Life at the Beach

Yesterday we spent a very lazy day at the beach.  Sam has been going snorkeling in the afternoons, and yesterday I joined him for both a morning and afternoon snorkeling session.  The coral here on the Northern coast of Bali has been through a lot.  First the local fishermen were using dynamite and cyanide to fish, and then el Nino severely bleached the reef.  The dive shops (including the one we’re diving with) and a few of the locals have put together awareness programs to teach the local people how important the reef is to their tourism and how they can protect and improve its health so that they can continue to count on tourism as employment.  There are a couple of neat organizations & their links:

Reef Seen works to rescue turtle eggs endanger of being dug up and eaten (they are considered a delicacy).  They also take in turtles that are found on the beach or in fishermen’s nets so that they can be released back into the wild.  We went to see their hatchery where they have about 400 baby turtles and 5 adults.  It was definitely very cool and the baby turtles were adorable!  Click on "environmental prog." and check out their turtle project.

Also headed by Reef Seen (and under "environmental prog." on their website) Reef Gardeners is a program that educates and promotes a healthy reef in the Pemuteran Bay.  The members are responsible for removing harmful things from the reef (such as Crown-of-Thorn Starfish) and promoting continued growth. 

Finally, the Bio Rock project is responsible for maintaining the underwater structures that are charged with a low-level electric current that helps promote limestone growth, which is the base for coral formation.  The project is the largest in Southeast Asia and there is more Bio Rock in the Permuteran Bay (some in the shape of turtles, fish, starfish) than there is in all of Southeast Asia combined.

Today Sam and I went SCUBA diving again.  We rented an digital camera & underwater housing from one of the shops near our hotel and headed back out to Menjangan Island with our same dive master and a German couple, Milan and Claudia.  They are serious divers and brought their equipment (including a very nice digital camera in underwater housing) from Germany to dive in Bali.  We took some neat photos although our camera didn't have a wide enough lens so everything came out blue.  :-(  And, of course, the internet isn't cooperating so I can't upload pictures into the blog tonight.  We saw a 4-5 foot Black Tipped Reef Shark (which was too far away for me to get a clear photo), a small eel, and a 1-1.5 foot barracuda on our first dive.  After a great lunch break and some tanning on the bow, we went for our second dive and Sam took the camera.  He got some very neat photos of the pair of octopuses we saw, which was by far the highlight of the second dive.

I think I have to rescind my comment earlier about Bali not having as many big sea animals as Thailand (although Duson made that very comment to Milan this morning) since our only shark this vacation was here in Bali and I have never seen an octopus (that I can recall) in all my time diving.  In other news, I have doubled my total number of dives in the last two weeks.  I'm very excited about that, and I'm just beginning to appreciate how relaxing and fun I find being under water.  I wish it were a cheaper hobby and that Sam had more time to go diving with me!

After we got back from our dives, we headed to our hotel's bar for appetizers and a cocktail to celebrate our last night in Pemuteran.  After that we treated ourselves to massages (Sam quite enjoyed his first oil massage by the way) and headed over to the restaurant Duson at Easy Divers recommended that we try.  Dinner was fabulous!  I ordered the Red Snapper grilled with Balinese spices, but we're pretty sure I ended up with a Parrot Fish- either was it was amazing.  Sam tried Beef Rendang, which our food connoisseur friend Dan wrote down for us to try while we are here.  I liked the beef, but the fish definitely stole the show.  

Since I can't post photos here on the blog, check out the link to the Bali facebook album and you can see the photos from our diving trip: Bali Album