Cendrawasih, here we come!

Dear Divers,

We just returned from a great trip to Komodo. The park was fab as always. Damai (www.dive-damai.com) is a wonderful home base and their excellent service and numerous divemasters made this a special trip.

We began in Bima on the island of Sumbawa. Just outside the harbor, in the mouth of Bima Bay, we dived a couple of outstanding critter sites. The usual suspects, including bizarre scorpionfish, ghost pipefish, pygmy cuttlefish, a couple of mimic octopus, myriad nudis, and numerous fire urchins were seen and photographed. The fire urchins were enormous, about the size of a basketball cut in half. It seemed like each one was more beautiful than the next and almost everyone had some variety of commensal. Zebra crabs, almost big enough to eat, were the most prevalent and many of them were carrying eggs. Surprisingly quite a few urchins had squat lobsters, and Maurine found one with a crab we’ve never seen before. The Bima sites are excellent critter hunts.

Most of the divers with us on this trip, however, were new to the South Pacific and were expecting excellent viz and great reefs. At Sangean they saw the reefs they had anticipated. The next stop was Banta where we dived a couple of new (to us) sites on Banta’s west side. The most spectacular feature is a lovely, extensive hard coral garden with the most anthias we have ever encountered. Fish completely filled the water column. Additionally, we found a terminal phase “yellow” blue ribbon eel, and Ariel Cohn saw the trip’s first manta! On an outstanding night dive at “Small World” everyone saw their first stargazer.

The next day we finally made it to the park proper. We spent our first day in a bay (Batu Monco) on the NW corner of Komodo and everyone really enjoyed the clear water and easy drifts along the wall and bommie-covered slopes. The following morning we anchored off Gili Lawat Laut where, for the next two days, we dived some of the fishiest sites in Komodo, if not in all of Indonesia. “Crystal Bommie”, which we still call “Easy to Find Rock”, and “Castle Rock”, known to us old-timers as “Hard to Find Rock” were phenomenal. Huge schools of fish and the giant trevallies feeding on them; quite a few sharks, mostly whitetips, cruised the bommie; and a two-meter-long grey reef shark with several blue runners in attendance passed by me a few times. Never close enough for a good photo, of course. The “Fish Bowl” was magical, as always. Zillions of fish and lovely glassfish-covered bommies are the features of this site, along with the mantas that are usually seen at the end of the dive (we did). A nice surprise was a male jawfish with its mouth full of eggs. By this time, Gladys Howard, owner of Pirates Point Resort on Little Cayman Island (www.piratespointresort.com) was duly impressed. Her only disappointment of the entire trip was not getting to dive with her “son”, the late Larry Smith.

Since the SE trades were still blowing to beat the band, we spent the rest of our time in the park diving the better sites in the north like the two “Tatawas”, Batu Bolong, and Pantai Mera (Pink Beach). On the next to last day, however, we got a radio call from Mark Heighs, the cruise director and co-owner of Seven Seas (www.thesevenseas.net). Mark was in South Komodo. He said the winds had calmed and the mantas were abundant, so we sailed down there for our last full diving day. The mantas were indeed there, and on the second dive of the morning a cold (69 degree), clear (100 foot+) current bathed the cleaning station. The resulting photos are the best we’ve ever taken of mantas in the park. It was a wonderful way to end the diving portion of our trip.

The next day we went to Loh Buaya on Rinca Island for a walk to see Komodo dragons. We saw over a dozen dragons, including recently nested females guarding the next generation. All of our guests greatly enjoyed the walk, and it was an excellent way to end the cruise.

As I mentioned earlier, and in our last blog, our next stop is Cendrawasih Bay. We will be surveying Cendrawasih so that it can be included in the next edition of our Raja Ampat guidebook. This book will be expanded to include two destinations in addition to Raja. I imagine the new title will be something like Diving Indonesia’s Birds Head Seascape. We hope to see nesting Leatherback turtles, WWII wrecks, pristine reefs, and oh yes; the resident population of whale sharks. Yes, you are reading “resident”; this population of whale sharks, the world’s largest fish, appears to be permanently located in southern Cendrawasih Bay. Read about the initial results of this survey in our next blog (late September) and a full report in the new book, which should be published in the fall of 2011.

Until September,

Burt and Maurine

Time Slipping Away

Hello fellow divers,

I had hoped to give you a rundown on everything we have been doing since the last blog, but we, and Secret Sea, have been so busy; the time just keeps slipping away. Plus we just spent a fun week with our house guests, Kerri Bingham and Hergen Spalink, managers of Lembeh Divers, www.lembehresort.com. Check out Kerri and Herg’s personal website, www.gotmuck.com. While here Herg helped me set up a Facebook page. Thanks, Herg! Actually, I’m not sure I should be thanking him. Our internet connection is so slow that it takes almost 10 minutes for me to accept someone as a friend.

Tomorrow, we are off to Komodo for a Secret Sea charter. We’ll be on one of our favorite boats, Damai, www.dive-damai.com, for an 11 night itinerary. We are very excited about this trip. One of our guests is Gladys Howard, owner of Pirate’s Point resort on Little Cayman Island, www.piratespointresort.com. Gladys has been a friend for years, but she was our dear departed friend Larry Smith’s “second mother”. Larry found the resort for Gladys 1986 and worked there for a number of years before coming to Indonesia. Sadly, Gladys never dived in Indonesia with Larry. We feel honored she has chosen us to show her around one of Larry’s favorite places, Komodo National Park. After our trip she is off to visit another place Larry made famous, the Lembeh Straits.

We return to Bali on August 27 and, 10 days later, we'll fly to Sorong. We will be heading to Cendrawashi Bay (CB). CB is on the backside of the Bird’s Head peninsula of Papua. CB, along with Triton Bay and Raja Ampat, comprise the area known as the Bird’s Head Seascape (BHS). Some of you have probably visited Triton Bay, and more of you have been to Raja Ampat; but few of you, including us, have ever been to CB. This trip is actually a survey, and part of our job as consultants for Conservation International, www.conservation.org. The results of this survey, along with information from Triton Bay, will be included in the revised edition of our guidebook, Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat. The new guidebook, will encompass the entire BHS, and it should be in print late next year or early 2012.

Another purpose of this survey is to create a new itinerary for liveaboards. CB has great promise, including WWII wrecks, resident populations of whale sharks and dugongs, vibrant pristine reefs, and some of the best topside scenery in all of Indonesia. We have reports of endless white sand beaches and, located just west of CB, are largest leatherback turtle nesting beaches in the South Pacific. Sounds like a place I want to dive! Look for a full report on our return.

Until then...Best Fishes,

Burt and Maurine

Raja Reloaded

We are back in Bali after 6 fabulous weeks in Raja. Maurine and I left Bali in mid-February and I returned at the beginning of April. This was not a typical trip for us.

We spent our first 2 weeks aboard one of our favorite liveaboards, “Seven Seas” (www.thesevenseas.net). We were to be on board assisting a private client, OPS, the Oceanic Preservation Society (www.opsociety.org). They were returning to Raja to continue work on a photo project they started a couple of years ago. BTW, OPS is the group that produced The Cove, an excellent documentary about dolphin slaughter in Japan. Three days before the charter was scheduled to depart The Cove was nominated for an Academy Award. The movie went on to win for Best Documentary. We just saw The Cove and it is an engaging, real adventure. For those of you who haven’t yet seen it, don’t fear that it is too bloody or depressing. The movie is very James Bond-ish. Most of it deals with the back-story regarding the issues surrounding the crew’s incredible ordeal to film scenes of an event that the Japanese government was attempting to cover up. The actual footage of the slaughter, although graphically disturbing, only comprises a few minutes of the overall film.

After the film was nominated, director and producers decided they had to stay in the US to promote it during the run up to the Oscar voting. Since the director and a couple of the producers are the principals of OPS, they had to cancel their charter on “Seven Seas”. Everyone was totally bummed out, but at least they received an Academy Award as a consolation.

The boat was paid for, stocked and ready to go. Our non-refundable tickets were issued so the show “went on”. Actually it turned out to be both a fun and a working trip. Seven Seas owners decided to hop on board and brought a couple of Balinese expat friends. We called a good friend in Australia, the infamous, marine life photographer Roger Steene. Roger had to jump through hoops, but two days later he managed to show up in Sorong with the rest of the group. We hadn’t seen Roger in a couple of years so it was a real treat. (BTW, for those of you who have had the pleasure to meet but, like us, haven’t seen Roger in a while; he’s still as crusty as ever!) So off we went exploring. What a wonderful scenario, an excellent boat at our disposal and no real agenda.

We turned the trip into a working holiday, however. We spent the first few days in the Dampier Strait photographing around the new capitol city of Waisai, on a project for our “real job” at Conservation International (CI). We are producing an educational program that will be used aboard the Kalabia, the floating schoolroom sponsored by CI and TNC (see our recently released dive guide Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat, for more about the Kalabia.) It was so helpful to have Seven Seas as our base. In only a couple of days we were able to document a number of topics that would have taken us a week or more otherwise. FYI, even though Raja is remote and the epicenter of marine biodiversity, there is still much to be done to protect and preserve this fragile region.

After a few days of photographing issues related to the dark side of Raja, like uncontrolled erosion due to the construction of roads and the dredging of the new port facilities, rampant growth issues, etc., we were off to one of our favorite areas, southeast Misool. We have been exploring a remote area in the extreme eastern section off Misool around a group of islands called Daram. A few stellar sites in this area (Andiamo and The Candy Store) are included in our book, but our goal is to create a multiple day itinerary in the area. We found two more incredible sites, so now the boats can spend at least an entire day diving Daram with their guests.

BTW, Roger had never visited the Blue Water Mangroves, off northwest Misool, so we visited that area toward the end of the trip. Some of you may recall that there was a croc attack on a diver there last year. Many of the liveaboards have now chosen to take the BWM off their itinerary. We were a bit apprehensive, but we spent an entire day diving there without incident. The BWM were beautiful as ever. We are NOT necessarily recommending that boats return to this region. Just reporting that we spent a day there without incident. Putting the BWM on a route is up to the specific operator, crew and the guests.

After dropping off our guests in Sorong, we were transported to Raja’s newest land-based resort, Raja Ampat Dive Lodge (RADL). This lovely, little resort is owned by our oldest Indonesian friends, Reno and Nyoman Kirtya, of Grand Komodo Tours. GKT runs a fleet of liveaboards throughout the archipelago, but this is their first land-based operation. RADL is located on Mansuar Island, very near the manta aggregation sites in the Dampier Strait. The lodge is simple, but the rooms are large with air conditioning and private baths. The food is plentiful and good, mostly Indonesian. The diving is superb and RADL is conveniently located with access to many of our favorite sites in north central Raja (see www.komodoalordive.com for more about GKT and RADL).

The resort is new and for most of our two-week stay we were the only guests. That meant we were able to do one of our favorite things: GO EXPLORING! We found three outstanding new spots with big fish like mackerel, dog-tooth tuna, and Giant Trevally (GTs). Two of the sites had large schools of big eye trevally and barracuda. One of these sites also had a large school of a smallish (12-15in.) tuna and, to top it off, a manta cleaning station. We were in heaven, and dived each site numerous times.

We are so lucky to have found a place like Raja where more and more sites just keep popping up. We know that many of you have already visited Raja. What you should know is that if you chose to return and dive there with us you will dive numerous new sites!

After RADL, Maurine had to return to Bali to deal with the “fun” part of our job, the office work. I, however, got to stay on for another 2 weeks, again aboard Seven Seas. This time around I was guest cruise director for another private client’s charter. Werner and Myra Kurn, owners of Ocean Enterprises (www.oceanenterprises.com) in San Diego had chartered Seven Seas for their first Indonesian liveaboard experience. It was great diving with them and their clients. Werner is such a hoot; everyone had a great time. Of course, we showed them some of the new sites, but since they had never visited Raja every site was their “the best site ever”! Raja IS that special.

We will both be in Bali for the next 6 weeks, and we’re busy finishing the educational program for CI, and processing and editing all the digital image files we took in Raja, nearly 10.000 new images. Fortunately all our scheduled 2010 trips are full, so we are working on charters for late 2011 and 2012. Check out the travel section of this site soon.

Thanks for checking in with us and reading the blog. Don’t miss Maurine’s ongoing blog for Undercurrent (www.undercurrent.org). Apparently she chooses her subjects well because she is the highest rated blogger.

We are returning to the US for a short visit in late May and early June. Then we’ll be back in Indonesia on a new contract with CI for at least another year. Please stay in touch with us through this blog or by emailing.

Best Fishes,

Burt and Maurine

Life is Too Short

I guess I’m going to have to face the fact that life is just too short to blog as often as I promised. Again, it’s been a few months since our last posting, and I know I vowed to do better, but time just seems to slip away. When we started diving and photographing PCs were not a personal possession/obsession, cameras used a product referred to as film, the internet hadn’t been invented, and I assure you nobody had even thought about blogging! Now it seems everyone is Twittering or Face Painting or whatever it is that cyber-people seem to have endless time for these days. It’s becoming obvious that we aren’t natural born bloggers! We got into this business to be outside, to actively participate with Nature. What can I say? Life is short, eat desert first!

Let’s see where were we…last September, at Lembeh Resort (www.lembehresort.com), we co-hosted, along with Fred Dion, a group of divers and friends. Many of you know Fred, former owner of Underwater Photo-Tech and presently a partner at Backscatter, (www.backscatter.com). Fred is an old friend and one of the dive industry’s good guys. Believe it or not, Fred had never been to Lembeh. We finally convinced him to come, but he was worried that many of his guests were concerned about a whole week of nothing but critter diving. Fred loved it, and more importantly his guests did too. Now he plans to make a trip to Lembeh an annual affair.

Lembeh Resort is lovely, has one of the best camera rooms on the planet, the divesites are only minutes away, and the new dive-ops managers, our good friends Kerri and Hergen, are the best. And, oh yes…the dive guides. Most of them have over 10,000 dives each in the Strait. They spot tiny cryptic animals from meters away and are very adept at helping photographers get “the shot”. In our opinion, Lembeh is one of the few destinations where a diver is better off land-based.

Of course the real stars at Lembeh are the critters. We had them in spades! If memory serves we saw 5 Rhinopias scorpionfish, one was a juvenile barely an inch long; countless frogfish and nudibranchs; at least 4 sightings of Blue-ringed octopus; plus a virtual cornucopia of other various sundry critters for which Lembeh is famous.

All the guests really enjoyed our photo seminar, Revealing the Art in the Animal: How to Stop Taking Pictures and Start Creating Images. We approach photography and structure our course, in a non-traditional manner. We learned by trial and error and have distilled our workflow into a course that is very user friendly. Virtually every guest said they learned something valuable from our lectures. (They weren’t just trying to make us feel good because we could see how much their photography improved!)

After the group left, Maurine and I did a short exploratory trip a couple of hours down the Sulawesi coast to Buyat Bay. Danny Charlton, who owns the dive operation at Lembeh Resort, is pioneering this new dive region. We had lousy conditions due to unseasonably high winds and were not able to dive all the sites, but the area is very promising. The hard coral gardens are some of the healthiest and most extensive we’ve ever seen. The critter sites were inaccessible, but that is not such a bad thing since now we get to go back!

After Buyat we returned to Bali and formally launched the book we produced for Conservation International (CI), “Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat” (“DIRA”) at the prestigious Ubud Reader’s and Writer’s Festival. Although “DIRA” is only a guidebook, we had a large, appreciative audience who were WOW-ed by the show. If you want to know more about the book check out Alex Mustard’s review on Wetpixel’s forum (http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/book-review-diving-indonesias-raja-ampat/). To know more about Raja Ampat, visit CI’s web page (www.conservation.org) or their dedicated Raja Ampat webpage, (www.diverajaampat.org).

In late October we returned to the states for a visit (our first in a year and a half) and to officially launch “DIRA” at the dive industry’s annual trade show DEMA. Although our trip was a whirlwind of activity and travel, it was wonderful to see everyone. We started the trip by celebrating my mother’s 97th birthday. (She still lives alone at her home in Texas!) We then visited Maurine’s sister in Connecticut, attended DEMA in Florida, and returned to Texas to log some quality time with friends and family. On our way back to Indonesia we spent a well-deserved quiet week of R&R with our second family in California. We celebrated Thanksgiving there--Dungeness crab, wild salmon, and a plethora of outstanding regional wines-- before catching the flight to Bali.

It is hard to believe we’ve been back in Indonesia for almost two months. We spent our third Christmas and New Year in a row at sea off the west coast of Papua. This, however, was not just another trip to Raja; we spent most of our time further south along the coast, in Triton Bay. The diving was superb from our spacious comfortable home, the liveaboard Damai (www.dive-damai.com). And since we were the only boat in the area, we had the place all to ourselves. The only negative was on the second trip when we had reduced visibility due to an abundance of rain. So, we spent a lot of dives looking for critters. And did we ever find them! We found two new spots where we encountered multiple Wonderpus octopus. This was a real bonus since we were initially looking for flasher wrasse. (We found the wrasse, too.) I have been to Triton on 6 trips and had never photographed a frogfish. This time we saw 4 different species! And the seapens, a variety of soft coral that look like feathers sticking up out of soft bottoms, were hosting an unprecedented variety of marine invertebrates, from allied cowries to Tozeuma shrimp. Both groups of divers never wanted to leave and are already planning their return.

The last trip ended in Sorong, Raja Ampat’s gateway, so we did do a little Raja diving at the end of the second trip. Mainly, we spent time at some of the new sites we had discovered during the making of “DIRA”. The Daram islands continue to amaze. They offer some of the loveliest dive sites in all of Raja. Daram’s sites are located beyond the “standard” itineraries of most Raja liveaboards so, again, we had the place to ourselves. Many of our divers had visited Raja before, but none had dived Daram or the adjacent area we call Northern Lights. Everyone agreed that these two regions are as good as, or better, than anywhere they had previously dived.

We’ll be in Bali for nearly a month. We’ve got heaps of images to edit, and a gardening project to complete before preparing for our next trip. We’ll be assisting the Oceanic Preservation Society (OPS) film crew (www.opsociety.org) who have charted Seven Seas for a Raja Ampat trip. They are riding the wave of their award winning documentary, The Cove, (www.thecovemovie.com). If you haven’t seen this movie yet, do so, and tell your friends to see it. It’s important.

Thanks to many of you, all of our 2010 Secret Sea Visions (www.secretseavisions.com) trips have sold out. Some of you have asked us to secure additional charters. Despite the world’s economic woes, surprisingly all of our preferred liveaboards are completely booked out for 2010. However, due to a cancellation we did manage to book space for early 2011 on one of our favorites, The 7 Seas (www.thesevenseas.net). Dates for this trip are April 2-13, 2011. We have planned a special itinerary that combines the best of the Banda Sea with our personal favorite sites in Raja. Don’t miss this trip. It’s one of a kind and spaces are filling fast! Visit the website for details.

Sampai jumpa lagi (until next time),
Burt and Maurine

DROP-OFF

Don’t get too excited this blog’s title does not refer to a stellar new divesite we recently discovered but to the fact that a friend just wrote saying she loved the blog, but we appeared to have DROPPED-OFF the radar screen recently. I know in the last blog entry I promised to be diligent about writing more frequently, but we’ve been very busy and time has again slipped away. Hopefully you have noted we put our time to good use and, in addition to other projects, have redesigned our website. A special thanks goes to Peter Blumtritt for his site design.

At the end of May we returned from Singapore where we received new visas and, in early June, I headed to Komodo for a trip aboard one of our favorite live-aboards, 7 Seas. It had been a couple of years since we had dived in the park, and even longer since we dove our favorite southern sites in Horseshoe Bay and Manta Alley. Even though the water in the south was cold, we had super encounters with the mantas, and Cannibal Rock, although it clearly shows wear and tear from too many photographers lying on the reef, was still glorious. The fishy sites in the north, like Crystal Bommie and Castle Rock, were better than ever. Both sites had more fish including big fish, like dog-tooth tuna and GTs (Giant Trevally) than I remembered from previous visits. Sharks, too, are returning to these sites. Castle Rock has a small pod of dolphins that frequently visit and are becoming accustomed to divers. Komodo’s popularity is well deserved.

In the meantime we continued to dedicate most of our waking hours to the guidebook, “Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat”. To make a long story short, it is finished! We took delivery on them last week. The effort was monumental, especially toward the end, but the result is a book we are proud of. We went to Jakarta for the 48-hour non-stop print run. I should give credit where credit is due. Maurine and our publisher, Sarita Newson, pulled the back-to-back all nighters since I had to leave after the first day to prepare for a month in Komodo again aboard 7 Seas.

It hasn’t been all work and no play, however. Right before going to Jakarta for the book’s printing, we had to leave Indonesia again for a visa renewal (we have to exist/reenter every 2 months). We went to Bangkok, Thailand this time. We are lucky to have access to Air Asia, one of the world’s fastest growing airline companies. They offer no-frills budget airfares throughout SE Asia. So a trip to Thailand is quite affordable. In Bangkok, we hooked up with Mark, one of our best friends from Austin. He was in the area on business, but more importantly his significant other, Bo, is Thai and her family lives in Bangkok. Mark really knows his way around the city and Bo’s family treated us like royal guests. It also just happened to be my birthday so we had ample reason to take advantage of Bangkok’s remarkable cuisine and nightlife. My birthday started at 4 AM with a visit to Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) to pray with the monks. It ended at a back-street noodle house 22 hours later with a bowl of the best Pad Thai on the planet! Some of the activities must remain censored, no sordid details! Let me assure you, however, we had a grand time, although we all paid for it the next few days. Our thanks go to Mark, Bo’s family, and our incomparable taxi driver, Sam. Sam knows Bangkok and everything that is available in Bangkok!

I left for Komodo the day Maurine returned from Jakarta. Ten days later, with the first bound copy of “Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat” in hand, Maurine boarded the Damai, a new liveaboard, on it’s maiden voyage. This is the ship we have chartered for our 2010 dive itineraries. The ship proved itself and Maurine was very impressed. Congratulations to Damai’s owner Alberto. No doubt, Damai will quickly become one of the favorite liveaboards in Indonesia’s fleet.

As planned I, aboard 7 Seas, rendezvoused with Maurine on the last day of her cruise aboard Damai. Maurine “jumped” ship and joined 7 Seas for another cruise. Our lives had been a whirlwind for the past weeks so it was great for us to be together and for me to see the book. We had a lovely cruise visiting the best Komodo had to offer both north and south. We found two different species of Rhinopias in Horseshoe Bay and the big fish action in the north was spectacular. Dragons were abundant both on the beaches in Horseshoe and on the Rinca Island walk. Every nest had a female dragon guarding it so there were plenty of photo-ops.

Next week Maurine and I will join our friend Fred Dion, former owner of Underwater Photo Tech, now part of the Backscatter group, in Manado. We will dive Lembeh and Bunaken. We are really looking forward to being with Fred again, and seeing our divemaster friends at Lembeh. Hunting for critters in Lembeh is so much fun, it’s like an Easter egg hunt! We will be back to Bali toward the end of September. “Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat” will debut here in Indonesia at the prestigious Ubud Book and Writer’s Festival the first week in October. Then the last week of October we will fly to the states for a visit with family and friends. It will be a whirlwind of activity starting with my mother’s 97th birthday in Texas, quickly followed by a trip to Connecticut to visit M’s sister, then down to Florida for the guidebook’s US debut at the annual dive industry trade show DEMA. After the show we will return to Texas for another week before heading to what we hope someday to be our new home, upstate California. We’ll stay there until Thanksgiving when we head back to Bali to continue the battle to save the world’s reefs one book at a time.

BTW, “Diving Indonesia’s Raja Ampat” will be available from the website as soon as they arrive in the states. It will likely still be a couple of months, but keep checking. We will also be sending out a newsletter about the book’s launch and our Secret Sea dive trips for 2010. Most of the trips have sold out but we do have a few spots left on our November (2010) Raja Ampat trip. Let us show you a Raja you’ve never seen before!

Best Fishes,
Burt and Maurine

Happy Ending

I hate starting anything with an apology but it has been so long since we made a blog entry that I’m left with no option but to say, “We are sorry for the delay!”

Many bubbles have passed overhead since the middle of January when we last wrote. At that time we were in Sorong , Papua at the halfway point in our survey of divesites for the Raja Ampat (R4) Dive Guide we are producing in conjunction with Conservation International. On January 14 we left, “Oh So Lovely”, Sorong harbor aboard the liveaboard “Archipelago”. The divemasters aboard this vessel are our old friends Made and Ali. Made and Ali learned about diving and showing people great critters when they worked for Larry Smith. Watching them give the dive briefings brought tears to our eyes on more than one occasion. Diving with them also brought back many wonderful memories of when Larry was still with us and we were all diving together. We also met “Archipelago’s” cruise directors James and Francesca who had only been on-board for a few trips, but certainly had their act together. They said learning the “ropes” was quiet easy. All they had to do was ask Made or Ali what “Mr. Larry “ would have done and do it. Smart cruise directors and delightful people. James is British so he talks funny; Francesca is an Amer-Italian from New Jersey so she talked funny too! They are a most welcome addition to a stellar operation and the crew loves them, which means they are doing it right!

Next we boarded the “Seven Seas”. We’ve known Jos Pet, one of the owners, since our early diving days in Komodo. Jos was the manager for The Nature Conservancy’s field station there. He’s a really good guy who knows his stuff. His partner is Mark Heighes. Mark has been diving in Indonesia as long as anyone. He first came to the country in the mid-80s with his aunt and uncle, the famous Australian marine life filmmakers, Valerie and Ron Taylor. Mark previously ran a boat called the “Evening Star”. Three years ago Jos and Mark bought a phinisi (schooner) hull and Mark basically built the “Seven Seas”. It is a very tight ship. They crew is stellar as well.

Aboard the “Seven Seas”, as acting cruise director, was Stew Esposito. (Stew runs the Raja cruises and Mark does the Komodo itineraries.) Stew was the “Truk Aggressor” captain for years so he knows his way around a wheelhouse and divesite. It was really great getting to know Stew and diving aboard the “Seven Seas” again. (You may remember that we were aboard “Seven Seas” for the month of October ’08 when we assisted Howard and Michele Hall film their latest IMAX movie, “Under the Sea-3D”. *See the blog that refers to that time period for that expedition report. The film is in release and has received excellent reviews. Check it out in your local IMAX theater.)

Our next stop was a visit to Max Ammer’s Sorido Resort in northern R4. Max has been in Papua for a long time and has done an incredible job building this up-scale resort in the heart of the Dampier Straight. Sorido’s house reef, Cape Kri, is one of the fishiest sites in all of Raja and famed Sardine Reef is only a 5 minute ride away. Along with the more basic Kri Eco Resort, which is just around the corner from Sorido, Max’s resorts sit in the ideal location for diving the best sites in northern R4. He and his crew of divemasters have done a lot of exploring over the years. So staying at either place will enable you to dive many sites not on a standard liveaboard’s itinerary. (You’ll be able to read more about Max in the guidebook.)

For three days we had been doing some wonderful dives when we got a call from James, cruise director of “Archipelago”. Francesca had developed some strange symptoms and needed to seek medical attention immediately. Problem was they had another group arriving the next day so they asked if it was possible for us take over for them. We couldn’t leave them in a bind so we packed our wet gear and headed back to Sorong and rejoined the “Archipelago”. We do have some experience as cruise directors, but it had been 20 years since we were the managers (the first ones) aboard the “Bilikiki” in the Solomon Islands. Cruise directing is like riding a bike and with Made and Ali’s help it was a piece of cake. All we actually had to do was interface with the guests. Fortunately the group from Dolphin Divers (Sacramento, CA) led by Alan Markis was delightful and comprised of experienced divers who really needed no assistance.

We did a southern itinerary, but on the last day returned to Batanta (central R4) to dive a critter site we started the trip with. The winds were blowing quite hard, however, and it wasn’t possible to dive the spot we had chosen. So we looked at the chart and headed down the coast to a bay that was a bit deeper and offered some protection from the waves. To our knowledge no one had ever dived there so we were a bit concerned that the last day of diving might be a bust. Those fears didn’t last for long! As we entered the water and drifted slowly to the silty bottom the first thing I saw was a mimic octopus! And the dive only got better. We found another mimic plus two wonderpusses, two pair of ghost pipes, plus numerous unusual nudis and allied cowries. Everyone loved the dive and since it was the last day, we named the site “Happy Ending”. Ask for it on your next liveaboard itinerary. BTW, fortunately Francesca received a clean bill of health; she and James are back on the boat.

Changing our plans in the middle of our survey did have one negative consequence however. After Sorido we were scheduled to board our long time friend Edi Fromenwiler’s liveaboard, the “Pindito”. Although Edi understood and gave his blessing to our subbing aboard “Archipelago”, it was a big disappointment. Edi has been diving Raja longer than anyone and we were really looking forward to the trip with him. Hopefully the chance will come again next season. BTW, I just talked to Edi an hour ago. He was in Sorong about to start his last R4 charter of the season. He had just finished his previous trip at…where else?…”Happy Ending”. Edi had never dived it before and his group found great critters including both varieties octopi and ghost pipefish. It really made our day knowing we were able to give Edi a tip about where to dive in Raja! (Read more about Edi in the guidebook.)

When we got back to Sorong on February 17 after guest cruise directing on the Archipelago we said “so long” to Sorong! Our survey was complete. Actually we had run out of time. Raja is so vast we could easily spend another season or two or three exploring never-dived sites, but we came home pleased with over 12,000 new images and over 30 new sites for the book.

Once in Bali we set up housekeeping again. I started editing photos and Maurine continued work on the text. Editing that amount of photos takes a while! To date I’ve done about 500, which is more than enough for a guidebook that will only contain 150 pages. Maurine continued to work on the text but 10 days later I was back on the plane bound for…Sorong.
I was asked to act as guide aboard a private yacht visiting the area. The “Andiamo” is a 150 ft, Dutch built, “Feadship” owned by Nancy Mueller, former owner of Nancy’s Frozen Foods. (Apparently her frozen quiche is quite good.) Anyway she sold the business a few years ago to fulfill a life-long dream of diving the world’s best reefs. The ship is immaculate and run by another Truk alumni, Raymond Heer. He was with the Peter Hughes fleet. We had a great two-week trip. Nancy was a delight and accepted my critiques of her photography with open arms. She had a wonderful group of experienced divers and friends with her, and the trip was a huge success. We even did a bit of exploring in the far eastern part of Misool near the Daram islands, location of the “Candy Store” divesite mentioned in the previous log. We found a couple of excellent new sites, but Daram still needs further exploration. We really like this area. It’s not dived much because most of the liveaboards don’t venture that far east, although actually Daram’s only a couple of hours from the eastern sites on most Misool itineraries. Daram normally has clearer water than the sites to the west and some of the area’s most beautiful beaches. We feel sure there are many more wonderful dives waiting to be discovered around Daram.

By the time I returned to Bali Maurine had basically finished the text of the guidebook. Even though we hate being apart, I guess my absence wasn’t totally a bad thing! I had not taken cameras with me aboard the “Andiamo” so I didn’t have more images to work on. We were home for about two weeks and I was able to finish editing all the images for the book. During this time we received a number of pieces of sad news. One of our good friends in Austin, Brian Chamerlain, had succumbed to cancer and another friend from Bali, Sasha Dambach, one of the Kararu Dive Voyages owners, had a fatal accident on his Harley. This news was a double shock to us coming in the same week. We will really miss Brian and Sasha’s presence in our lives. One would think that the loss of two friends in our circle would be enough but death is always a constant in life. One should live life to the fullest because you never know.

Early April brought to Bali a group of stateside friends we hadn’t seen since leaving last June. Aboard the “Seven Seas” we hosted one of our Secret Sea charters. Virtually every guest was a previous client and most of them are close friends. Bali is a wonderful place and we’ve made new friends but being with people that you consider family is something the heart needs occasionally. So we spent a fun week wining and dining, playing tour guide, etc. (Actually not that much wining was done. Indonesia recently placed a 300% duty on all foreign imported luxury goods. That means the cheap bottle you buy at the grocery costs somewhere between $30-40 here. What’s worse is that cheese prices have also tripled.)

We took the group to Maumere on the island of Flores, our gateway to a spectacular dive trip around Alor. We started the trip off with a bang by visiting the actively erupting (about every 5-15 minutes,) volcano of Komba. After Komba we worked our way east to Alor, which lies on the southwest corner of the Banda Sea, diving some fabulous walls along the way. The reefs were literally blanketed with purple anthias, and on a couple of sites we had multiple shark sightings. We also found an outstanding new wall during an exploratory dive in Alor. Alor also has some of the better critter sites in Indonesia and we spent time with frogfish, fire urchins and their commensals, and octopi. Village visits were also outstanding, so the trip had a good mix, walls, critters, and culture. One of our shore visits was to the famed traditional whaling village of Lamalera on Lembata Island. This is the only place in Indonesia where the natives still hand harpoon whales by leaping from small boats powered by nothing but sails and muscle.

As we headed back west we dove a new critter site off west Lembata that turned out to be a real find. We photographed two different species Rhinopias, a red skin-flap and brilliant yellow weedy. Other finds included regular reef octopus, fingered dragonets, frogfish, and multiple giant plurobranchs on the night dive. But the real highlight for most of the divers was the “squid ballet” taking place in 10 feet of water. Around 8 large reef squid (12’’ long) were mating and laying eggs for the entire day. Actually they had been at it for over a week, as there were hundreds of eggs scattered around the site, hidden in various clumps of acropora corals. The squid were very accepting of the divers and continued their activities while we watched, mesmerized by their dance.

We ended the diving at the island of Pamona just north of Maumere. This site was once one of Flores’s best but was heavily damaged, along with every other site in the area, by the ’92 tidal wave that nearly washed Maumere off the map. Mark had not dived the site since ’91 and was a bit apprehensive about what we would find. Turned out the wall was in very good shape, and at the western point of the island the fish life was outstanding. The divers had one of their best dives of the trip watching schooling snappers and trevally, eagle rays, dog-tooth tuna and 4 grey reef sharks. It was another “Happy Ending”! Most of our clients agreed it was their best trip ever.

An interesting and disturbingly scary event took place in R4 while we were aboard “Seven Seas” in Alor. A large crocodile attacked a diver in the Blue Water Mangroves off NW Misool. Diving the BWM is one of the highlights of a charter to Raja. This area is especially attractive for photographers and we have spent many hours on scuba or snorkel wandering through the labyrinthine channels that comprise this area. The diver in question had finished his dive and was on the surface when the croc came out of the mangrove and attacked. The diver and his buddy fought animal. Details are a bit sketchy and contradictory at this time, but it is big news on all the dive forums. If you wish to read more, visit www.wetpixel.com and do a search for croc attack/Raja Ampat. There is controversy regarding whether the crocodile should be eliminated from this popular dive area. Consensus seems to be overwhelming that the croc was exhibiting normal behavior in its environment. It being the diver’s choice to either accept the animals presence or not dive the area. We agree. Bottom line, the diver was evacuated to Singapore and is doing fine even though he’ s had to endure numerous operations on his hand.

When we got back to Bali and opened our email we learned of the passing of one of our very best friends, Steve Drogin from San Diego. Many people in the industry know Steve. He was so helpful to so many. He knew everybody and if Steve liked you (he had no time for jerks); he was truly your friend. If you wish to know more about Steve check out the Wetpixel website. They have a nice tribute to him. I talked, via Skype, with Steve every couple of weeks and will really, really miss him. And we sure hope that Death has moved on now. It has certainly taken its toll in our circle of friends.

Now it’s back to the book. The editor is almost finished with the text and we will meet with the designer next week to begin laying out the book. It is still on schedule for a debut at DEMA, the annual industry dive show, in Orlando in November, assuming DEMA happens! The industry is really suffering in this economic climate and it appears that none of the big equipment manufacturers will attend this year.

Maurine’s sister and brother-in-law come for a short visit next week and then at the end of May we go to Singapore to get our visa renewed. June 3 we will have been here for a year! Once back from Singapore it will be the Komodo dive season and we are looking forward to diving some of the sites we pioneered in the early ‘90s. A newsletter will be going out shortly announcing our travel programs for 2010. Hopefully we’ll see many of you on our upcoming Secret Sea Visions charters. I promise to be a better, or at least a more frequent, blogger in the coming months. And speaking of blogs, we have been asked to contribute a blog on “Undercurrent’s” website. So look for that as well. Until next time we wish you all a Happy Ending and…

Best Fishes,
Burt and Maurine

Greetings from So Wrong

Happy New Year,

Maurine and I are spending a few days R&R in lovely Sorong, aka So Wrong. Sorong is the gateway to West Papua and the Raja Ampat (R4) Islands. We are presently at the midway point of a 3 month diving survey to discover new sites and revisit old favorites. The results of our surveys along with the photos we are creating will be included in the guidebook we are producing on R4 in conjunction with Conservation International (CI). We have a couple of days break between trips and are presently at CI's offices, which is about the only place in town where we can access the internet.

Don't get me wrong Sorong is not the worse place we've ever had to stay but it certainly ranks in the top 5! Sorong is an oil town with few tourist amenities or infrastructure. Lonely Planet is spot on when they say, "Sorong is not a place to linger!" Actually it is getting better as more tourism (mainly diving) comes to the region. Since the air service into and out of Sorong is not the "best", tourists occasionally get stuck for a night or two. We are attempting to locate the best attractions Sorong has to offer. It is a difficult task. There are couple of decent restaurants, an internet lounge, and a comfortable hotel. Fortunately too, there is a good company that offers bird watching tours. Bird watching in Papua is outstanding and the chance of viewing two species of Bird's of Paradise on a day trip out of Sorong is likely.

We just returned from the newly opened Misool Eco Resort located in the heart of southern R4s best diving. The resort is "Conde' Nast Traveller" beautiful. The setting of the over the water bungalows is stunning. The resort is truly "eco", 90% of the wood used in the construction was milled from driftwood. When you consider they have more than 500 feet of over the water boardwalk you begin to realize, that is a lot of driftwood. If you are interested in visiting or knowing more about this incredible new resort check out their website, www.misoolecoresort.com.

Prior to our visit "down south" we were guests aboard Kararu Dive Voyages live-aboard, the Cheng Ho. With Cheng Ho we dived mostly in the north and were able to show the cruise directors some of the new sites we found on our survey last September. They were quite impressed by the sites and we were quite impressed by them! We had been hearing good things about Kerry and Hergen for over a year and they lived up to the hype. They were outstanding and rank right at the top of our list of the best cruise directors we have had the pleasure of meeting! Visit Cheng-Ho yourself and see what we mean, www.kararu.com.

R4 is really two destinations, the north and the south. It is possible to see both in one trip but you'll only barely see the highlights. If you have the time it really makes since to visit twice or do back-to back trips with different itineraries. We have a hard time deciding which region's diving we like better. It usually just boils down to where we are at the time. When you consider the caves of Uranine, the critter sites in Aljui and southern Batanta along with the stellar wide angle sites near Kri, Yangello and Fam you would have to say the diving in the north is more diverse. However, the south is home to one of the favorite places we have ever dived, the unique Blue Water Mangroves. And, of course, the sites near Fiabacet/Boo and Wagmab/Faroundi offer the most beautiful and diverse reef scenics on the planet. So it's really a toss-up.

So far this survey's diving included revisiting sites in the north and exploring new ones in the south. Many of the new sites we visited while staying at MER were stellar. The resort dives a number of locations not yet "discovered" by the live-aboards and many of them are outstanding. One day we went to the remote Daram island chain in the far east. We found a few great spots including a dive we are calling "The Candy Store". The site was unbelievable, two small rocks surrounded by submerged pinnacles, walls and ridges. There were so many fish and so much to see we didn't know where to begin. We were just like kids in a candy store. This is now one of our favorite spots in all of R4. We only spent one day in Daram and found 6 new sites. Many more await discovery. This is an area we hope to revisit sooner than later and feel sure will become a welcome addition to the itineraries of the live-aboards.

When checking our email this morning we read the latest news from Michele and Howard Hall about their new IMAX film, "Under the Sea-3D". From our previous blogs you will remember we worked with them on that project last year in PNG and Indonesia. The film is nearing completion and will open nation-wide in over a 100 IMAX theaters on Feb 5th. For those of you in Austin look for it at the Bob Bullock Theater on that day. Make sure and stay for the credits; our names should appear near the very end in the smallest print possible, but what the heck it will still be in 3D IMAX! So now that we are about to be famous we'll be looking forward to the rich part too.

We head back to sea the day after tomorrow. We have 3 more liveaboards and one more land-based resort to visit before completing the survey. We should be back in Bali in late February. Since we won't be able to access the internet between now and then don't expect a blog entry until we get back to Bali.

Hugs and Fishes to all,
Burt and Maurine