In the Shadow of Manado Tua
By Tim Ingmire on 14 February 2006
It has been a long time since I’ve had goose bumps purely from excitement, longer in fact than I can remember; but as I stepped from the airplane at Manado’s Sam Ratalungi airport my skin fairly tingled with them. This was first real foray into SE Asia outside of the one city country of Singapore. What I saw as I walked along the windowed sky bridge into the terminal building was hills thickly covered in coconut trees – absolutely picture perfect but not a patch on what I hoped to see over the next three weeks. I had wanted to holiday in an exotic tropical paradise and here it was, I couldn’t wait to see more of this country both on land and underwater at some of the world’s best dive sites.
Day 1 – Macro day
Dive Sites:
- Fukui
- Alung Banua
- Wori Bay
Today’s diving was starting off at a site called Fukui on Bunaken Island. The attraction of this site is a row of giant clams and a newly discovered Hippocampus, a tiny little thing not at all like the normal Pygmy Seahorse. Excellent, this was exactly the thing I was expecting – lots and lots of fascinating tiny critters.
Getting to the site took a leisurely 45 minutes on one of the 4 regular boats that the dive centre uses. It is a type typical to the area and, whilst relatively basic, was more than spacious enough for the 3 divers and guides on the boat. On a number of occasions I was lucky enough to have the whole boat to myself with no other guests – pure luxury. Typically, the weather was hot with a fierce sun that kept me in the shade for the journey out and the sea was almost oily flat. I had been told that we could expect dolphins and, if I was really lucky, pilot whales on the crossing to the Island but it wasn’t to be.
Bunaken
Bunaken is a small island that would have most beach bums and sun worshippers gagging; tall palm trees lean out over beautiful golden sandy beaches upon which numerous small colourful boats are pulled up. We had to motor around to the far side of the island and this is when you come face to face with the island that is Manado Tua. This is dormant volcano that you can see clearly from the resort but it isn’t until you get close when you realise how big it is as it towers up over you. Awesome.
Four other boats were already moored over the site, not surprising given the attractions that were beneath us, and this generated a little debate amongst the crew and guides. Clearly, they were contemplating moving on to a less crowded site. Having dived in the Red Sea, I was more than happy to dive with just four other boats, especially as they were probably only carrying a few divers each themselves. It was hardly likely to be crowded down there and I was eager to see this wee beastie. Of course, logic told me that we could’ve come back later but I was feeling a little like a spoilt child – I wanted to see this seahorse and I wanted to see it now. I didn’t say anything though.
Finally, the decision was made and we were in. This was even better than yesterday, the viz was superb, the water warm and I had moved some of weights around so I was felling much more comfortable in the water. Now, with camera in hand, I was ready to take an award winning photo of a rarely photographed seahorse that was attracting a lot of the dive centres in the area. Ah, what a dreamer! Again, the sight of some huge barrel sponges, some with the same white worm I’d seen yesterday and some with colorful fans crowded around the rim greeted me. Man, these would look fabulous with a wide angle lens – but I was equipped with a macro lens, so after a quick look I swam on by following the rest of the gang (having adopted my usual position at the back) and then I saw the them. I’ve never seen giant clams before and so these for me were beautiful and much larger than I had expected – another subject for a wide angle shot which meant that I had already decided we should come back here some time.
Just beyond the clams the group were hanging around a large boulder covered with growth waiting for another group of divers to move on by. This must be interesting I thought but this was no fan coral so the Hippocampus must be further on. Eventually the other group moved on and our guide, Andy, moved in to find the interesting subject. The other two guests took a look and fired off a couple of snaps and I was then beckoned forward to take a look. Great, I couldn’t see a bloody thing – it was all just stuff. Then Andy pointed and something moved. It was a little tiny seahorse coloured so that it blended in perfectly with the growth around it. I had imagined something like the typical pygmy seahorse that I had seen in countless photographs sitting nicely on a colourful fan and positioned so that I could get a nice clear photo. This was nothing like that. This one was positioned in an area with very little light and was a muddy yellow colour that was almost impossible to distinguish from the background and try as I might, the camera was finding it very difficult to find a focus lock – now, too late, I wished I had the manual focus kit. This was not going to be easy. I took a number of pictures but I knew with each shot that it wasn’t good enough. Either it was out of focus or the seahorse moved or it had turned it’s back on me. Eventually I gave up as I was aware that the others were waiting for me – we swam on.
Nudist colony
After a while Elly, the other guide started rapping on his tank and called me over pointing at something. Before I reached him I could see a pair large beautifully colored Nudi’s. Elly moved over allowing me to get closer and I started to take a couple of pictures. I could hearing laughing behind me and felt a tap on my shoulder. A hand appeared shaking clearly say “no”, then pointed to a couple of dead leaves floating in the water. Then it hit me and shouted “oooooh, yes!”. I had completely missed two ghost pipefish right next to me – feeling like a fool and chuckling into my reg I pulled the camera around and started to take pictures. Again, the fish slowly turned around and around trying to not see me in the hope that I didn’t see them. Getting a focus lock on the eyes and then reframing before the fish moved was proving to be very difficult. This was something I found myself doing again and again over the next 3 weeks with very mixed result. Despite the difficulties I was as happy as a frolicking lamb in spring. I had already seen things that I never really thought I would ever see and here I was taking photos of them – I was ecstatic.
After another hour we were back on the boat, we had been given freshly sliced pineapple and papaya, and I was basking in the warm air, feeling very pleased with myself. The photo side wasn’t going as easily or as well as I had expected but there was lots of time to learn – this was after all, only the third trip with the rig and I had another 53 dives to do.
After an hours surface interval we were kitted up again and ready to dive Alung Banua, a spectacular wall dive with fantastic corals and sponges on the opposite side of Bunaken Island to Fukui. Here, I was introduced to pretty little bubble corals with attendant shrimp and crinoid squat lobsters; feisty little devils that would wave their tiny claws at you warning you to keep away despite the fact they were only a couple of centimetres in length. I also came across (ok, it was found by a guide again) an orang-utan crab, a skinny little thing that was unbelievably hirsute. I took many photos of these things during my stay believing that I didn’t get a single one in focus. The hairs which cover the crab lend every photo a very fuzzy, unfocused look to its appearance and only by looking at its eyes did I really see if the picture was sharp or not. Another hours dive and we were up again ready for the lunch that we had ordered the previous evening and which had been put aboard that morning in thermal cases. Not wanting to go for the western food on offer I had opted for the Asian Fare. It was delicious but unfortunately, the combination of jet lag and the heat killed my usually large appetite and I could only manage a plate full which was a shame because I had copious quantities of about four different dishes to help myself to. I was really starting to enjoy the food on offer, I just wished I could eat more of it.
During lunch, and after the crew had eaten, we made our way back across from Bunaken to another of the Dive Centre’s house reefs and one which was to become a real favourite of mine, Wori Bay. This is a site with several dives in one. We started by descending onto a pinnacle that drops to a sandy bottom over which you swim to a reef covered with coral and coral debris. Every time I visited this site I found something new to me. I was told I could expect to see a blue ring octopus and stonefish here which meant that every time I wanted to put my hand down to steady myself, (on rock or dead coral only you understand) I gave the surface a little wave and a quick study to make sure one of these things wasn’t taking a rest where I was about to put my fingers – that would put my diving holiday to a very sudden end. We had come looking for frogfish but none were to be found, instead we found hundreds of nudi’s – they were just everywhere we looked. It was just as well that I had come equipped with the macro lens as the tide was on its ebb and, with the site being within the bay, the viz was not good so we were treated to an underwater snowstorm as large flakes of silt floated past and onto every surface, living or not.
Terra Firma
Once up and out of the water, we made our way back to the dive centre jetty and back to terra firma. All the kit was taken care of and we were told it would all be rinsed and back on the boat ready for our dives in the morning. Even my camera was taken off the boat for me sparing me the effort of having to carry it the short distance to the camera room. Now, the camera room is an excellent facility. Being the only guest using it I had loads of space for my gear and uncontested access to the computer where I could view the days photos. Everyday, I would go straight to the room, remove the camera from the housing and, in turn, the batteries and compact flash card from the camera. The batteries would be recharged and I would copy the photos from my card to the wee device I’d brought for back-up, an Archos AV400 with a 100Gb Hard drive. This is an excellent device as it has a CF slot and copies 1Gb worth of files in about 5 minutes – very quick, which was just as well because I found it very difficult to wait to see how things had turned out. Once copied, I plugged the USB cable from the computer into the Archos and started to view the pictures, weeding out the really poor ones. With high expectation I viewed the first day’s photos. Hmm, not so good, I barely managed two photos of the hippocampus where it was even recognizable and the rest were not good – if I had wanted sharp pictures of the surrounding growth, then I would have been happy, I had some real keepers; but I didn’t, so they were dumped pretty sharpish. So, in all a little disappointing – some very nice nudi shots and maybe one or two nice pipefish shots but nothing that really gripped me. Ah well, there was always tomorrow.
From this point I’m just going to cover the highlights of each day each day offered fabulous diving and it would be overwhelming to describe it all here.
Contact
Author: Tim Ingmire
Email: info@travel-dive.com
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