September in Bali: Menjangan Island

I was in Permuteran to dive two very different locations. The first was Menjangan Island, also known as the island of the deer. To get there, we had to abide by a whole bunch of rules. I like multi-coloured signs like this and I especially liked the rather paternalistic exhortation to make sure all your diving equipment was attached securely to your body.

While the diving at Menjangan Island wasn’t quite as spectacular as the other places I’d dived for this trip, it was very relaxing as there weren’t any challenging currents. The water was beautifully blue as usual and while there weren’t as many pelagics, there was still the odd gem or two. This yellow-spotted trevally was one of them.

Here also was the second time in my diving career I saw a school of squid in broad daylight. The last time I saw a school of squid, it was my first dive. It took more than a hundred dives to see them again.

Closer to the reef were plenty of longfin batfish. Here, they seemed almost excessively friendly, changing quickly from their day colours…

… to night colours as they came in close, as they did when wanting to be cleaned.

For some really odd reason, one of them swam right up to me, as if it was expecting me to do the cleaning honours for it.

There were plenty of parrotfish around. I’m surprised how little photographed these fish are. I think it’s something to do with how shy they are and how they just don’t stay put in one place.

There were others like this grouper that I can’t find in my fish ID book…

… and more familiar ones like this Indian doublebar goatfish hovering over some coral.

Some of the fish came in schools, like the two-spot snappers in their brownish grey raiment.

Others were more solitary, like one of my all-time favourites, the juvenile harlequin sweetlips. I can’t get enough of its unique polka dot pattern.

Some fish lived in crevices, like this yellowbarred jawfish emerging in search of prey.

Others like this fire dartfish seemed to simply hover in one place posing for the camera.

There were other fish that lived in crevices, and some of these you won’t want to get too close to. This fimbriated moray eel is one good example.

Some were small and really difficult to get close to, like the goby. I can’t tell for sure whether this is a common ghostgoby.

I think this is a large (!) whip goby but as usual, I can’t be sure.

Other fish are much more easily identified, like these panda clownfish, also known as Clark’s anemonefish. They were so at home among the stinging anemones…

… as was this anemone shrimp.

Rather camera-shy was this hermit crab, which hid its face swiftly under its shell as the camera clicked.

And then the ones that didn’t seem shy at all – the nudibranchs. I saw a white flabellina that seemed to mimic the coral it was on.

There were others that were even more unidentifiable, like this strange blue one with an orange and white strip outlined by deep blue running down the middle.

I tried to take some nudibranch portraits, some not quite coming out as I’d like as the flash refused to fire.

And others came out much better, with a pensive, slightly lonesome feel that seems quite at odds with the experience of being a nudibranch, perhaps.

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Layang Layang: Reef Life and Macro

Don’t think that Layang Layang is only for the pelagics. There’s plenty of macro to be found here, it’s only that sometimes the currents and the wall can be a bit challenging for finding those critters and also getting the perfect shot of that tiny little creature. There was a lot of reef life here, such as this rather surprised looking tomato grouper.

I was also quite pleased to see one of my favourites, a juvenile black snapper with its characteristic black and white stripes and dots.

Then there were the fish that insisting on posing for a picture, like this slightly constipated looking pennant bannerfish.

There were also bottom dwellers like blue-spotted stingrays.

They always seem to stare up so malevolently at us.

There were also other fairly amusing fish, like this doublebar goatfish. They like to rest on coral and pretend that they are not there, innocently spacing out, as if if they can’t see us we can’t see them!

Others showed off their colours beautifully against the coral, like these panda butterflyfish and peacock grouper.

DC is obsessed with the pufferfish family, just like I’m obsessed with hawkfish. His favourite shot of the whole trip is this seal-faced puffer that he cornered in a coral niche. It’s cute, isn’t it?

Not so cute is this giant frogfish that has its mouth open in wait for unsuspecting prey. In a split second, it’ll pounce and the prey will be in its belly.

Far less grotesque were pretty nudibranchs slowly making their way across the coral gardens.

They were surprisingly hard to spot among the colourful backdrop of coral, but once found, a joy to photograph.

Far harder to photograph were the pink anemonefish, who were so skittish, this is probably the only decent one I got amongst the tens of shots I took.

Going down to the seriously macro-level, I found some large whip gobies on a sea fan and thankfully this one wasn’t as shy as my next subject.

The Denise pygmy seahorses were such a pain to photograph. My camera had great difficulty focussing on the tiny creatures smaller than my fingernail. This one is pregnant and had the tendency to swim to the underside of the sea fan, making it impossible to catch on camera.

DC got this picture that’s far superior to mine, it’s so beautiful how he managed to capture the eye and its almost serene expression.

We had some good luck on sandy patches at the house reef at night. There was a flamboyantly coloured Spanish dancer.

There was also this strange blob of a sea slug oozing its way along.

Much prettier was this variation of a reeftop pipefish that wiggled its pretty pink tail and didn’t seem to mind the many flashes from our cameras.

Then there was the bizarrely shaped longhorn cowfish that seemed to have difficulty navigating its way out of this patch of seagrass.

Back on the coral reef, there were other oddities like this leaf scorpionfish with its glassy white eye staring out at us while swaying back and forth in the water pretending to be a leaf.

In the anemone were some porcelain crabs, which were quite shy. This one kept scuttling towards the underside of the anemone and it was really hard to keep up with it before it disappeared from sight.

A rare sight in the coral was this peacock flounder. Normally associated with muck diving, I was thrilled to see this one swim along and then try to rather unsuccessfully camouflage itself on some maze coral. Its googly eyes and patchy colouration gave it away immediately!

There were also quite a few shrimp and other crustaceans hiding out in crevices. Here’s DC trying to get a good snap of some shrimp.

They were some kind of orange cleaner shrimp that I have yet to identify, very pretty though!

Other cleaner shrimp like these commensal shrimp also hung around the same area. Both kinds would come out onto my hand and pick away at dead skin. I suppose it makes good eating for them. And round goes the circle of life!

There were also these spiny rock lobsters in another hole. I was so tempted to pull them out by their feelers but of course resisted. It’s a pity they were so shy though!

Back on the surface of the coral reef, we were happy to see the bigger fish thriving. There were plenty of sweetlips about, including these adult harlequin sweetlips that seemed to love giving a mirror mirage by going in pairs above and below the coral.

Then there was this emperor angelfish that came up to pose for a picture on my last dive. Such an obliging creature!

And last of the fish, there was this white mouth moray looking out for prey.

Unfortunately, as this video shows, it’s a bit of FAIL because it got slapped in the face by a passing fish. So much for being a lean, mean predator.

The nicest finale to our dive was getting up close to this turtle. As we approached, the green turtle was facing us and knew full well of our approach. Somehow it didn’t swim away.

DC got in close enough for a really macro shot of it.

But then we noticed something odd about the way it was rocking back and forth.

We realised that it was stuck in the coral! For the sake of this turtle, I broke one of the laws of diving – don’t touch any creature – and tugged it gently out. It got free and immediately coasted up towards the surface for a good breath of fresh air.

It was such a lovely feeling to end our successful series of dives by helping out a stranded turtle.