Sometimes there are so many fish in Raja Ampat, it gets dark. This is one of those dives where I could just sit in one spot and stare…
I love that you shot this in B&W. It’s perfect!
Raja Ampat No Longer A Secret
As I reported a few days ago, RA is no longer a secret place. There are home-stays and small resorts popping up all over the place. I used to take a walk down the beach towards the end of Pulau Kri on the day of rest, Saturday. When I took that walk, it was totally void of humans…it was just me, the water, and the birds. Not anymore. This time, when I took the walk, I ran into several home-stays that have been built next to the water…and a couple of new piers extending out to the drop-off. I guess this is progress. I just wonder what it will be like 30 years from now? At least I got to see it when it was pristine…
I am not complaining, and the growth is not all that bad. Because of the popularity of Raja Ampat, Indonesia is the first country to protect Mantas in ALL of it’s territorial waters. This would not have happened if Raja Ampat remained a secret. So, some good has come from it’s new popularity. I also like taking photos of piers….these two photos are of the new pier…
I want to go there!
Sweet Lips
You would think fish would move around a bit, but every time I dive the reef out in the middle of the channel in front of Kri, I can find these this same group of Sweet Lips hanging out. I wonder if they recognise me? I told my dive guide, Eddie, that I would be hanging with the Sweet Lips for the entire dive…and that’s exactly what I did…Eddie took off with the other two divers in my group, and explored the reef while I just made my self comfortable at the large rock where the Sweet Lips were. I think I took a hundred or so photos…trying for different angles, different camera settings, etc. This is my favorite of the bunch…and it was one of the last ones I took.
Dive Trouble
Two things happened while I was taking photos of the Sweet Lips. About half way through my dive, I noticed my strobes were not firing. To my horror, I looked down at my housing and found the end of my strobe cable…the end that attaches to my housing….floating in the water. Panicking, I managed to re-attach the cable. Then I looked at my housing to be sure there was no flooding….to my relief, no water was seen inside, and to my surprise, the camera and strobes kept working after re-attaching the cable….lucky.
The next thing to happen was my own stupidity. I was so involved taking photos, I lost track of time. Eventually, I looked at my dive computer, and it read that I had to do a 6-minute decompression stop…oops….overstayed my time at depth….I then looked at my air supply, and I had less than 500 PSI left of air….not very much….another little panic wondering if I could stay down long enough to do my 6-minute stop. On my way up, the time increased to 8 minutes….uh oh….I am all alone…no one to share air with if I run out….when I got to 15 feet, I just drifted and breathed as slowly as possible watching my computer slowly…very slowly…tick down. Finally, it reached to zero, and I had only 100 pounds to spare…whew….stupid me.
Lots of fish, indeed! Beautiful-looking fish!