Below are links to photos from diving in Rajah Ampat / Irian Jaya. Also on this page is my dive log from the the 57 dives I did while out there. Diving Rajah Ampat was amazing, and I can't wait to go back.

I had originally decided only to post my very best images, but I had the great fortune of finding a woman by the name of Judy Foester, who single-handedly identified the critters in all 523 of the images I sent her (!). Because of her, I now have a reason to post photos for the purpose of identification in addition to those that please aesthetically. Thank you, Judy!

Note that the following are the only links to these galleries aside from those in the table of contents. Once you click through to any of the photo pages (except for the "Best of" page), you can navigate by clicking on "Next" and "Previous" links.

best of	abstract	anemonefish
blennies & gobies	cephalopods	conservation
crustaceans	fish (misc)	nudibranches & worms
pearl farm	people (uw)	pipefish & pipehorses
pygmy seahorses	reefscapes	scorpionfish
sea stars	sharks & rays	shells & clams
supermacro	sweet lips

Dive Logs

7 December 2004

Dives 1,2,3 - Goabesar - Farondi Island, Misool

Misool is pygmy seahorse city! It's been incredible here. Our drop point is on the edge of a blue hole that opens up onto a nice wall with a few small caves. There are many sea fans here, and on each dive we have seen at least five pygmy seahorses, including ones that look significantly different than the usual bargibanti and denise species that we see everywhere. On our first dive, we dropped down onto two ghost pipefishes, and later on found a third one (which was a robust ghost pipefish). Incredible! There are also many, many nudibranches around -- tons of frilly, stinging species rather than the Chromodoris sp. nudies that are everywhere in SE Sulawesi and further east in the Solomon Islands (or, at least, these were the nudies that were the most common when I went to those two places).

Dive 4 - Goabesar - Farondi Island, Misool (night)

Directions to Goabesar from Pindito, at night: Go around corner and head towards Orion, but slightly to the left. Approach left-hand side of atoll chain and stop just before wall. Back roll off of zodiac and descend.

We saw even more pygmies than we did during the day! One fan had at least eight bargibunti seahorses in it, and two of them were paired up on opposite sides of the fan. A short distance away, a pair of denise seahorses danced around together before one went swimming off to who-knows-where. I've seen footage of them zooming around and it seems that they ultimately end up back at the fan -- but it still worried me. We had an early encounter with a squadron of four squid that didn't really want to play with us; later on in the dive they returned and allowed me to get very close to snap some shots. They flashed black, brown, purple, and yellow spots at us while glowing green around the eyes. I love squid. We also saw: sea fleas (or whatever they are called), tons of Caprellid sp. ghost shrimp, a nice spindle cowry, nudibranches, flatworms, and a crinoid with two Periclimenes sp. shrimp and a bunch of clingfish inside of it. Beautiful dive. I don't think we would have come up if my strobes hadn't run out of juice.

Oh yeah, I was stung in the forehead by something nasty. It's been two hours and it's still stinging. :(

8 December 2004

Dive 5 - Fiabajet Barat (Fiabajet Island)

I took a wide-angle setup down onto the point at Fiabajet Barat in the hopes that some large fishies would be terrorizing the ball of anchovies near the surface, but we had no such luck. For some reason there was no current, so we swam slowly along the wall, which was packed full of gorgonians. The coral growth near the surface was lush, and there were areas dense with cauliflower-like white corals.

Dive 6 - Exploratory Site (Fiabajet Island)

We decided to dive an area near Fiabajet Barat and found a slightly more barren wall, but it was still full of whip corals, gorgonians (with pygmies, of course), and some really colorful soft coral patches. I'm finding that the Canon 16-35/2.8L lens is nearly unusable with the Seacam Superdome and recommended port extender. The vignetting (both light and focus) around the corners is horrible. I may have to experiment with different extender lengths. I wish there was a high-performance wide-angle lens + port combination in the Canon camp!

Dive 7 - Tempat Buaia (Ef Mo Island)

Muck! Sort of. Tempat Buaia is a gentle slope filled with hard coral fragments and plenty of holes for critters to hide. At around 95' is a sandy area, where we saw a tiny cuttlefish, more pygmy seahorses, and some neat nudibranches. I love sandy areas, but sandy areas at 100' can be a little stressful due to limited bottom time (even on Nitrox).

9 December 2004

I've been afflicted with some sort of stomach bug, I think. I have an upset stomach, a fever, and I'm aching all over. Sleeping a lot. Hope tomorrow is better.

10 December 2004

Dive 8 - Femin Timor (Femin Island)

Nice wall with schools of anchovies. Hausi found two nice pygmies on a gorgonian. Near the end of the dive we floated around in a shallow garden that had been destroyed by dynamite fisherman some time ago. The new growth here was impressive and showed how resilient coral reefs can be if left alone, even after being severely damaged. There were a couple of turtles swimming around here, too.

Dive 9 - Tanjung Barat Utara (Jef Pele Island)

The visibility around here has been fantastic! The walls drop off to sandy areas around 120' or so, and schools of anchovies and other fish morph into various shapes just above us. There were some nice nudibranches, pygmies, and small turtles. Thirty minutes into the dive, we arrived at an underwater ridge jutting out into the current. Normally, this sort of topographic formation would be swarming with sharks, but so far we have seen no sharks in what would traditionally be "sharky" areas. It's really unfortunate; even out here in the middle of nowhere we are affected by unregulated shark finning.

Dive 10 - Pulau Tengah (Jef Pele Island)

I slapped the 180mm macro onto my camera in the hopes that I'd find some pygmies doing cool things. Unfortunately, I have to figure out how to get the Macro Mate to function properly with such a long macro. The Macro Mate works wonders with a 100mm macro lens with the port just in front of the lens, but setting it up like that on the 180 gives bad results. Incidentally, using a diopter on the 180's lens itself with the front of the port close to it doesn't work either -- one has to give the lens/diopter combination a bit of breathing room in the port to get reasonably sharp results. I'll stick an extender on the 180mm setup and give the Macro Mate another try sometime soon.

Despite the crappy combination, I managed to get a couple close shots of pygmies. With the 180mm macro and external diopter set up the way I had it, I could fill the frame with a pygmy seahorse's head. :)

Dive 11 - Slam Malam (Jef Pele Island) (night)

Great dive! The sloping area about 100m from where the Pindito is anchored was like Saron shrimp city. Their eyes shine at you from little cracks in the rubble, and to see one you have to approach it without shining your light directly at it. I also saw my first two bobtail squid (which are no bigger than a pinky nail). They are very, very cute! Unfortunately, there were many places to hide, so I was unable to get decent photos of them. Compounding the problem were the hordes of planktonic shrimplings that mob dive lights at night. They're horrible!

As usual, we had squid hunting in the illuminated borders of our dive. As we came up for a safety stop, I chased them around for a bit and took a few photos.

11 December 2004

Dive 12, 13- Gunun Laut (Jilliet Island)

There is a sea mount here whose top barely reaches 60' in depth. It is absolutely gorgeous, with large sea fans oscillating in the current and a huge school of anchovies sparkling in waves of fast-moving ripples along its length. There is another "plane" of fish below the anchovies: glass fish hang motionless in dense formations, also sparkling in the sunlight. Squadrons of jacks and tuna rip large, temporary holes in the dense schools, and a couple of mobula rays wander by slowly. I made a poor decision and took a macro lens with me, but I still enjoyed just hanging out watching the action. At the top of the sea mount, Edi discovered a solar-powered nudibranch, which is really, really bizarre. I challenge you to find the rhinophores. ;)

The wall close by is covered with nudibranches, flatworms, and sea anemonies. We have a good time as we wind upward after leaving the sea mount.

I went down to 118', which made my Oceanic computer freak out and go immediately into deco (we're on Nitrox). My Uwatec unit is still going strong. Since that incident, I have been unable to keep my Oceanic from reverting to air in between dives, even though I have set it not to do that. I guess I'll have to dive without a backup computer for the rest of the trip.

Dives 14, 15 Ikan Muda (Gamfi Street)

OK, this is getting ridiculous. There are pygmy seahorses everywhere. One fan had 33 of the little buggers in it, and numerous fans hosted between five and thirteen. It seems like nearly every fan along the wall has at least one living in it. The bargibantis are enormous, and you can easily fill a 1:1 macro frame with one. Others, however, are much smaller. :) We're seeing many different types of pygmies, and it's unclear to all of us whether they constitute commonly known species or ones that have yet to be properly named. I had thought previously that pygmies are not found in shallow waters, but we found a fan at 15' that had at least five bargibantis in it.

More ridiculousness: we dropped in for the second dive at this location and found in rapid succession (aside from the hordes of pygmies) two ghost pipefishes (one black, and one white), and a freaky looking shrimp on a wire coral. It was all I could do to make it to the surface before I ran out of air and bottom-time, and I'm on 32% PO2 Nitrox!

We're cruising north at the moment. I'm excited to see what we see next. :)

12 December 2004

Dive 16 Batu Burung (Jef Fam Island)

One of our first non-wall dives. The current was ripping, and we dropped down behind a little reef and looked for critters among the lush coral garden. We were all pretty excited because we found huge tassled wobbegong sharks tucked under a big table coral and in a cave! I wasn't able to get any compelling photos with my 100mm macro lens, but I was excited nonetheless. As we drifted above nice-looking reefs during our safety stop, I wished I could have had an extra tank of Nitrox. ;) Oh yeah -- part of the reef was covered with hydrozoans. I wasn't wearing a glove on my left hand, and man was that a mistake.

After the dive I felt like I could have a relapse of my previous sickness, so I took the rest of the day off. Just before sunset we took a little zodiac cruise into a nearby lagoon. Edi shut off the zodiac's motor, and we drifted in the middle, listening to the calls of various birds hidden in the trees. We also went on a little strip of beach where someone had built a thatched shelter; for some reason, strewn around the shelter were several discarded shoes (and a lot of other shit).

13 December 2004

Dives 17 Jurang Dalam (Kawe Island)

The swell and surge on the wall at Jurang Dalam made for difficult diving with a camera. A nice large school of batfish greeted us upon our descent, and we worked our way around the lee side of the island until we could go no further, and then turned around. Anchovies and fuseliers buzzed around us, and schools of tuna occasionally darted in for a quick bite. After the dive, we decided to cruise for two hours into a lagoon where there is a pearl farm for some pseudo-muck diving.

Dives 18-20 Dinding Selatan (Sel Pelee Bay)

Man, is this dive site amazing. Each time I get into the water I only get back out because it starts getting difficult to suck air out of my tank! The first time we dropped into the site we were greeted by five very large lionfish, and from there, we were ferried from guide to guide as they found cool little critters to photograph. A selection: ghost pipefish, clown mantis shrimps (everywhere!), many different types of nudibranches, dragonets and pipefish, pygmy seahorses, solar-powered nudibranches, fire urchins with coleman shrimp and zebra crabs in them, orange ball corallimorphs, and much more. Annalisa found three tiny, tiny capsules with eyes that were bobbing around in a hole. I took a photo, and upon later inspection we still have no idea what the thing is.

Anchovies sure are stupid. At night, a school them decided to accompany our lights and continuously dive-bomb the sandy bottom, our photographic subjects, and our neoprene-clad bodies. Often, they would knock themselves silly by swimming into various hard things, and would sometimes end up being stung by fire urchins and other sticky/poisonous things. I'll tell ya: taking a photo of a subject becomes difficult when at any moment it can be struck by an anchovy at high speed.

We're going to stay in this area another couple of days, hopefully. I could dive here for weeks and not be bored.

14 December 2004

Dive 21 Kebun Karang (Sel Pelee Bay)

Kebun Karang is across the bay from Dinding Selatan. This sloping wall is covered with more coral growth than the wall on Dinding Selatan is, but for some reason we found many fewer critters to photograph. On a sandy plateau we saw three beautiful purple/yellow nudibranches (and more). I'm starting to hate photographing common nudibranches; it is difficult to get a shot that doesn't look like an id shot. But I still usually snap a shot or two anyway. :)

Dive 22 Exploratory (Sel Pelee Bay)

Drift dive across a sandy bottom with small coral heads poking up. Many, many mantis shrimps and nudibranches. Hausi found a good-sized wobbegong shark in a little cavel, and I snapped abstracts of it for a bit before settling down to photograph a small, black ribbon eel. After a few minutes, the wobbegong darted (relatively slowly) out of its cave and settled about a meter from us, which was convenient because I wanted to take some shots without the tiny little orange fishies in the cave getting in the way. I found two juvenile dragonets on the wobbegong's pectoral fin. Macro lenses are cool.

Dives 23-24 Dinding Selatan (Sel Pelee Bay)

Back to the ol' faithful. This site rocked again. Saw pygmy seahorses (four of them on one fan), a bunch of mantis shrimp, two purple ghost pipefishes , nudibranches, a Inimicus didactylus (Demon Stinger), a small turtle, a couple of remoras, and a big sardine bait ball at the surface, along the rock wall. The ghost pipefishes were a mated pair, and the female was clearly pregnant. I followed them around with my eye in the viewfinder, and suddenly, the female stretched open her pouch, presumably to aerate the eggs! I snapped a photo, and it came out very nicely; late-stage eggs are clearly visible, and I *think* some of the eggs may even be empty.

The bait ball was also spectacular. Hausi and I were hanging out at 12' or so, and the bait ball overcame us, casting us into a shimmering darkness. Occasionally, a fish or two (and a school of tuna) would dart into the bait ball and cause it to writhe and twist into various shapes. I love bait balls, and can't wait to be in the water with a big one in the open sea.

Night Dive: I dropped in onto a dark crimson crinoid hosting two worm-like clingfish, at least one squat lobster, and dozens of little shrimp. One of my favorite things to do is to watch a crinoid's commensal critters twist around inside of it. The guys didn't like my light, so I couldn't get any photos. However, right next to the crinoid were a couple of large white basket stars, and in one of the stars were numerous orange shrimp, which I did manage to snap a few photographs of. Basket stars are hard to photograph because they close up when you shine lights on them.

After leaving the crinoid and basket star, I was swimming in mid-water a few meters off of a wall and suddenly noticed a very colorful ghost pipefish swimming mindlessly in tight circles. These guys are never found outside of their chosen camouflaged environment, and this particular specimen looked like she was doing some sort of final dance of death. It was very strange. Later on in the dive, I found a second ghost pipefish away from the wall. This one dive-bombed the sandy bottom and swam around erratically, trying to poke his nose into the sand. Again, a bizarre thing to watch.

We also spotted a huge flying gurnard. This thing was probably over 2' long -- the same one Steve and Hiro saw the evening before, I'd wager. And finally, in the shallows up by the rock wall we saw what we think was a congar eel. Again, I love this dive site. It has been the best site for night diving, so far.

15 December 2004

Dive 25 Jamur Utara (Wajag Island)

On our way to the dive site we drove through a frothing mass of jacks jumping out of the water. A good sign. But when we dropped in and descended down to the point, there were no schools of jacks to be found; instead, we saw a buoy caught on the reef edge. Following the blue rope, we discovered a large gill net tangled up on a ledge at around 100'. Hausi, Tomi, and Annalisa worked hard to detangle the net and then attached a safety sausage to one end and floated it up to the surface. Caught in the net was a large lobster (which they freed), and the torn flipper of a sea turtle. :(

The rest of the dive involved fighting surge. Big camera + surge = not a good time!

Dives 26-27 Tempat Lego (Wajag Island)

Sand and coral heads. Saw a couple of leaf scorpionfish and many, many jawfish and shrimp gobies. Some coral heads had small caves underneath them that were often filled with glassfish, Durban's hinge-beak cleaner shrimp, and pipefish.

In the evening, a bunch of the crew came out with two guitars and sang me a happy birthday song in Indonesian. We all ate cake, afterwards. This is the second birthday in a row I've had in Indonesia. :)

16 December 2004

Mountain Hike

At 8am, Hausi, Tomi, Hiro and I took a zodiac over to a beach on one side of the lagoon and started trekking up the limestone forest. The limestone mountain is often razor-sharp, and if you come to Rajah Ampat and decide to do this climb, please remember to bring durable shoes or booties with hard soles. After about twenty or thirty minutes of climbing, we arrived at the top of the hill and stood next to a lone palm tree that is prominently visible from the bay, below. Luckily, we had a nice breeze up there, but it wasn't enough to keep me from sweating like a pig.

We've also taken a couple of zodiac rides around the many atolls in the bay we're anchored in. It's absolutely beautiful here: the calm water looks like dimpled glass, and growing on the small limestone islands are dense forests of trees laden with epiphytes. On some of the atolls we've even seen wild orchids.

Dives 28-29 Jamur Tengah (Wajag Island)

Great dive site! There are two schoosl of sweetlips here that will let you get within a few feet of them as they hang out over cleaning stations. A ledge at 65' hosts tons of nudibranches, cowries, pipefish, pipe horses, a rolling mass of striped catfish, and many other critters. Hausi found a little squid that I ended up watching it for over 40 minutes, taking photos as it fed on critters inhabiting two small gorgonians next to it. I also noticed that it would attach itself to a sponge, change color, and pretend to be one of its protrusions.

Dives 30 Tempat Lego (Wajag Island)

Slow night dive . Saw a nurse shark (first one on this trip), and tried to amuse myself by picking up dead anchovies and finding things to feed them to (the stupid things are still killing themselves by smashing into things around our lights). Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything to feed them to.

17 December 2004

Dive 31 Berbatus Cadas (Kawe Island)

Beautiful topography, with tall, thin pinnacles shooting upward from the bottom like jagged teeth. Surge was pretty bad, and was noticeable even down at 100'. Saw some nice blennies, nudibranches, and colorful tunicates, but it was nearly impossible to shoot anything. The fish here are typical for the greater area, and didn't allow us to get anywhere near them. In fact, one anemonefish fled from its anemone when I was still about 2 meters away from it. Bizarre.

Dives 32-33 Dinding Selatan (Sel Pelee Bay)

18 December 2004

Dives 34, 36, 37 Dinding Selatan (Sel Pelee Bay)

Dive 35 Pearl Farm (Sel Pelee Bay)

Edi has a good relationship with a local pearl farm run by an Australian corporation. Two of the ex-pat managers came over to Pindito in the morning and led us to one of the strings of oyster nets in their farm. One of the nets had fallen off of the main line, so the two guys had to drop down to 140' and run a search pattern in low visibility to retrieve it. I descended down into the dark green with them and snapped a few photos on the bottom before ascending slowly to the rest of the nets, which are at around 15-20 meters in depth (they found the net within a few minutes). The operation here is pretty amazing; there is a local staff of about 220 individuals, and there are about 850,000 oysters strung up around the bay -- a considerable investment! They entire pearl farming process is done on location, including giving "birth" to baby oysters, seeding them, growing them in the bay, harvesting, cleaning, sorting, etc.

Apparently, it is difficult for foreigners to run businesses in Indonesia. The guys here are routinely asked for bribes by various officials -- all the way up the chain. Some other pearl farms in the area are run by military generals. We're told that those operations are exempt from bribes.

19 December 2004

Dives 38-39 Eagle Rock (Kawe Island)

Eagle Rock is an amazing dive site! There is a lot of current, but on the protected side of the island, large boulders create an impressive topography and are completely covered by coral growth. Adjacent to that area is a large rubble field similar to the one by Darwin's Arch in the Galapagos (only this one is much shallower). Schools of many different species of fish hang out above dense colt coral and black coral gardens (which were actually yellow, green, orange, and red). Particularly impressive were schools of barracuda, batfish, sweet-lips, snappers, and fuseliers. We also had encounters with manta rays, resting wobbegong sharks, and sea turtles. In the shallows, rays of sunlight danced around us (rare for this trip).

One of my friends once said, "at some point I became a photographer and ceased to be a diver." I feel the same way: these days it's hard for me to enjoy diving without a camera, but a site like is enjoyable even without a camera. Or so I imagine...

Dive 40 Dinding Selatan (Wafak Island)

The shallow sloping area here has been bombed out and is very barren, but the lip of the wall is lush with coral growth. There is a nice black coral forest down a bit deeper, and on the wall was a nice school of anchovies being hunted by jacks. In the shallows were a few gorgonians, and it was possible to frame them with the cliff wall and associated foliage looming overhead through the water's surface.

Dive 41 Tempat Mandarin (Wafak Island)

Fantastic critter dive! We dropped in at sunset (which was beautiful) and poked around the rubble, looking for Mandarin gobies. Upon descending to 15', Hausi and Annalisa immediately spotted a Wunderpus! These guys are extremely rare, and it was fun to see it move slowly casting a net with its striped arms. I saw about seven Mandarinfish, but they were all buried deep in the rubble and it was impossible to get a shot that I would show to anyone. Late into the dive, I found a small blue-ring octopus hanging out at the tip of a branch of coral. Unfortunately, he wasn't showing his rings prominently for my camera, and only did so just before disappearing deep into the rubble. There were also numerous Saron shrimp around, but none of them would stick around once lit by my modeling light.

Annalisa found something like seven bobtail squid on this dive. She has a good eye for them.

20 December 2004

Dives 42 - Tanjung Barat (Mansuar Island)

Blech. Strong current and barren slope with areas utterly reduced to rubble by dynamite fishing. The channel a bit deeper was like a fish freeway, and as we shot by in the current they streamed past us in the other direction. Hausi and I was buzzed very closely by a school of large barracuda; they were close enough so that I could see their mouths opening and closing slowly (with teeth visible). We also saw our first free-swimming reef shark of the trip (a small black-tip), and several dogtooth tuna and jacks.

My (relatively new) Lexar 4GB 80x compact flash card crapped out during the dive. The camera went into "Err 02" mode, and when I surfaced I had to remove the battery to clear it. At that point, I discovered that the CF card would no longer format in the camera nor in my computer.

Dives 43 - Cape Kri, adjacent to Papua Diving

See description in Papua Diving dive log...

>Sardine's Reef (Papua Diving)

Dive 44: Fantastic fishy dive! The reef itself has nearly complete coverage -- very healthy, and fish were everywhere. Many large jacks and wahoo were here as well, and Otto, one of our crack dive guides, attracts them to him easily with a plastic bottle and a metal stick (which is also known to attract sharks). Spectacular reef, and spectacular fish!

Barracuda Sleeping (Papua Diving)

Dive 45: We dropped down into a sandy area spotted with little coral heads and lots of garden eels. Again, this area was very fishy, so it was easy to get some nice wide-angle shots. One thing that I'm enjoying about the reefs here at Papua Diving is that the fish here are easy to approach. The fish we swam with in ther areas of Rajah Ampat/Irian Jaya were scared shitless of us and didn't allow us anywhere near them. I would guess that the fish here are more used to frequent diving and have been fished by dynamite less.

We also saw a specied of pygmy seahorse (whose name I can't remember at the moment) that does not take host to gorgonians. Otto found one of these little guys near a tunicate on little strands of hydrozoans.

Dive 48: ---

Koh Island (Papua Diving)

Dive 46: Otto is an amazing dive guide. Whereas I might drift over a small section of reef and spot a colorful nudibranch, Otto would drift over the same section and then point out three ghost pipefish and four nudis. In fact, I saw him look over a reef from four or five feet away and then point out a nudi that was less than 1cm long! I had to stick my face right next to the rock to see it clearly. Otto also found yet another pygmy seahorse that was hopping from one little strand of hydroid to another.

I made a rookie move and took my 100mm macro lens out set to a focus limited mode. I must have changed the setting inadvertently when putting the housing together.

The reefs we dove today are as lush as any I've seen.

New Reef (Papua Diving)

Dive 47: Some nice critters: Periclimines imperator shrimp on a sea cucumber, and mating nudibranches.

Cape Kri

Dive 43: (from the Pindito) I took the 11:00 dive off because it was scheduled to be at the same site (which I wasn't too excited about). After lunch, we cruised to Papua Diving (the resort we'll be staying at for the next six days) and dove on their house reef, which is incredible. The current rips along the reef, and soft corals, gorgonians, sponges, and just about everything else grows to gigantic sizes. In the water column, large schools of jacks and snappers swim around while tuna dart in and out of schools of bait fish. The colors on the reef are spectacular, and we spent the last ten minutes or so drifting at breakneck speeds along the shallow coral garden. Edi told us that guests have spotted billfish here during their safety stop, and while we failed to see one on our dive, we did see a sailfish feeding at the surface on the way over here. I'm excited to dive this reef again.

Dive 49: Lots of nice macro subjects. I finally got a nice photo of a Pontori pygmy seahorse, and also took some shots of a goby nesting with its eggs in an empty burrowing clam shell. After shooting the pygmy, we ascended, and a then photographed a nice-looking leaf scorpionfish. I gave my Macro Mate to Otto (he was storing it in his BCD pocket), and by the time we boarded to the boat, it was gone. It's a demo unit from Backscatter, and I suppose that I just purchased it. *sigh*

Dive 51: Where did the fishies go? They must migrate to another part of the reef during specific conditions.

Manta's Reef

Dive 50: The current absolutely rips here, and divers typically use reef hooks to stabilize themselves at the edge of the wall. There is a big cleaning station here; while we were there, three manta rays cruised in slowly and hovered in the current while small, green wrasses cleaned them. Apparently, the action is usually much better, but I was happy to see even three of them. The surface of the water was like a mirror, and one manta hung out for awhile right under it. Its reflection on the water's surface was beautiful. I would have loved to get a photo, but there was 30' if raging current between me and it. :)

Mike's Point

Dive 52: Mike's Point, named after Max Ammer's son, is the best dive site I've been to so far in my short diving career.

We dropped down to about 22 meters in depth along the edge of the atoll's wall, where nudibranches and other little macro critters crawled about while blankets of fish milled around above us, occasionally scattering in response to squadrons of hunting jacks. As we wandered into shallower areas of the site, we passed lush gorgonian gardens; the gorgonians were the ones that grow in multiple layers, and these were perfect specimens. What I was impressed with was how complete the coral coverage was. There were huge gardens of single species of coral: acroporas, leathers, colts, and much more. Each swath of corals might be between 5 and 50 meters wide, with individual colonies growing as large as 5 meters or larger (I saw a acropora table coral that was about that big around). Although the individual colonies were packed together in larger areas, each often differed slightly in color from its neighbors. for example, there are fields of acroporas with groups of blue, yellow, white, and cream tips -- with all of the shades in between. It's quite a spectacle, and all of us were astounded by the coral coverage and quality.

The topography at Mike's Point is also very nice. Underwater, the lip of the atoll juts out dramatically in just a few feet of water, creating cavernous areas underneath that are literally covered with tunicates, soft corals, and little critters. There is also a narrow swim-through near the surface, and with the proper technique one can shoot through the swim-through like an arrow in the current, to be thrust out into the largest staghorn coral field I've ever encountered. It extended our further than I could see, and as we drifted along to clear the reef for an ascent, no end was in sight. I hope to come back to this site to shoot wide-angle before we leave Irian Jaya.

In the middle of the dive, my camera stopped flushing photos from the buffer to the compact flash card. This is the second catastrophic failure I've had with the 1Ds Mk II on this trip (the first was a Lexar card failure), but I suppose those problems are to be expected from v1.0 firmware. Still, it's disappointing to pay so much for a professional photographic instrument and have failures in the field! My modeling light's bulb also burned out during the dive. I've only done about fifty dives with the light so far, and I expected the bulb to last longer.

Dive 54, 55: Amazing, again. The shallow coral area continues to impress, but when we returned in the afternoon to the shallow base of the atoll, I floated there for a moment, stunned and not sure where to even start taking photos. I believe the phrase that popped into my head was, "like kid in a candy store."

Mios Kon (Island)

Dive 53: Nice school of blue and yellow striped snapper, a mushroom coral with four, worm-like, mushroom coral pipefish in it, and a little coral bommie with an underhang full of soft corals, coral trout, and batfish. The school of batfish here let us get within inches of them, and I snapped some nice photos of one of them being cleaned by two cleaner wrasses.

The Passage

Dive 56, 57: The Passage is about 45 minutes away from Papua Diving. Marsel, Etsuko, Steve, Hiro, Otto, Max and I piled onto one of the smaller boats and cruised out there to dive Nudibranch Rock and The Passsage. The Passage is a narrow channel leading into a large lagoon, and indeed it is so narrow that it feels like a river when you're on it (complete with ripping current). The bottom is mucky, with nudibranches and shrimpgobies almost literally everywhere. In the shallows, cardinal fish hang, motionless, and archer fish cruise around looking upward for insects to shoot out of the air. I saw two archer fish squirt and some insects (the view was from the boat), which was very cool. Overhanging foliage makes for dramatic views through the water's surface from below, but unfortunately we had rain and clouds instead of nice blue skies. I need to go back here on a nice day -- I can already envision the photos I will get. :)