njcfm

Anyone happen to be in Isla Mujeres or Isla Holbox on June 8-10th and interested in sharing a chartered boat for photographers?  I found a boat available for charter on these dates, large boat, high end, decent price too.  Wouldn't mind sharing with another photographer or two...

 

Anyone going to be in the area and interested?

 

thanks

eric

We traveled to Bali and stayed in Candidasa, spent 3 days diving with AquaMarine and 5 days in Bali total.

Overall a great trip, AquaMarine was 110% professional and picked us up each day. We stayed at the Water Garden hotel which was very very nice, very quiet and right in the middle of town.

Candidasa is a small town with a bunch of places to stay and eat, was a terrific place to stay and clear of the typical tourist spots.

Let me start off by saying that United/Thai Airlines left my luggage in London on our trip, I did not get it until our 3rd day of diving. I informed AquaMarine of this and they stated they had a camera that I could rent, it was a s95 in the canon housing and sufficed for the 1 day I used it.


AquaMarine provided the following:
-Transportation to and from each site each day
-Well organized gear that we used each day (our gear was in my luggage)
-Lunch, surprisingly good each day
-Small boats with a dive master per 2 people. Our divemaster Gede was terrific, very friendly, understood our experience level and let us enjoy our dives.

The first day we dove Tulamben, the U.S.S Liberty, very nice wreck. Lots of fish life, nudis, etc.. We did 2 dives, both were shore dives as AquaMarine operates out of one of the hotels.

the second day we went to Nusa Penida, did Manta Point, crystal bay, and nuda penida.
-Manta point was terrific, didn't see any Mantas until 30 min into the dive but we were able to follow a pair to a cleaning station and got an awesome show for the rest of the dive
-Crystal bay was gorgeous, lots of fish life, healthy reef, and a bit of current. Thermoclines with huge drops in temp +/- 10 degrees at least!
-Nusa Penida was a drift dive, very strong current but overall a nice way to end the day.

The third day we went to Pandangbai and did a couple of muck dives
-Jepun/Turtle neck: Artificial reef to start off, saw frogfish, seahorses, nudis, etc..
-Blue Lagoon: nice macro life

Overall we were very happy with Bali and plan on going back at some point in time.
Here are some pictures:

looked through nudipixel and think it is one of the following but i'm just not sure:


Felimare samueli


Chromodoris


none of them match in colour or pattern, antenna and gills appear to be similar though, any ideas/suggestions? Found in the Atlantic, specifically Bermuda





any help or suggestions is much appreciated.

already cleaned up most of the backscatter and made some basic adjustments.. wishing I had my macro lens on instead of my wide angle but overall i'm happy with the results.

opinions/suggestions are welcome.

my wife and I are headed to mabul/sipadan for 5 days and 4 nights in December, we currently have 2 problems
1) not sure where to stay
2) want to do whatever we can to ensure we get to dive sipadan

I know it is a quick trip and that appears to be why we are having such a hard time getting a guarantee, however I have heard that these really don't mean anything and getting to go to sipadan is sort of a right place right time thing on a daily basis.

Is this area "busy" in early december? should getting the guarantee be a requirement or are the chances good we would be able to make the trip anyway, even if we have to pay the $200 to purchase a pass from another resort?


We have spoken to an agent about almost all of the resorts in the area and at the moment the following have "guaranteed" at least 1 day in Sipadan.

-borneo divers - they will guarantee at least 1 day at sipadan
-seaventures - they will guarantee at least 1 day at sipadan
-SMART - no guarantee and no promises that we'll be able to purchase a pass either
-pulau mataking reef resort - no guarantee and a $110 fee per person, plus the fee to try to get a pass from another resort
-Sipadan water village - will guarantee at least 1 day at sipadan (however this is a much longer trip, and only 2 dives)

We are looking to book this quick, and I'm curious as to what wetpixel's experiences are at these places:
-Are they clean?
-Decent food?
-Which would you go with?

thank you in advance!