Back to Tulamben: Nudibranchs

And we conclude this series on Tulamben with a tribute to the nudibranch. There was no shortage of them at Tulamben, we even saw their ribbon-like masses of eggs occasionally.

They came in all sorts of colours, from the usual white with coloured trimmings, such this one…

… to those that looked like bits of bubblegum.

There were a few that came in pairs, exhibiting the trailing behaviour of one hanging on to the tail of the other in making contact.

There were others that made head-to-head contact, so I wonder whether it was a precursor to any mating action. In any case, these fellas move so slowly I’ll probably have run out of air before anything happened, so it was just as well that I moved on.

We were pleased to have spotted a nudibranch that Wayan had never seen before. This warty fellow seems rather well placed to camouflage itself amongst the coral and sand, it’s no surprise it’d not been seen before. I’m sure Wayan will start looking out for it more from now on, and perhaps it could end up being a new species named after him!

Other nudibranchs were more quotidian, like this yellow, white and black one, looking quite like most of the ones we see while diving in waters nearer to home.

Some were unusual for me, like this red one. I’ve not seen a red nudibranch before, I don’t think.

And others, like this, made me torn between liking them for their delicate contours and cute colouring, and turning away in disgust because the yellow splotches made me think it had a skin disease.

Whatever the case, nudibranchs reminded me that slowing down helps you to get good shots on the camera, and that slowly but surely does it, just like how this one ended up where it was.

And that was the end of our sojourn to Tulamben in Bali.

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September in Komodo: The Critters

Komodo surprised me by throwing up plenty of critters. There were plenty of nudibranchs, as usual, eggs included.

Some of them I still can’t identify though I see them occasionally.

Others, I think I know the names, like this spanish dancer (I think).

And then there are the ones that I’d seen for the first time in Komodo, and had no idea what they were.

There were some that were plain bulbous and gross. If anything can tell me what this is, I’ll be quite grateful. I think this is more of a sea snail of sorts because I think our guides said something about the shell being on the inside and the soft stuff outside.

There were also much prettier ones with delicate tendrils.

Then there were the crustaceans that lived in the delicate tendrils of corals, like this coral crab.

Others, like the orang utan crab, lived on cabbage coral.

And there were the hard to find whip coral shrimp, which was a beast to photograph. I remember this little critter took me 10 minutes and a good 20 bar of air to get a not-great photo.

And the highlight of the critters was Oscar the smashing mantis shrimp. This fella lived in a hole and whenever we’d visit, our guide would knock at the entrance of his hole. Before long, two little fish would rise out of the hole, smartly realising that the safest place would be in the cosy hole where Oscar couldn’t extend his smashing pincers.

Check out how Oscar would come out and peer at the outside world.

September in Bali: The Cephalopod Experience

One dive at Nusa Lembongan we thought we were having a rather quiet and peaceful hour underwater. The water was blue and fairly clear and there wasn’t a lot of action. We were a little disappointed because of a false alarm that mola molas were sighted.

After the advance party came back reporting nothing to see, we morosely headed on and came face to face with a large cuttlefish instead. Now cuttlefish aren’t particularly rare, but this one was large and quite friendly.

In fact, it was so friendly that it let me get right under and take a cheeky shot of it propelling itself backward.

As we proceeded further, we met more of these placid characters milling about on the reef.

I started to click away quite happily…

… and to my delight, I realised that the main reason why they were so placid was that they were laying eggs! Here I caught a female using her tentacles to push the egg sacs deep into the coral away from reach of predator fish.

As I looked up, there were quite a few others in the area, some rather large like this handsome specimen here that my dive guide Nyoman is pretending to catch.

I’m not sure whether they were other females searching for a good spot for their own eggs or males keeping watch.

It was a wonderful privilege to watch a new generation of cuttlefish being laid.

September in Bali: Underwater Macro

Bali as a dive destination really surprised me with the sheer variety and quantity of wildlife to be seen. The rich coral life supported many species that were rare at other more famous dive areas in the region. I could choose no better place than Tulamben to start taking underwater photos. There were lots of  Nemos to shoot, though some were shyer than others, like these false anemonefish or clownfish.

The pink anemonefish flashed a bright pink against the brilliant green of their protective homes. Even so, they sulked at the camera rather disagreeably.

It was this panda clownfish that finally posed nicely for me while guarding his pink eggs at the base of the anemone.

Next up, the challenge was to spot and shoot the pygmy seahorses. My task was made far easier with the world’s best dive guide ever, Wayan. It was amazing how he could spot the little creatures so easily and point them out carefully. Here, you can see how tiny a pygmy seahorses is.

Here’s the Denise pygmy seahorse up close, looking so elegant and fragile.

Less delicate looking was the regular Gorgonian pygmy seahorse, though this male is very obviously pregnant. For seahorses, the males carry the eggs while the females swim free. What a great arrangement.

Other rare fish included this longnose hawkfish, a very pretty fish that started my subsequent fascination with hawkfishes of all shapes and sizes.

Then there was the jawfish that burrowed in the sea bottom, only revealing its face and yellow eyebrows to the surface.

And there was the funny-looking ribbon eel that showed off its striped blue body and brilliant yellow mouth, looking like it had a tragicomic accident with a fluorescent yellow marker pen.

Another interesting find was the robust ghost pipefish that looked remarkably like leaves gliding along in the current.

Here’s a video with a pregnant one, you can just about spot its eggs in between its ventral fin parts right at the end of the video.

There were also other creatures like this pretty little cuttlefish so well camouflaged against some stinging coral.

And then there were the pretty nudibranchs, also unglamourously known as sea slugs. There were pink ones with yellow trimmings…

… black and white ones with orange trimmings…

… purely blue ones…

… and even pairs with pinkish brown splotches on them. I bet these fellas must be poisonous, otherwise they’d be way too easy to be spotted and gobbled up!

A Very Alcoholic Cherry Almond Cake

I’d recently discovered some really nice dried cherries in Carrefour that don’t quite cost the sky (just an arm and a leg). It allowed me to finally try out Nigella’s recipe for a cherry cake. Her version involved natural glace cherries. I haven’t seen natural glace cherries anywhere in this corner of the world before and I thoroughly detest the typical bright scarlet ones, so I upped the decadence level by soaking the dried cherries for some hours in a mixture of kirsch and rum. It worked out beautifully, tasting a little like christmas fruit cake. It gets even better the next morning as the alcohol from the cherries infuses the cake. I’d imagine it’ll do wonderfully with extra dark rum scattered over the cake and left to age for a week before serving.

Before we get to the recipe, a few tips on prep work. First, soak the cherries overnight in a mixture of kirsch and rum. I ran out of kirsch, so topped up the alcohol with dark rum to cover the cherries in a bowl. Use brandy, whisky or vodka if you don’t have either the above. Next, halve your cherries or chop them very roughly  as I think the cherried alcohol infuses better in the cake that way. Last word on flour: I don’t really like the hassle of stocking both plain and self-raising flour and also keeping track of my baking powder to make sure that it’s not expired yet. What I do instead is to make up my own baking powder by using cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda. If you’d like to tailor your own recipes, halve the amount of baking powder to find out how much cream of tartar to use, and halve the amount of cream of tartar for how much bicarbonate of soda to add.

Ingredients:

200g dried cherries, soaked overnight in alcohol mix and then halved
250g flour
1½tsp cream of tartar
¾tsp bicarbonate of soda
200g butter
120g sugar
3 eggs, beaten
2 drops almond essence
100g ground almonds
about 3 tbsp milk

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC. Butter and line a loaf cake tin.
2. Drain the cherries, reserving the soaking liquid
3. Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy, then add eggs and almond essence.
4. Fold in flour and ground almonds.
5. Make up the cherry soaking liquid to 6 tbsp with the milk and fold into the cake mixture.
6. Fold in the cherries and scrape out into tin.
7. Bake for 1 hour or so until a satay stick comes out clean.
8. Let cool completely before removing from tin.

Makes about 12 slices.

Diving the Similans: Things on a Wreck

Our last dive in the Similans was at Boonsung Wreck. It used to be a whole boat at the bottom of the sea, but the tsunami lifted it up and smashed it into four big pieces. Ironically, this makes for richer marine life as there’s more space for coral to grow and therefore more places for fish to hide and spawn. Among which were these bored, listless looking longfin bannerfish mooching about the place.

There were quite a few moray eels and here was one of the few blackspotted morays I’ve seen. It wasn’t too pleased with its hole because soon after I took this picture, it departed and tried to fight a white eye moray for space but sadly was soon defeated and had to go back to its lousy old hole. Poor guy.

Then there were goby shrimp and their shrimp gobies. It’s cute how all the shrimp does is shovel gravel out of the hole. Talk about a menial task. The goby just guards the hole and darts in at the first sign of trouble. The shrimp never shovels past the middle of the goby’s body. It was so hard to get close enough to take a good picture. This is the best I got.

Then there were these two lovebird cuttlefish who stuck together despite showing their alarm colours. I think there were too many divers hovering over them and no crevices big enough for them to hide in.

Last of all was the only set of nudibranch eggs I saw on the trip. It was funny how there weren’t a huge number of nudibranchs in the Similans. The ones I saw were the rather common and boring ones, so it was such a treat to see the ribbony sheets of eggs. See how each pink dot is an egg? I wonder how these things survive without being eaten by predators, they’re so obvious. Maybe they’re poisonous to most fish.

Boonsung Wreck was a nice easy wreck to dive at. While the viz wasn’t the best, I liked how there was stuff both on the wreck and around it. It was a relaxing end to the diving.

Mimolette

We were casting out for a brunch place and Riders Cafe wasn’t open, so we settled for Mimolette next door. I’d heard that the standard had gone down but decided to try it anyway. We started with the lemon pancakes which were competently executed. They were done with lemon zest in the batter and served with honey and strawberries. I liked how they served real cream, whipped to just the right consistency. However, I didn’t like how the strawberries were the regular bland undderipe kind and I felt that the pancakes could have been taken a notch higher if they’d served it with lemon curd or French crepe-style sprinkled with lemon juice and icing sugar.

DC highly recommended the steak and eggs and he was right. The steak was very well flavoured and done just right for breakfast – medium rare. We normally go for rare steak but this time went with the restaurant’s recommendation. It was perfect for the first meal of the day. The scrambled eggs were on the edge of runny – just right and the sundried tomato with bacon made a great counterpoint to both egg and steak. It was a good though heavy start to the day.

Judging from the website, it seems like they’ve changed the menu. Try your luck anyway!

Mimolette
55 Fairways Drive
Tel: 6467 7748