lona

Heehee...aiyar, while I'm happy with my photos, I know it's not spectacular...I'm just glad for most of the pics you can actually see what I'm trying to shoot hahahaha..

Oh, I have to talk a little about this fisherman's net we found on one of the dives. It's quite sad to see the net in the water...and fishes stuck in the net. The guide managed to free one of the fish, I don't know what fish it is, but it's about the same size and shape as those red groupers or angoli you can buy in the market. I go back tonight and post it online, but this fish, must've been so tired from struggling in the net, when freed, it just sank to the sandy slope and stayed there...it wouldn't even put up a struggle when the guide held it. The guide offered it to me so I held it gently and the guide took a picture of me with the fish in my hands. That was quite an amazing experience for me... After the pic was taken I let the fella go and it swam for a distance before settling down on the slope again to rest... It's quite something to see the fish, but really amazing to hold a fat live fish out at sea, and then letting it swim free from your hands...something like how people release doves...

So anyways, I talk about the resort's housereef. This reef is right smack in front of the resort. We could actually do a shore dive right in front of the cottage we were staying at. Their housereef, while not as rich as the wall, was pretty good for critter spotting. It was here that I saw my first wild ribbon eels. Both the blue ribbon and the (apparently) rarer black ribbon. You would have seen them in the earlier pictures I posted in this thread. These eels are pretty difficult to take..in all instances, everytime I make my approach and bring my cam to their burrow, they will come out to investigate with their mouths wide open headfirst, and I have so many shots of their mouths...argh...but it's so tough to get in an angle where you can shoot their sides and see their nice hue. The resort's house reef had plenty of blue ribbons, so I had no lack of chances...in that one dive I counted about 8 blue ribbon eels..and that single black ribbon eel. That fella is jet black with a single yellow stripe running down its back...it looked really cool. Stonefish and lionfish were plentiful, and I followed a particular lion about the reef while it was hunting and I saw it make a few meals. I think one particular meal was an octopus...a small one, but I can't be too sure since it was covered with mud...but I thought I saw a tentacle or two... It was here I saw the typically common shrimps you see in the shops, as well as another assortment of nudibranchs.

Thanks...actually most of the shots you see here are with macro lens...maybe not as powerful, but the tolerance not very good...cos a little off it becomes unfocussed liao.

ya lor...what to do...just circumstances. my consolation is that we saw dolphins I could burn a copy of the cd and pass to you if you want.. PM me your contact lar..we figure out how to meet.

hey...I think I saw HUGE versions of that monti (assuming that's what it is) in Manado...they were like my height!! Assuming it's the same thing we saw...

Anyways, a short write up before I get back to work...*sigh*...yeah it's back to reality for me. Manado was EXCELLENT. I'll talk about the diving first: We spent all our dive days at Bunaken, and at the resort's house reef. I talk about wall diving first. The wall diving at Bunaken was nothing short of spectacular! The whole place was literally bursting with life! Everywhere I turned there were colours, shapes, sizes and types! The top of the walls usually started between 8-12 meters and we stayed about 20+ meters and I couldn't see the bottom. Visability was about 15m, not the best, I've heard, but good enough for some pictures lar. Some parts of the wall had a nice current going so we drifted along. When the current got fast, it was really exhilarating, seeing everything zoom by you! Much like an underwater roller coaster ride, just without the ups and downs. We saw so SO SO MANY things! We had white tips sharks, turtles, tangs of all sorts (too many to mention) a lot of which you seldom see in the shops, angels, moorish idols (which were BLARDY FAT , in fact all the fish there were damn fat), schools of squirrelfish, families of anthias (I noticed only pink and lyretail anthias, I thought I saw purple queens though but I can't be too sure) from one and a half times the length of my index finger to the length of my fingernail. Suncorals all over the place, quite alot of seafans and sponges were seen too. Oh and on one of the walls, while the guide and myself were peering into a cave, he turned around to call my gf and his eyes turned huge and he started 'MMMMM!!! MMMMMM!!! MMMMMM!!!' and I thought OMG shark/trigger. He grabs me turns me around and my gf and myself look at each other and I start looking out for the threat. Later I ask the guy what happen...he says...'Eagle Ray'. DAMN we missed that ray...ARGGGHHH!!! Oh we saw a couple of napolean wrasses in the distance too...and some huge fish which looked edible but I don't really know what they are...so...haha...sorry about that lousy description... On the boat on the way to Bunaken we saw DOLPHINS!!! Both on the way there and on the way back in the evening. They were generally quite playful, sometimes leaping out of the water and splashing back down! There was easily 50 dolphins that I'd estimate...maybe more...it was breathtaking...and some of the friendlier ones tried keeping up with the boat. I'm not sure what dolphins they were, but the guide mentioned spinner dolphins, but don't quote me on that.. We saw flying fish too, scuttling out of the water to glide along with the boat...it's the first time I've seen these and they were damn cute. It's amazing how far and fast they can glide just above the water surface... Ok, more later...

ya lor...it was my intent to get my gf to bring the light cannon down for me to supplement the strobe, but since she was getting used to her BC I figured forget it lar...I'll just make do with the strobe... The thing is, the minimum focussing distance quite touch and go lor...I only have the framer from the macro lens to estimate, and from there can only play with the aperture. For awhile I was trying to focus on composing the shot, but after awhile of waiting I figured, what the heck lar...I'm here to enjoy my dives so just take what I can, don't hold up my gf..

kelstorm, believe it or not...I didn't get a chance to go to Lembeh...apparently there was some problem with the local police and we could not organise an outing there.... so we tried to find the pygmy on their housereef and on Bunaken, but ALAS Never get to see!!!! *SOB*

ok lar, more tomorrow night...time for me to sleep liao... hope you like the pics so far...nothing professional, just wanted to share them with you, that's all...

From these on, pictures are taken by a digicam, the guide's one...didn't ask what it was...

actually, I used photoshop to only reduce the pixel size and the quality of the picture to minimum (0). I didn't do any colour corrections to the pics... I'll probably upload the full quality pic to some online album later in the week lar...now getting damn sleepy liao..heehee...

Don't think you can see the commensal shrimp here...I really don't understand how come people can take such closeups...I'm guessing what people do is that they crop and blow up their prints from the negatives, that's how they make it so nice...see if you can spot this guy in this pic... this guy shows up quite nice on my computer, actually...

In case you're still viewing my thread haha...and wondering why the resolution's so bad, it's cos I put it to the lowest quality and reduced the size of the pic. The actual pics are much sharper, I have to mention...but I don't want to take up too much server space. Each pic is only about 20 odd kb. These pictures were scanned from negatives...

Sorry this one's rather blur, but the anthias family was too cute and cool to not post...