poor vis, we ascended to 11 meters where we found LOADS of cool stuff on the chain off the pier. We were convinced we could have found frogfish there if we had stayed longer but we decided to surface after 68 minutes. I really wanted to dive the site again the next day now that I knew what to look for but I had to fly home. If I ever go back to the Gilis, I'll be heading straight for 'Magic Pier'.

Unidentified fish at 'Magic Pier'

Return to Gorontalo

With my newly certified dive buddy at my side, we set out overland for Gorontalo, where we met up with my ELF friend Mark for four days of excellent diving with Rantje. It was fun to show my sister where I used live and work and even more fun to show her my old diving haunts! And, after 60+ dives in Gorontalo last year without a camera, I was thrilled to finally be able to take pictures at some of my favorite dive sites. Although Colleen didn't get to see any of the whale sharks that occasionally cruise by overhead, she did see many other interesting things that make diving in Gorontalo so special such as the enormous intricately carved Salvador Dali sponges, the hundreds and hundreds of types of corals, the mysterious Jinn Caves dive site, and the local fishing village of Olele.

Surface interval @ Hidden Beach
(Rantje later used this photo in the new German language edition of the Miguel's Diving brochure!)

White-eyed moray eel

Beautiful Gorontalo corals!

Big ol' clam

Gorgonian crab @ Jinn Caves

Blue-spotted fantail stingray @ Jinn Caves

Unidentifed frogfish

Surface interval @ Olele Village

Another great Gorontalo dive comes to an end

Colleen left Indonesia with 18 dives under her belt! And she's a born natural too, although that's no surprise since she's a great swimmer. I can't wait for us to have more diving adventures together, wherever in the world that may be!

Wow..Muck Diver Course!

My ELF friend Megan and I have the distinguished honor of being the first two PADI certified Muck Divers in the world! We took this brand new course while staying with Two Fish Divers in Lembeh, Sulawesi - the "muck diving capital of the world".

Muck diving is diving in sandy, muddy or "mucky" water. The visibility might not be so good and there will probably be some tires and trash strewn about. But many people are drawn to this type of diving for chance to glimpse and photograph some truly bizarre looking creatures, or critters as they're called in the muck diving world. Lembeh is particularly famous for its black-sand muck diving.

Helen, one of the Two Fish instructors who designed the course, guided us through a series of peak performancy buoyancy drills underwater and told us about some of the crazy critters at Lembeh. As we we looked through a critter identification book before one of our dives, I mentioned to Helen that the thing I wanted to see most of all on this trip was a stargazer. I'd seen pictures of this creature before and it really freaked me out because it looks like a skeleton head buried in the sand. Helen said that the stargazers are seen more often on night dives but lucky for us, she managed to find one for us during our morning dive!

Stargazer - freaky or what?!

Some other special Lembeh critters I saw for the first time:

Giant Yellow Frogfish

Flamboyant Cuttlefish

The creatures in Lembeh were amazing. In addition to these, I saw snake eels, several strange crabs, spiny devil scorpionfish, coconut and reef octopuses, Ambon scorpionfish, Banggai cardinalfish, and many common seahorses. But this is still not enough - a return trip to Lembeh is a must in the future to check off a few other critters on my wish list including a hairy frogfish, a mimic octopus, a wonderpus, and a blue-ringed octopus!

Helen and I demonstrating the dive signal for 'ghost pipefish' - another great muck critter!

Diving Pulau Weh

Pulau Weh is a little tiny island off the northern tip of Sumatra, a short ferry ride away from Banda Aceh. Megan and I made sure to squeeze in a few days of diving after our workshop in Banda Aceh. 

Durban Hingebeak Shrimp

School of Juvenile Striped Catfish

Upside Down Lionfish

Peacock Mantis Shrimp

After a few fun days of diving, we packed up all our gear and took an hour long shuttle ride to the port town of Sabang to catch our ferry back to Banda Aceh. We said goodbye to our driver, loaded our bags on the boat and took our seats. An hour or so later, we were still sitting at the dock. Then there came some announcement in Indonesian over the loudspeaker followed by a mass exodus of all the Indonesian passengers on the boat. We eventually figured out that the ferry had been canceled for the day because of rough seas. The next ferry wouldn't be leaving until the following morning. So, we gathered our bags again and disembarked. Luckily, our driver was still lingering around the ferry terminal and agreed to take us back to the dive resort for a discounted price. As a bonus, we got to do an extra dive that day and it was a great one - a big dogtooth tuna swam right up to me as I descended, we saw a blacktip reef shark and lots of giant moray eels and, as a final highlight, we saw dolphins from the boat on our way back to the resort.

When we finally returned to Banda Aceh the next day, our host Khairil told us that it's very unusual for the ferries to be canceled; it happens only a few times a year. He then went on to say that there had been several fatal ferry accidents in recent years on the Banda Aceh - Pulau Weh route because of overloaded boats going out in bad weather. After hearing that, we were even more glad that our ferry the day before had been canceled. We had to rebook our return flight to Jakarta but it was more than worth it for an extra day of diving and a SAFE return to Banda Aceh.

Happy As a Clam

I recently came back from a trip to Bali where I finally got a chance to play with my new toys - a Canon G11 and a Fisheye Fix underwater housing. Hilariously, I found out that my new housing is quite the guy magnet! This is ironic since I'm happily off the market now, but seriously, I had guys coming up to me saying stuff like, "That's a beautiful housing you have there" and "Excuse me, I'm a photographer and I couldn't help but notice...".  Single ladies pay attention. You might want to invest in a nice piece of photographic equipment. I'm just sayin'.

Behold my power combo:

I was very nervous about taking my setup underwater for the first time. It's the single most expensive gear purchase I've made so far for my new hobby and I had nightmares about flooding the camera on my first dive. So I made sure to get some DAN equipment insurance beforehand and then I took down just the housing without the camera on my first dive to test the seal at depth.

The good news is that the camera works wonderfully underwater and did not flood at all. The housing is super easy to use and I just can't get over how much easier it is to press the shutter button on this housing compared to the Canon plastic housings. The ISO and exposure settings are all adjustable from the housing itself which really reduces the amount of time you have to spend fiddling with the menu settings.

The bad news is that I didn't get very many good pictures this trip. I like taking macro pictures and staying in one place for a long time to get that perfect shot by playing with the settings. But we were diving off Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida, areas known for their strong currents and surge. It's not really possible to stay in one place for long. At one point I was finning against the current trying to take some reefscape shots of some photogenic angelfish in a crevice. I snapped four shots and when I looked up I realized that I had lost my dive group! Fortunately the others weren't far away, but it drove home the lesson that I really can't take repeat shots in current. I also learned that photographers swimming against the current use up their air much faster than everyone else.

Of course, I knew that Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida were not ideal for beginner photographers since I had dived there before. But the islands are gorgeous and since I was in charge of showing the new ELFs a good time on Bali, I wanted to take them to this beautiful spot a little off the beaten path. I had also hoped that I would get a chance to practice my manual white balance skills with some of the big fish that come with the current and surge, namely manta rays, mola molas and sharks. To my great disappointment though I didn't see any of those things.

So, here's a sampling of a few shots I did manage to get while finning against the current, swaying in surge, struggling to keep up with my dive group and trying not to crash into the coral or my dive buddies:

Saddleback anenomefish

Sand perch

Swimmer crab

Flathead

Reefscape

Freckled hawkfish

Despite the frustrations of shooting in these conditions, I LOVE my new camera and housing and can't wait for my next dive trip. Hopefully, I'll be able to take a few long weekend trips to Lembeh and Gorontalo in the next couple of months. If so, I really will be as happy as a clam.

PADI Digital Underwater Photographer Course

Once I had completed the, let’s be honest, somewhat stressful Rescue Diver course, I could focus on my next goal – underwater digital photography! I had been looking forward to this course for a few months and had high hopes that it would be better than the photography adventure dive I did for my Advanced Open Water back in January at a different resort. That resort had let my friend Mark and me use our Olympus Tough cameras for the dive. The thing is, those cameras are only waterproof to 10 meters and, when diving, we routinely go to 20 or 30 meters. Mark’s LED screen malfunctioned after just a few pictures and I spent the whole dive more attuned to my depth gauge to make sure I didn’t go below 10 meters than I did to my photos. Never mind the fact that we didn’t even get any tips on how to take good underwater photos.

I’m pleased to say that the PADI Digital Underwater Photographer course at Two Fish was much, much better than my previous foray into underwater photography. First of all, I spent an entire afternoon studying the PADI manual where I learned about the usefulness of such things as histograms and manual white balance. The next day, after having gone over the knowledge reviews with my instructor, Abraham, I had a land lesson on how to use the resort’s camera, a Canon Digital IXUS 100 IS, in its underwater housing. Abraham gave me assignments around the resort to practice using the ISO and exposure settings, as well as the digital zoom to get close ups of macro subjects. After successfully taking pictures of my room key, ants on a log and various other things, I was ready to take the camera diving.

The course included two dives with just Abraham and me. He pointed out some interesting subjects and let me take my sweet time adjusting the camera settings and trying different angles. What a luxury to be a photographer alone with a guide! I made the most of my dives but I was hungry for more practice so I rented the camera for three more days of fun diving. After each day of diving, I sat down with Abraham so he could critique my photos and show me how by adjusting contrast, brightness, midtones and saturation with Microsoft Office Picture Manager, I could easily make an OK photo pretty decent (and not have to spend a fortune on Photoshop). But the biggest lesson I learned from him was to get close, fill the frame with an interesting subject and try to get the best picture you can from the camera so there’s less to fix later.

Here are some of my favorite shots:

Thank you Abraham for getting me started on my new hobby! I can’t wait to buy a camera and continue taking pictures of the magnificent world under the sea.

The Weird and the Wonderful

The term muck diving refers to diving in areas where the bottom is sandy, muddy, murky and/or littered with rubble, rocks, tires, old fishing equipment, discarded shoes and various other things. While you’re not apt to find a whale shark here, plenty of other fascinating creatures call this environment home. I shot the following pictures at Sand Castle in Gorontalo with my Olympus uT8000 in about 3 m of water.

A pair of Starry Moray Eels

Reef Stonefish

Juvenile Lionfish

Hermit Crab

Porcelain Crab on Anenome

A pair of Ambonian Shrimp

Sea Urchin

And here's one more shot from Shadowlands. This is a reef site, not a muck site, but it's where I saw my first boxer crab so I was pretty excited. These guys are so cute! Note the tufts of anenome he's clutching in his claws like boxing gloves.

Boxer Crab

Taking pictures underwater is a lot of fun but I feel very frustrated by the limitations of my camera. If any of you reading this are underwater photographers, can you please suggest a good quality diving camera for me? I don't want to invest in something super expensive, but I want a camera that's good enough to offer me a lot of creative flexibility. Hendra, my new photographer friend, recommends the Canon G11, which he considers to be a semi-pro camera. I'd love to hear some other recommendations as well.