BALI - Northwest coast of Secret Bay to Puri Jati.

Secret Bay

"The secret bay" is the more poetic name given by the Balinese dive community Gilimanuk Bay. This bay is located in the northwest of Bali, located in the West Bali National Park. The bay is about 2 km wide and very shallow. In the middle two small islands and in some places mangroves are present. It is the only bay along the narrow zeedoorgang between Bali and Java and very strong currents up to 7 knots make this bay, as it were a breeding ground and nursery place for young fish. The strong currents make for a fast changing tide in the bay and diving should be more properly with these tides into account. The water is there is than also about the general, Fri cold-(20-24 ° C), and well as the visibility is subject to strong fluctuations. It is best to dive at incoming high tide. This will also always have a positive impact have on the visibility. There are interesting things to see but all in all it was strongly against diving especially when one compares one dive sites in Lembeh. I took my first dive directly connect 4 frogfish what is exceptional. But for a muck dive site there were too few small critters. Few slugs. Highlights were different snake eels, nudibranchs including a very large Jorunna funebris and the large number of coral more valances (Plotosus lineatus). Someone also saw one schommelvoorhoofdsvinvis and a devil fish. The rumor that Banggai cardinal perch (Pterapogon kauderni) could be found, I can now confirm it. Not in large numbers but there was one fairly regularly found hiding between the spines of sea urchins. Although we had planned a large number of dives in this "Secret Bay" could eventually make a few. The reason lay in the discovery of a much better dive 'Puri Jati' in the north of Bali.

Puri Jati (also known as Zen Beach) - North Bali

Puri Jati is a lesser known dive site in Bali but for how long? Located on Zen Beach hotel is within easy reach this dive site. It is an exceptional muck dive. There are many strange critters to find the dive site is very shallow, ranging from 0 m to about 10 meters deep about 200 meters from the beach. Afterwards, the sand slope down fairly quickly to above 30 m depth. The sandy bottom is covered with algae and numerous little corals belonging to the family Caryophylliidae (genus: heterocyathus)

Very interesting is just paying attention to the symbiosis between the coral and the little worm Sipinculid (Aspidosiphon corallicola). This ensures that these little coral not disappear under the sand surface on which they live.

I have almost a month three daily dives with an average dive time of 1 ½ hours. This large number of dives resulted in exceptional good video. There were mimic octopus (Octopus sp.19) in virtually every dive. Numerous other types of Cephalopoda including blue-ringed octopus. A wide variety of frogfish including the sighting of a hairy frogfish (variant Antennarius striatus). Frequently we saw marbled slangaal (Ophichtus bonaparte). In the many small houses everywhere periclemens anemone shrimp. Also gorgonians shrimp (Tozeuma armatum) I have found from light orange to dark green algae hydroides. I found a schommelvoorhoofdsvinvis (Ablabys taenianotus) and several harlequin ghost pipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus). Some very beautiful slugs are plentiful for. The number of species, however, one can observe is rather limited. There were also quite regularly and seahorses zeenaaldpaardjes to observe. On the last day we found there's Ambon scorpionfish (Pteroidichthys amboinensis).