Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays

Now that Diving Indonesia’s Bird’s Head Seascape, the new guidebook we produced for Conservation International, is complete and now available, it’s time to think about diving again. (BTW, you can order the book directly from our website, www.secretseavisions.com. Just go to the “Books” tab and then click on “fishID” to order. If you prefer, you can order it from Amazon, but it will be drop shipped from "fishID" so save time and order it from them.) The book has received rave reviews. See Drew Wongs’s on Wet Pixel, http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/diving-indonesias-birds-head-seascape-a-book-review. As Drew will tell you, the book is a must have for anyone visiting the region and for all fans of underwater photography. For those of you with divers or photography lovers on your Christmas list this book is the perfect gift.

Our 2012 and 2013 trips have been sold out for months, so for 2013 we have decided to add a land-based trip to Lembeh Strait and go critter hunting. We will be staying at our favorite resort in the Strait, Lembeh Resort. Just to make it more fun, especially for you nudibranch aficionados, we have asked one of the world’s leading “branchsperts” Dr. Dave Behrens to join us. Dave has written numerous books and identified more species of nudibranchs than just about anyone. Dave will give informal talks and be on hand to help with identifying new specimens. And yes, we will find new species. The divemasters at Lembeh are some of the best on the planet. They will amaze you with their ability to spot these spectacular animals, plus all the other critters that Lembeh is famous for, like Rhinopias scorpionfish and mimic octopus, to name but a few.

Join us in Lembeh June 28-July 8, 2013. Check out our web site for more details.

In 2014, some of our most exciting news is that we will be teaming up with Kerri Bingham and Hergen Spalink for some of our trips. If you’ve dived Indonesia, especially Lembeh, you probably are aware of Kerri and Herg. We were very impressed with them and their skills when we met during their stint as the cruise directors with Kararu Dive Voyages. For the last 3 years they have been the dive-ops managers at Lembeh Resort. They are super people, both of them have incredibly engaging personalities, are very talented photographers, critter spotters, group leaders, and we just love diving with Kerri and Herg.

In 2014 we have decided to spread our wings a bit and visit a destination that, believe it or not, is not in Indonesia. Our first trip with Kerri and Herg will be aboard World Wide Dive and Sail’s (the Siren fleet) new liveaboard in Palau. Palau was the first place we dived in the Pacific (1982) and we still remember it as being magical and have always wanted to return. We will plan a special itinerary that will incorporate Palau’s famous sites, like Blue Corner, with seldom visited, off the beaten track, sites. If you’ve never been to Palau or, like us, haven’t visited for over 30 years, this will be your chance.

The dates for our Palau charter are March 29-April 8, 2014. Look at our website for more details about this trip.

But, there is no way we can let a year go by without at least one trip to Indonesia. Keri and Herg suggested that we give all of you the opportunity to experience what we’ve been doing, virtually alone, for all these years. Exploring, finding new dive sites, and developing new itineraries is what we do best. So we’ve targeted a region we’ve all wanted to explore, the Forgotten Islands, which inscribe eastern Indonesia’s southeast Banda Sea. Names like Babar, Wetar, and Tanimbar should come to mind by those who have read Rudyard Kipling’s fascinating stories. This trip will combine known sites in the central Banda Sea and eastern Nusa Tenggara, with never before dived sites throughout this vast region. We’ll dive with sea snakes at Manuk, perhaps get lost in a huge school of barracuda off Fadol or simply marvel at the sites around the island of Dai.

We have chosen to charter the best boat in Indonesia for an exploratory adventure, the MV Pindito. Edi Frommenwiler, Pindito’s owner, is a legend. Aboard Pindito he pioneered virtually all of Indonesia’s most famous dive regions, but Edi has never been to the Forgotten Islands. (For more about Edi and his impact on Indonesian diving read the dedication, page 30, in our first guidebook, Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat.)

This adventure will cover an area so vast that it can’t be explored in a single trip. So you’ll have to choose between the northern or the southern itineraries. Of course, some of you may choose to join us for both! We will begin in Ambon on April 14, 2014 and break the trip in Saumlaki, on Yamdena Island in the Tanimbar group on April 25. The second trip begins in Saumlaki on April 28 and finishes in Maumere on May 9.

Join our team on this journey and experience what few others have ever seen while we discover a whole new world of diving. This will be a once in a lifetime opportunity and the trips are sure to sell out quickly. Book this trip soon and experience the thrill of exploration with us.

HO³,
Burt and Maurine

Cenderawasih Bay & Whale Sharks

We just returned from our initial survey of Cenderawasih Bay and we know that many of you are very interested in what we found. Most of our diving, other than on Manokwari’s excellent WWII wrecks, was within Cenderawasih Bay National Park, Indonesia’s largest. This park is huge, half again larger than Raja Ampat; our 16-day survey barely scratched the “surface” of this underwater wilderness.

Cenderawasih, along with Raja Ampat and Triton Bay, makes up the Bird’s Head Seascape. Its reefs look nothing like Raja’s colorful, fish-filled reefs, nor are they similar to Triton Bay’s soft coral wonderland. Pristine and vast, the bay’s reef tops comprise some of healthiest hard coral gardens we have ever seen. Dramatic vertical walls with prolific sponge life abound on the outlying atolls. We found schooling fish along the reef points and ridges.

Cenderawasih also has a few unique features in Indonesia’s pantheon of rich reefs. The bay was geologically isolated until recently, and if you look at a map you’ll see that it is still somewhat confined. This means that less current moves through Cenderawasih’s waters, and therefore there’s less recruitment of marine larvae than in a place like Raja. This isolation has blessed Cenderawasih with a number of very colorful endemic species. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that many normally deep-dwelling fish species are found here in relatively shallow water. This topsy-turvy reefscape, along with the presence of the world’s largest fish, the whale shark, prompted Dr. Gerald Allen to call Cenderawasih “ the Galapagos of Indonesia’s Reefs”.

Our team included Drs. Mark Erdmann and Gerald Allen who were documenting fish and collecting new species. Mark is head of the Bird’s Head Marine Programs for Conservation International (http://www.conservation.org/). Gerry is the world’s leading tropical marine ichthyologist and the author of numerous popular books on reef fish identification. Also onboard were Titus, a national park ranger with a very enlightened attitude and invaluable local knowledge; Ruland, a UNIPA (University of Papua) graduate assisted Dr. Crissy Huffard, a cephalopod expert and Conservation International staff member, with a mollusk (tridacna clam) genetic study project spearheaded by the non-diving member of our team, Pak Hamed, a UNIPA professor. Maurine and I surveyed the reefs in order to suggest itineraries for liveaboards visiting the area in the future. The detailed results of our survey will be included in the new Bird’s Head Seascape dive guide to be published late next year. Grand Komodo’s excellent crew onboard the Temukira, especially Weka, their dive master extraordinaire, contributed to the success of our trip (http://www.komodoalordive.com/).

Most of the dives Maurine and I completed were short in terms of time, but long in terms of distance covered. We surveyed the reefs on scooters in order to locate potential sweet spots; ten minutes of scootering equals about an hour’s swim for most divers. We dived a few times without scooters to look for potential critter sites, and we did find a nice variety, including, seahorses (not just pygmies!) frogfish, unusual nudibranchs, several ornate ghost pipefish, a number of interesting cephalopods, and tiger shrimp. Mark and Gerry discovered at least 5 new species of fish, including a new dottyback and garden eel. They also increased the species count of Cenderawasih from 884 species to 955. The Bird’s Head fish species count is at 1596 at the moment!

The absolute highlight of our survey was our whale shark experience. The bay’s resident whale sharks have learned that the bagans, floating fishing platforms, throw their dead fish overboard. This is a bonanza of protein enrichment for the normally plankton-eating sharks. The bagan fishermen encourage whale shark visits because the enormous fish are considered good luck. We felt like the lucky ones! The sharks seemed interested only in their free breakfast (all of the action takes place at dawn), and ignore snorkelers and divers. We spent several magical hours with these magnificent creatures and were able to photograph them in quite decent viz. Clear water, unusual fish behavior and cooperative mega-fauna…Gerry might be right. Cenderawasih may well be “the Galapagos of Indonesia’s Reefs”