After what seemed like a never ending flights, we finally arrived Tuesday night to Bali Aquarium, our home base for the next two months. The export facility is located in the capital city of Bali, Denpasar, and ships corals, fish and invertebrates all over the world. Bali Aquarium is one of the pioneers of maricultured aquarium corals in Indonesia and we will be here learning more about what goes into getting corals from the source to you. Chances are if you have any coral in you home aquarium from the Indo Pacific, there’s a good chance some of them probably passed through the raceways here at Bali aquarium!
November is the tail end of the dry season (hint the rain is coming) so our hostVincent Chalias没有延迟设置一个周末充满了红利ng. A quick (short) night’s sleep and we packed up our gear and hit the road for a three hour drive to Tulamben, on the north-east coast of Bali. Tulamben is among one of the most popular dive sites on the island, famous for the Liberty wreck, a US Army Transport ship torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942.
We have to admit, “most popular dive site in Bali” wasn’t our idea of a good time! Nope we are on the hunt for dive sites off the beaten path. Lucky for us, Vincent has spent the better part of twenty years in Bali so he knew just where to go.
Day 1for our first dive we headed 45 minutes west of Tulamben to Taman Segara Penuktukan. What is interesting about this dive site are the concrete ball-shaped artificial reef structures placed around 9 meters deep (30 feet) which, are designed to be a place for corals to grow and fish to take shelter and spawn.
Tamar Segara was established in 2008by a group of local conservationists, assisted by several NGOs including the Reef Check Foundation to protect the coastal and offshore areas of Penuktukan. Prior to 2008, the underwater site was under threat from non-local fishermen who used destructive bottom trawl nets, poison and explosives to catch fish. The group of local fishermen from Penuktukan formed the group to help protect the waters around their village.
Currently there are some 40 structures in the water with lots of large well developed colonies of branchingAcropora. We found lots of fish living in the artificial reefs including some extra inquisitive trigger fish we had to fend off during the dive.
Day 2of diving and we headed 30 minutes east of Tulamben to Amed. We did three dives, two starting at the Japanese shipwreck and one in Jemeluk. The shipwreck is a great snorkeling spot as it is shallow 3-5 meter deep (10-15 feet).
The shipwreck is covered in corals, and schools of fish like to hide in the protective hull, so it’s easy to spend lots of time looking around all the nooks and crannies. We found a trio of yellow leaf fish, at least a dozen azoox stony coral species inside the ship, and astunning orange elephant ear coral.
在沉船之外的浅水中,是一个皮革珊瑚花园,例如Sarcophyton, Lobophytum和Sinularia, we also found a beautiful colony ofNephthea在3m(10英尺)或水中摇动膨胀。我们还发现了我们的第一个孔雀虾虾和红色侏儒海马,Hippocampus bargibanti.Past the shallows, the bottom slopes to a deeper coral reef formation around 20-25 m (65-80 feet) deep covered in sea fans, stony corals and more fish that you could count.
Our last dive of the day was at Jemeluk and was one of my favorites. The dive started with a longer swim out over a sandy bottom covered in garden eels, then the shallow reef quickly turns into a sharp drop off down to 35m (115 feet). At the bottom we found some beautifully photogenic tunicates,Mycediums和Oxypora. Along the wall we also spotted some beautiful pink square anthias and large colonies ofacropora达到从窗台。
Day 3took us to Kubu a short drive east of Tulamben. Kubu starts with a rubble bottom with lots of little critters hiding amounts the rocks. We found lots of Rhodactis mushroom anemones,Pocillopora Montipora, and large anemones with some fantastic and bold maroon clownfish.
库布(Kubu)是另一个倾斜的礁石,是我们周末最深入的潜水。我们的最大深度为36m(120英尺),这是您希望您可以整天呆在水中的潜水之一。坡度到处都是微型栖息地,上面有大田地Anacroporagiving way toAcropora carduus(red dragon acropora) We especially loved watching the school of sergeant major damselfish darting around as 20 or more trevallies shot through the water chasing the school.
We headed back to Denpasar that afternoon for a day of well needed rest and lots of time to sift through our photos and to report back! There will be more to come throughout our stay about Bali Aquarium and especially coral farms and what is takes to get coral from here to all of you.
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