Last time I went to Sulawesi in 2012-13, I spent the entire time in Lembeh. This time I wanted to split my time up a bit so that I didn’t get sick of the muck diving. As such, after spending 5 nights in Lembeh, I went back over to the other side of the island and stayed at Tasik Ria for 5 nights. This allowed me to get in some wall diving. Much more colourful than Lembeh, and it makes for a nice contrast.
The diving in Bunaken is fairly easy. Only one dive caused a bit of a headache – literally. Kind of a washing machine current hit us on one dive site, second dive of the day, and I really did have a headache for the following 18 hours. Not fun.
Did a few dives on the Tasik Ria house reef as well. It’s muck diving, but it’s pretty tame compared to Lembeh. You go to Bunaken to drift dive the walls, not for macro. The macro is around, but not noteworthy.
The photography was ok. Visibility was usually around 15 meters or so, but at the same time, there was often a lot of crap in the water, and it made taking photos difficult. Lots of backscatter, even with the strobes. I did take a lot of photos here, but most of them had too much backscatter for me to bother posting. These are the best of the lot.
As seems to happen after every dive trip these days, I looked at the photos and thought “these would be better if I bought [insert new gear here]”. Now I’m thinking about adding a high powered video light to my setup for the cases where my strobes just don’t quite do the job. You’ll see what I mean in the turtle photos below. They’re ok, but I can see how they’d be improved if I’d had more lighting. Maybe for Christmas…
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- Random shot from the Tasik Ria house reef
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- Striped eel catfish from Tasik Ria house reef.
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- Turtles at Bunaken. Yes, I know it needs more strobe!
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- Probably my favourite turtle photo from Bunaken!
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- Deep turtles!
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- Random reef shot during safety stop at Bunaken.
Rock Doc's Photography 