Lembongan
I arrived on the 21 and have been diving almost every day since. Obviously the days with the Manta Rays have been EPIC but that’s not all that’s epic around here. Big Fish has a building called the Yoga Shack and yoga is not exactly my cup of tea but other folks love it and show up mornings and evenings to join Shauna and others to chill, stretch, and workout. On other occasions the Yoga Shack is turned into an AWARENESS center and the public is invited to join their talks and slide shows on the mysteries of the sea or particular elements of the sea such as; ‘What is coral, animal or plant?’, ‘The Secret Life of Mantas’, and episodes of ‘Blue Planet’. Big Fish, Blue Corner and a growing number of dive companies have joined in with groups such as SEA SHEPARD and SHARK GUARDIAN to help people understand the ocean and the sea they dive in and love. If there wasn’t a problem there wouldn’t be these types of groups, let’s just hope it’s not too late.
I was diving with www.bigfishdiving.comback in January when a woman volunteered to work with the Manta research team under the Marine Megafauna Foundation. She’s still here for another month and doing a most excellent job helping with talks and impromptu appearances swimming from one dive boat to another to help the unaware be aware of what they’ve just seen or will see. She also works closely with www.mantamatch.comas do some of the other guides and instructors at Big Fish Diving. She explains to divers what the research team needs such as, if you take a picture of the underside of a manta you can download it and enter it into a database where it is accumulated for a deeper understanding of the travel patterns, behavior, and conditions of mantas through time. Some have been photographed here in Lembongan, next to Bali and travel as far as Labuan Bajo, Flores. The problem is there is a part of their migration that goes through an area known for catching mantas for their gills.
A while back a Chinese Doctor said that manta (gills) were good for a lot of things such as immune system recovery, cancer prevention, sexual stamina, and progressive health. Well after research was done none of these statements had any worth. It was all trash talk but people believe what they want and the industry grew into something so ugly and ridiculous, the educated world started laughing. That didn’t stop the ignorance and now a manta alive in the wild might be worth millions of tourist dollars, but on the table or dried, powdered and drank is worth next to nothing. The Chinese want black market products such as Yatse-gumba; a fungus that grows out of the head of caterpillars in Nepal, shark fin soup, and manta ray gill sets. In reality shark fins have accumulated high levels of mercury, manta ray gills filter through the water and pick up micro-plastics, and caterpillars with mold growing out of their head sounds a bit desperate to me. When I was last in Nepal trekking the Lower Dolpa region I had a chance to try these little caterpillars with mold growing out of their head and I had a 2000-meter climb the next day. I wanted it to work. It didn’t. No matter what the mystics say no one beats death. The mystics die like everyone else no matter what they eat or tell you to eat.
The swell has really picked up around Lembongan and Gili Air. There have been storms separated by a few days and unfortunately I can’t get close enough to take any fantastic shots of these surfers.
I adopted a Manta Ray the other day. That means I donated to the Marine Megafauna Foundation and got to pick a Manta, name it, (Big Dipper, because there are black dots that look like the big dipper on her underside). When other people turn in photos of it I’ll be alerted to its location and condition. I donated $200.00 USD towards research and get a newsletter periodically and that sounds good to me. Marine Megafauna info@marinemegafauna.org.
While not diving with the Manta Rays we’ve been diving on the north side of Nusa Penita where guides and myself have noticed a massive bleaching of the corals in the area that came on rather recently. Fire corals and most others are sensitive to water temperature changes and like us we live in a certain temperature bracket that if it goes too high, the old and the young die. Coral is a little different because they can hibernate and wait for ideal temps to return, if they return.
My fin strap infections have subsided into craters with no reddening surrounding them. I have been diving a lot over the last six months and I finally got water trapped in my ear. With a bit of vinegar and water or alcohol in the ear it seems to have dislodged and I have one more day of diving here on Lembongan before returning to Sanur for a short spell of writing before heading out on another fine aquatic adventure. I’ll also be diving out of Sanur for a spell. There will be one more diving blog before some transitional blogs and then South Africa, the Sardine run and sharks. See you in the blue.
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