Not only the boattrip (Ikan Terbang) was great, but the most important part, the diving, was very successfull. Jerome told me I was very lucky, because already the second dive, we saw a manta (first time Jerome saw 1 at that site).
Already within the first 3 days, I had seen a lot of white tip sharks, turtles, mantas and in 1 dive we spotted a tresher shark (=long tail shark), a seasnake, a group of at least 20 mobulas (=smaller manta rays), turtle, whitetipsharks. Normally, you wouldn’t even spot all of this in 10s of dives, and this time it was all in 1 hour.
And to top it of, a few dives later we saw a hammerheadshark. I saw the hammerhead coming right into my direction. As I didn’t have anything to call the attention of Jerome, I shouted very loudly. I didn’t want him to miss this, because hammerheads aren’t seen very often. He heard me and knew something extraordinary was happening. And maybe I shoute a bit to loud because the shark turned around and swam away.
The other dives, almost everyday we saw turtles, whitetipsharks, also sometimes eagle rays (1 dive 2 of them cruising together), and another manta which came really close to us.
And I like a lot the small things as well, so we were continuously looking for new nudibranches, shrimps, .. Jerome even found a seaspider which I had never seen before. Jerome is great in spotting both small and big things.
Only 1 minor thing happened to me: my external strobe flooded. I tried to dry it out but it didn’t seem to work anymore. So, now only pictures with the internal strobe can be taken, which means no real macroshots anymore. But it didn’t spoil my dives at all. These things happen sometimes.
The last days, we had no fish or meat anymore on board, so the crew requested us to bring something to the surface (because the fishing lines of Maurice were not very productive: 1 fish and 2 times plastic garbage). But, once in the water, we couldn’t really bring ourselves to kill an octopus or fish for food. Too bad, everybody had to wait until we would find a fishing boat.
Exploring life and the world! 