Pemuteran: Three Worthy Snorkeling Sites

      We spent seven nights in Pemuteran on the far northwest coast of Bali.  Our original plan was to spend only four nights, which would probably have been about right.   The potential eruption of Mt.

One of the Biorock Structures

Agung caused us to change our plans.  It must be noted that the travel time to Pemuteran is far greater than what you might expect, no matter which way you approach it.  It took over four hours for an experienced driver to travel the 70 miles from Amed to Pemuteran and, just yesterday, over four hours for the same poor fellow to make his way through Singaraja, over the mountains and down into Ubud.  So although on the map it doesn't look very far,  it is a destination not to be taken casually and once you get there it is worth staying for a while to justify the effort.

    As the title suggests, there are three good spots to snorkel from the beach in Pemuteran,  Our discovery was aided by our good friend Peter Kroppje who did some very helpful research in a book

The Hospital de Saint Pau would look at home in the Biorock

on Bali snorkeling.  By virtue of going diving several times, Peter talked to the nice people at Sea Rovers, who were instrumental in helping us find the third site described here.

    The first site I will describe is the Biorock Project.  This endeavor began in the year 2000 with a few steel structures, charged with low voltage electricity.  These were placed in the Java Sea in front of Taman Sari Resort.  Biorock now extends about forty meters along the coast.  The reef in Pemuteran had been largely destroyed by cyanide fishing.  Sounds crazy, right?  But nevertheless true.

  When Sandra and I visited here in 2009 there were some discrete patches of coral and a few sponges.  things have changed dramatically.  As noted in a previous blog, the last two years subjected the biorock reef, and all the other reefs in the area, to high ocean temperatures courtesy of climate

A Dusky Wrasse among the Biorock coral rubble.

change. Now in 2017 the reef associated with Biorock looks a lot like what you might expect coming from Kona: some living corals, but lots of coral rubble as well.  As in Kona, the branching corals seem to have taken the biggest hit.

   The biorock structures still exist, looking ever so much like something envisioned by Isaac Asimov, Buckminster Fuller or, possibly, one of  the Catalan modernisme architects from late 19th Century Barcelona. Those science fiction dudes had little on Anton Gaudi and Luís Domènech Montaner.  If, for example, you picked up the Hospital de Saint Pau, plopped it in the Java Sea and electrified it, it would not seem especially out of place at Biorock.  Perhaps you could get a free tonsillectomy in the process.

     Regardless of the design inspiration, there is a greater variety of organisms on the structures than

Clown Anemonefish living on the Biorock

we saw eight years ago.  Everybody loves Nemo (sorry Raymond) and may of the structures boast anemones with false clown anemone fish.  On one structure we counted four such anemones replete with the cutest little fish on our emerald orb.

    To visit this site, enter on the soft sand in front of Taman Sari or slightly to the east.  In their efforts to deflect the hoi poloi away from their paying guests, the fine people at Taman Sari have placed signs along the beach extolling in English the dangers of entering in front of their hotel (Sea Urchins! Scorpionfish! Sharp rocks!) This is nonsense, of course, but the entry is equally safe on the beach a few meters to the east.  Swim out about twenty meters and enjoy the sea life and the biorock structures. 

    Were this the only spot for the snorkeling in the bay we would have made the most of it.  However,

Gorgeous anemone on the Reef Seen flats.

at least twenty years have elapsed since the end of cyanide fishing on this coast and the marine life is rebounding everywhere.  The second entry we utilized is directly in front of the Reef Seen Dive Resort. The management here seems to embrace the visiting snorkeler.  We utilized an elevated bench attached to a shady tree for changing and all we got from the Reef Seen people were smiles.  As at Taman Sari, you enter on soft sand.  There are residual piles of rocks leading into the ocean from the beach, the remnants of the weighs left over from the fishing days.  And there are tall, sturdy signs  anchored in cement platforms marking the way, in the event that you have any doubts.

   Here you find yourself on a reef flat with recovering coral with occasional patches of grass. Perhaps because the coral has not been force fed by well meaning electricians, there is far less rubble.  The shallow flat extends out about

The mystery damselfish with the peach colored caudal peduncle

thirty meters and then slopes sharply downward.  There are some protruding coral heads in the deeper water and a few mooring buoys. I employed the anchor lines from the buoys to hold myself down while attempting some photographs.

   We snorkeled this reef three times and it never failed to produce interesting organisms.  On my first snorkel, I saw a gorgeous anemone.  We found several hermit crabs, including the blood hermit crab that we know from Kona.  Not for the first time in Bali, did I see a damselfish that isn't in the book.  A handsome gray damsel with a yellow caudal peduncle, the tail trimmed in brown.  Any help from the peanut gallery?

There were several of these colonies of blue sticks.

   I can hardly wait to get back to a library where we can ponder some invertebrate books.  What do you make of this odd, blue organism that looks like a bundle of sticks?

   We chose this site for our last dive in Pemuteran.  Towards the end of our hour and a half swim, we experienced a flurry of interesting animals.  This included the Blue Ringed Angelfish, an interesting

Schultze's Pipefish,  Reef Seen  2017

transitional specimen displaying faint vertical stripes of the juvenile and the classic up sweeping blue lines of the adult, a duo of baby lionfish and what has to be one of the treasures of our expedition: a baby Lined Sweetlips. This three centimeter beauty was flitting in and out of a coral rubble shelter in the sandy grass.   The striped  sweetlips baby is a significantly different shape from its many spotted cousin, which you will recall from the Jemeluk blog.  He is sleek and has longitudinal stripes and a striking chestnut cap.  Like other baby sweetlips, his undulating locomotion is entrancing.  We worked for at least five minutes attempting to catch this quick moving sprite in the open.   I did get two shots with the macro lens, but the fish was just too kinetic and the pictures are poorly focused.  It would have been a fantastic fish even without any pictures. 

   The third spot I'm going to tell you about truly would have been impossible without Peter's

Bengai Cardinalfish at Weedy Pirates  Nov 2017

research.  Pemuteran Bay, a long shallow scoop on the north west coast of Bali, is divided roughly in half by a sandy point.  Just inside that point, perhaps 500 meters down the beach from Taman Sari, is a small pier which is notable at some distance for a large white, two masted sailboat moored there.  The pier marks the inside boundary of what the Sea Rovers Dive Emporium calls the Weedy Pirates dive site.  (The company fashions themselves as scuba diving buccaneers.)  On our next to last day, Sandra, Peter and I made the trek down the beach to this pier, hoping to see a premier muck fish like a batfish or sea moth.  We had been told that they were there, along with anemones and other interesting animals.

   At the foot of the pier there is a small grassy spot and a leaky hose with fresh water, providing an excellent location to transition in and out of the sea.  After entering on the soft sand we swam around the pier, not seeing much of interest.  As we headed slowly out to sea, things changed

Banded Coral Shrimp at Weedy Pirates 2017

dramatically.  Under a piece of stony rubble I spotted antennae, these belonging to a trio of banded coral shrimp.  Adjacent to the stone was a long spined sea urchin housing two extraordinary species, the Bengai Cardinalfish and a pair of sweet little Radial Filefish.  The spines on these urchins are longer than any we have experienced in Hawaii and Weedy Pirates served as home to at least three species of cardinalfish.  They were able to rest the day away among the urchin spines before entering the open water at night to hunt.

    Certainly the shrimp and the filefish were interesting, but the Bengai Cardinalfish is amazing.  Flipping through the pages of the field guide over the years, I have admired this fish, figuring it must be extremely rare, that I would never be so lucky as to see it in the wild.  We spent some time with this group and then swam out a little bit where a screen had been

Toothy Cardinalfish,  Weedy Pirates  2017

submerged creating a home for more animals, among them rested the bengai cardinalfish, now not surrounded by sea urchin spines.

    Over the next hour and a half we swam out towards the point about fifty meters and about thirty meters out to sea; not really all that far.  Over and over we were stalled by new finds, anemones winking in the clear water, hermit crabs, pipefish and two more cardinalfish.  Sandra found a remarkable sea urchin shaped like a corrugated garden hose with a duster on the end.

    At about the same time, we saw two of the most peculiar sea urchins ever.  the globular urchin looks like a royal blue handball to which has been affixed lines of bristles fron a clothes brush.  Very beautiful and most unexpected.  wayan at Sea rovers was able to put a name on this one for us. 

The Globular Urchin... one peculiar echinoderm.

    Halfway through, I spotted a bannerfish that I knew was different for the trip.  It turned out to be the Masked Bannerfish, not in our field guide, I later identified it from an Australian fishwatching site on the internet. We followed this handsome individual for a while.  He wasn't extremely cooperative, but as there was only one of him , he was not so elusive that we unable to get a good shot.

   A bit later, patiently cruising the grassy area, we were lucky to see a jawfish, also not in our field guide, but in this instance not readily identified from the internet either.  Challenges like this make fish watching interesting.  We watched this fellow with crown of red spots and an iridescent blue mustache for five minutes and were rewarded with a couple good

The Brown Barred Goby, Amblygobius phalaena at Weedy Pirates  2017

shots.

   Clearly Pemuteran has a lot to offer the adventurous naturalist.  There is a variety of food and lodging to be found.  I don't see a way around the difficult transfer, be it from the airport or Amed, but if you make the trip you will certainly find your rewards.

jeff

      

Jemeluk

        It was our last morning on the Amed coast.  We had asked our driver, Ketut, to pick us up at 11 so we all had time for one more snorkel in Jemeluk Bay before heading west.  All of our snorkeling at

Mt Agung rising over Jemeluk.  That little ridge is deemed protective.

Jemeluk had been out in front of our resort.  Villa Coral is not the newest place, or the fanciest, and

the food was just so so. But the kids that ran the place were nice enough, the air conditioning worked like a charm and the resort sat right in front of the best fish watching we had found so far on the trip.

    I had been pretty discouraged both at Japanese Wreck and at Lipah Bay.  Those sites that had epitomized rich coral growth were now much reduced by the bleaching brought on by climate change.  There were still lots of good fish and invertebrates to be sure, but those locations had, over the past ten years set a pretty high standard.  We had last visited in 2014, three years ago, and we left both of those bays in excellent condition.

Coral Villas.  Come for the fish, live for the AC.

   We didn't know what to expect when we arrived in Jemeluk...more of the same, I suppose.  So we were pleasantly surprised to find that the hard corals here were about as good as we remembered.  Its impossible to tell why a location not so far from others has not suffered the same ravages.  Nevertheless, we were happy to take it.

    Another thing that had not changed was the unfettered development along the shore of this small pearl of a bay.  In 2009 the hundred meter strand of pebbles had been fronted by untended grass.  By 2014 every nature of ramshackle home stay and restaurant was sprouting up.  Indonesia, or Bali at least, does not seem to grasp the

Extreme juvenile of the Many Spotted Sweetlips.  He flutters in the night like a moth.

concept of permits and zoning.  So as I walked down the beach, I was walking between the tables of seaside restaurants, around dogs, greeting pet roosters.

    One thing that had changed, at least transiently, were the number of young Australians.  Bali is only a scant 3 hours and 40 minutes from Perth by air. The flight is cheap, and once here a vacation is

Randall shows the Lined Wrasse juvenile

a third the price of a similar experience in Oz.  As a consequence, on previous visits we had been surrounded by young Aussies blowing off steam, as it were.  With the eruptive activity of Mt Agung, Australia issued a stern travel warning and it seems to have had an effect.  The number of inebriated Aussies had shrunk to an unnoticeable number. Divers Cafe, which was my destination, had been one of their favorite haunts and I was hoping for a peaceful morning.

    I put on my gear beside a jukung, the twenty five foot lateen rigged outriggers the Balinese use for fishing, and was soon in the water looking at fish.  Immediately I encountered a couple baby wrasses.  One was a tiny sprout with multiple projections top and bottom, that I had encountered in Hawaii thirty years ago.  At the time, the experts had thrown up their hands, but allowed that it might be the beginning iteration of a dragon wrasse, which in turn would become a rockmover.  We had seen both rockmovers  and dragon wrasses over the previous week, so I was happy to file this one away as

Tiny gray wrasse, the shape of the  Lined Wrasse juvenile.

such.

    The other was far more interesting.  This, of course, depends on how much you like extremely small, easily ignored fish. This fellow was also about an inch long.  He was chalky gray and shaped like an arrowhead.  Later, looking at the field guide, I noted that the shape was exactly like the lined wrasse juvenile.  However, that (more interesting) juvenile makes the book by being brown with custard curlicues, the sort of fish that was made popular in Haight-Ashbury back in the 60s.  For the record I have recorded this sighting as "similar to a line wrasse".  It never ceases to amaze me when the Olympus T4 focuses on tiny mid-water objects. In this case, I got a picture in pretty good focus, but the dorsal fin and tail are bent away, hence you do not see the complete profile.  Regardless, I was really pleased with the image.  

Key tip for night snorkeling...Don't cross the beams!

    In as much as you can't see the whole profile of my fish, I have purloined an internet image of the lined wrasse from my nonagenarian friend Jack Randall to complement my study in gray.  Hopefully you get the idea. 

    As a pertinent aside,the previous evening , while the Redoubtable SKG and I were on a night snorkel, we had seen an amazing baby fish, the progeny of the many spotted sweetlips.  It was a tiny thing, less than an inch long and attracted our attention by fluttering like a moth in the beams of our flashlights.  I was very lucky that the camera focused on this tiny delight and the flash stopped his fluttering perfectly.  Needless to say, the trick in a situation like this is   (as sent down to us from on high by Dan Akroyd

Lionfish On Parade  Jemeluk 2017

in Ghostbusters)  "Don't cross the beams."  The whole reef could end up like the ballroom in the Excelsior Hotel, for goodness sake.

     As I moved along, it became apparent that the reef in front of Diver's Cafe had not survived as well as its counterpart on the far end of this small bay.  One has to remember that coral death here preceded climate change.  It was my opinion that the Diver's Cafe management got a head start with straight forward pollution.  Nevertheless, the remaining coral has, over the last ten years, provided us with more than a few thrills.  For example, I saw my first lionfish on the reef outside the cafe.  Seeing a lionfish in Jemeluk Bay is not a big trick this year.  The day before, Sandra and I logged seven, most of them during the day.  The picture I'm including here is of a lionfish parading across the bay with its fins in full extension.  What a treat that was.

    There were not any lionfish in the vicinity of Diver's Cafe.  And only one small oriental sweetlips.  Three years ago there had been many large sweetlips and in 2009 this was where we spotted the older

Two Tone Dottyback  Jemeluk 2017

juvenile many spotted sweetlips.  As I swam around the point the coral death became much more apparent and there were few fish to keep me there, so I turned back.

     On the bay side of the cafe I found a pair of pretty fish that I had seen in 2014 and failed to identify.  They were in exactly the same spot and permitted the photo you see here.  With help from a pro (Wayan at Sea Rovers in Pemuteran) we can now put a provisional name on this fish, two tone dottyback.  When you were growing up and learning to watch fish didn't you always want to see a dottyback?  Is it possible that I am turning into a dottering idiot?

     As I floated off the point I noticed a sudden shift in the fish around me.  Looking over my shoulder I noticed that we had company.  A four foot ulua was looking at me as if I might be lunch.  This was a little unnerving, in part because I hadn't even had breakfast yet.  Eventually he decided

Blue is the color of my true love's Lobster.  Tommy Smothers, loosely.

that I was insufficiently tasty and moved on, leaving me to a bit more exploring.

   

   Around a tall coral head I saw two large white antenna.  Brave lobsters are virtually unknown in Hawaii, but even an inexperienced observer like myself had to be suspicious.  After scouting the situation, I selected a handhold about five feet down on an adjoining coral.  I dove down , grabbed

Sri Blesses the stone.  Bali 2017

on, and looked left.  Less than six inches away were two lionfish in a coral window.  This had happened the day before, so I wasn't entirely surprised.  I took my picture (it was indeed a handsome blue lobster) and surfaced.  I decided on a different technique, but first dove the lionfish and took their picture, thus moving them a bit deeper into their small cave. My second dive, with the lionfish hand hold is here for your lobster loving pleasure.

    And remember, if you need those letters of transit check with Ferrari over at the Blue Lobster.

     That is my best fish story for today.

      As this is Bali, land of magical Hinduism, I'll leave you with a picture of Sri blessing the rock outside our unit at Villa Coral.  May your life be full of blessings as well.

    

    



   

   

Menangen Island

    Having spent the first week in Amed, under the shadow of Mt Agung, we have moved our expedition to the very northwest corner of the island of Bali.  Here in Permuteran we are fifteen miles

Nickolai and Peter.  The Novice and the Wizard

away from the most important island in Indoniesia.  Java is home to several large cities,one of which, Jakarta, you have actually heard of.   Once upon a time, Jakarta was known as Batavia and was the first major European outpost in this part of the world.

   Yesterday, we went on a guided dive trip with Sea Rovers, one of the innumerable dive companies in Pemuteran.  There  were two guides, Davy and Aleef.  And Batu, an Indonesian of few words, who piloted the boat.  Aleef, a young sleepy sort of Muslim, was to guide the three snorkelers and Davy a lithe brown man with a quick smile and charming sense of humor, was guiding our friend Peter on his dives.

   Our third snorkeler, after the redoubtable SKG and your humble correspondent, was Nikolai.  Nickolai is from Denmark and had only donned a snorkel mask once before.  That was, in all of the unlikely places, Zanzibar.  What do I know about the island of Zanzibar?  Long ago the Big Z made its wealth as a holding facility for the black African slave trade.  More recently, as I recall, my boys and I enjoyed  a children's story, Hugo the Hippo, about an eponymous hippopotamus who made his way to the mainland after fighting off sharks and an evil Zanzibar sultan, who was probably involved in the slave trade when not plaguing hippos.

   Five years ago Nickolai had been stationed in Uganda as part of the Danish consulate.  He was involved in something like our Peace corps, coordinating a program aimed teaching the Ugandans how to make Havarti cheese.   While there, he took a tourist trip to the Big Z where he went snorkeling exactly once.  He must have enjoyed it, because here he was, once again at the ends of the earth, on his second snorkeling expedition.  On the other hand, he must not have enjoyed it too much because there was that five year hiatus between his fist snorkeling experience and the next.

the Inscrutable Razorfish, Bali 2017

   Nikolai is now married and the loving couple has a baby who is also on the trip to Bali.  We know this, as he allowed that Sea Rovers would not permit an infant under three on the boat trip to Menangen
Island.  To which we might add, "Thank expletive deleted God!"

    After grouping up at the office, we were transported in the back of a pick up truck to the small pier and soon found ourselves bouncing over the waves in a covered twenty footer powered  by a pair of 100 horse Evinrudes. It was good that we had all that power because Menangen Island is about eight miles away from the Sea Rovers dock.

   Soon enough we were secured to a mooring buoy and the divers, then the snorkelers, were disembarked into the warm Java Sea.  You will note that not only is Pemuteran on the west end of the island, but also on the north side, hence in a different body of water than Amed, accruing in the process a slightly different cohort of fishes.

The handsome Red Breasted Razorfish, Menangen Island 2017

    The spot we snorkeled first is known as Eel Garden.  It was raised coral flat a half mile from shore.  We had been prepared for coral death by the nice lady who booked the trip and here it was almost complete.  As in Amed, there were some soft corals, but the hard corals were all white and deteriorating.  Aleef had explained that there had been two really hot years for ocean temperatures in a row, 2015 and 2016.  As many of you know, it took only one year, 2015, in Hawaii to wipe out much of our coral.

   Unlike on shore near our resort, however, the water was crystal clear.  For the most part it was the usual suspects, keeping in mind that the usual suspects in Bali are pretty good.  The clear water enabled me to take much better pictures than those I had nabbed back by our resort. For the third time on this trip, but  the first in truly clear water, we encountered a family of shrimpfish, which I am now informed are known here as

The Skunk anemonefish pokes out his nose to say hello.

razorfish.  These strange elongated and compressed fish travel in packs, all the time swimming face down.   The school proved eminently approachable.  Sandra and I enjoyed them immensely.

    On this bleached reef,  Aleef found us a blenny sticking his head from a worm hole.  In this instance the bleaching actually makes the object of the picture more visible.    

    In a depression of powdery coral rubble, I found a leaf scorpionfish about three feet down.  Last time we were in Bali, in 2014, Sandra and I saw our first leaf scorpionfish.  Since then, we have seen several in Hawaii, but never in such an exposed position and at such a reasonable depth.  The fact that my picture is not perfect can only be chalked up to operator error.

Blenny in  a Tube

   Just before we were to board the boat Sandra found an anemone serving as home to a family of skunk anemonefish, the third of this group for the trip.  So important was this find, that Peter plunged back into the sea and swam up current so I could point out this relatively unusual anemonefish.


    While we were on this part of the snorkeling trip, our guide took up a chore that was to occupy about a quarter of his time...helping Nikolai with his mask fit.  There was a spare mask on board and Aleef retrieved that one, seemingly a marginal improvement.  At one point he even traded masks with the hapless Dane.  This is not really meant as a criticism.  It was truly Nick's second time ever donning a snorkel mask in anger and the best of us have had trouble accommodating to a new, ill fitting mask.

yellowspotted Pipefish, Menangen Island,  Bali 2017

    In a way, I am reminded of Sandra's beginning as a birdwatcher.  Before she had much of a chance to learn the sport, she was hauled to the hot spots in southern Arizona.  On a bench in the backyard of some enthusiasts, somewhere near Patagonia, Az., she had to pretend that she could identify a pygmy nuthatch and  a Mexican chickadee, not to mention a fistful of hummingbirds with names like Outrageous Velvet Throat.

   At some juncture, as we slide down the razor blade of life, we all have to be the neophyte and this was Nick's turn.  Too bad being a Tyro snorkeler includes the risk of drowning.  What was really too bad was that the baby Dane wasn't bawling his brains out to the amusement of the taciturn Batu.  Not!

   Back on the boat, we went about a mile to an outpost of the national park, replete with shelters for shade and restrooms.  After a sumptuous lunch, fried noodles with spicy chicken, an egg and some

The Sasquatch Hermit,  Dardanus pesmagnum,  Menangen Island 2017

fruit, we were permitted to snorkel the adjacent reef flat.   Here I caught this wonderful picture of the black tailed humbug dascyllus.  Off the pier, there was a family of golden spadefish.  In general, one sees the large adults swimming out in the sea and the adolescents, who look like something out of Star Wars, hovering around the pier.

    Our second dive site, Mangroves, was just down the coast.  Here the shore was lined with (no surprise) mangroves.  I remarked that I had never snorkeled among mangroves and that I was looking forward to seeing the unique group of fishes that are reputed to live within their roots.  Archer fish, as an example.  Peter initiated a discussion of the exceedingly poisonous snakes that live in the mangroves

Sandra's Hermit Crab, Ca. sandra , Menangen Island 2017

of Indonesia and I somehow turned the topic to saltwater crocodiles, a menace to snorkelers in northern Australia and Palau.  Davy told us the previous year someone had released such a crocodile nearby.  The beast had been exterminated, so we were in no danger on that front, at least.


     Here there was a steep wall with a flat on top, not unlike Paul Allen's Reef, only more so.  As there was virtually no wave action, this reef flat was very accessible. The tool of the year for dive guides is a colorful aluminum stick about a foot in length.  Aleef used his handsome purple wand to prod the reef gently and to point out the delights he thus discovered.  Early on he pointed out a yellowspotted pipefish.  At one juncture, he alerted us to a magnificent hermit crab.  This guy was bigger than the largest blood crab I have encountered back in the vicinity of KOA.  And was, as you can plainly see, covered with

Black Trumpet-shaped Sponges Grow from the Wall.

a lush carpet of hairs.  He was a veritable Sasquatch among hermit crabs.

    At another spot on the reef flat, Sandra found a shell out of place that (after some careful turning and patient watching) emerged the probable out of which  (after some Calcinus hermit crab you see here.

    There were some magnificent sea fans and sponges attached to the wall, which dropped a precipitous thirty feet. There was also some very good fish swimming off the edge.  Perhaps the best fish we saw, relative to the trip was a large, colorful blenny reminiscent of the Ewa blenny seen

The Ewa Blenny Equivalent,  the Blue Stripe Blenny  Bali 2017

mostly by divers in Hawaii.  Just this year Peter turned us on to an Ewa blenny near Mahukona, erasing a long standing identification error of mine.  So this equivalent had special meaning for yours truly.

    I will leave you with a picture of a small fish that occurred near the end of our snorkel.  As you can see, he has a red head that transitions to a blue body and tail.  My best guess is that he is a wrasse, but Gerald Allenet al. in Reef Fish ...Tropical Pacific
 attempts to cover all the reef fish from Thailand to Tahiti.  Suffice it to say, this is a monumental task...there are gazillions of fish and sometimes they change colors from location to location. Certainly we are so lucky to have the opportunity to enjoy them here in Bali.

Black Tailed Humbug Dascyllus

What is for sure is that this red and blue beauty is not in the book.  This is not unique...there are several beautiful fish we have seen that do not make what we had hoped would be a comprehensive field guide.

   (I am unable to upload the picture of the pretty red fish at this time.  Stay tuned.  We need your help with identification!)

    What we know for sure is that we are so very lucky to be here in Bali with the charming people and our good friends enjoying the fishes.

jeff

On the road to Bali

     There have been relatively few blogs lately because we have been very busy getting ready to go to Bali.  there has been an inordinate amount of house cleaning and gardening.  And a lot of my free time has been taken up studying the fish and invertebrates of Indonesia. 

Yellowtail Coris Male, Kahalu'u October 2017

    Earlier this week we did get in one snorkel.  It was a rough day at Kahaluu and we were joined by Kim Davison from the Methodist Church.  Kim has proved rough and ready and did quite well in the current and slosh at Kahalu'u.  Unlike my previous outing there, and in spite of the rougher conditions, there were more fish.  Specifically there were rockmovers and yellowtail coris in significant numbers.  This was the first time Kim had seen these larger wrasses turning over stones to look for lunch.  She was lucky enough to see a big male yellowtail coris busting up a sea urchin against the rocks and devouring the goodies inside.

   As you can see,  I was lucky enough to get a picture of the big brute, perhaps the best picture I have of a male yellowtail coris.

White Belly Damsel  A. leucogaster  Lipah Bay, Bali  2014

   Sandra is still recovering from her eye surgery, so she didn't go swimming.  We will be in Bali in just a couple days and she is planning on getting in the water then.  On this day, she stayed ashore watching the tourists and, in the process, nabbed a couple pictures of me and the lovely Ms. Davison struggling out of the water looking like a couple of Syrian refugees.  Not the sort of pictures one wants to advertise.

   One of the tools I have used to study for the upcoming trip has been to review the pictures taken on my last trip to Bali.  We have been there three times already and one might have thought that I would have been looking at the photos from 2008 and 2009 as well as the ones from 2014.  Certainly I have been working with the lists from those years.  Somewhere in between, rugged (hence

Diana's Hogfish  B. diana   Tulamben 2014

waterproof) point and shoot cameras became available and my pictures went from crude efforts to photographs of sufficient quality that I could really study the underwater subjects.

   I was surprised that I had not worked those 2014 pictures over with more vigour, for in the process I unearthed at least four life fish and a couple more for our Bali list.  I'm including a few pictures of those new life fish here.

     In some cases these fish were difficult to identify due to misleading pictures in the field guide,  Reef Fish Identification/ Tropical Pacific by Gerald Allen, et al.  The Diana's hogfish for example, looks little like their picture, but the three white dots are unmistakable.

    In other cases, like the Indian doublebar  goatfish (which I'm told tastes very good in a tikki masala) the fish just doesn't seem to have interested me enough to pursue.  But, my goodness, the

Blackstreak Surgeonfish,  A. nigricaudus  Tulamben

picture was right there, dormant for three years.   In any event, we pledge to try even harder this time around. 

   Of course, you will be treated over the next three weeks to pictures of the marine life of Bali.  Who knows what adventures will make it into the blog.  Mt Agung, the looming volcano, has shown signs of life over the last month.  With luck, the blogging will not include any life threatening situations.

   You may notice that a couple of those fish were seen at Tulamben.  This is a very hot spot to see reef fish and includes the wreck of the Liberty.  the Liberty was a US cargo ship. Torpedoed by the Japanese, the ship was run aground at Tulamben.  During an eruption of Mt Agung in 1963, the wreck slid into the sea.  Thus, the sightly wreck became a world class dive site.  No surprise, the resort area is right in the path of a lahar, a pyroclastic landslide.  Our original plan was to stay three nights at the Liberty Dive Resort, but we cancelled those reservations as Mt Agung became more active.  this was really a no brainer as the

Four Line Wrasse  St. trilineata   Jemeluk  2014

entire area was evacuated and Tulamben became a ghost town.  I can almost here Gordon Lightfoot singing.   The volcanic activity has subsided over the last week or so and we are now told that the
resort has re-opened.  We'll let you know if we make it to LDR.

    As a personal aside, in October of 1944 my father was on an LST (landing ship- tank)  which was hit by a Kamaikaze in the battle of Leyte Gulf.  The skipper of his LST ran the ship aground, on or near Luzon in the Philippines.  If one thinks about it, this seems to be a reasonable thing to do if the boat is sinking and you are near a suitable beach. The LST sat there for a week until the battle ended and help arrived.  As far as I know, the boat was re-floated and did not become a home for tropical reef fish, sponges and the like. In spite of the loss of the LST, the Battle of Leyte gulf was a major victory for the combined forces of the American and

The Battle of Leyte Gulf

Australian navies;  the Imperial Japanese Navy never sailed in force after this battle.  Perhaps this is why we see so many Aussie youths living it up on the beaches near Tulamben.  Not to mention that the governor of these Very Sandwich Islands is Japanese.

     Clearly geopolitics is not the strong suit of this blog.





    Well, in the words of my dear, departed compañero, Mike Van Ronzelen,  "You can't stay home all the time."  Mike managed to stay one step ahead of trouble as he toured the world and we will do our best to emulate those salubrious efforts.  And you guys try to stay out of trouble, as well.

Sandra posing in front of a smoking Mt. Agung, Tulamben 2014