From Bangka to Saronde and vice versa followed by a shortstay in Lembeh
We are back from a fantastic trip with Blue Bay Divers. We planned to dive Sangihe again which was in the past very productive for nudis, which we all love to see . Unfortunately the volcano Ruang burried some of our best divesites under ashes. He also didn’t want to calm down, so we decided to take a safe route from Bangka to Saronde.
Our focus on Macro, we were looking for new crittersites and did some exploratory diving. We found some productive divesites we dove more than once also on the way back. We also got the chance to see the new resort of Blue Bay Divers in Saronde and had a look at the divesites around the island. No divers except us…
Starting from Bangka the visibility was first not so good and critterwise it was a bit slow, but it got better from day to day.
Our great guides found us nice targets. Although we all have seen a lot already we found several for us new species. Well a picture is worth a thousand words, here some of my favourites:
We had also a wish list and by the end of the trip almost everything on it was found…. I still have no idea how the guides did this.
Well my number one are frogfishes, so I never can keep myself from taking many shots of a froggie. So I was smiling the whole trip since we all together saw 12 different species. Absolutely stunning. I still have photos of froggies that were not easy to identify, so there might be even some more. But here prove of the ones that were pretty clear:
In Saronde we did 3 nightdives on the housereef. We almost didn’t move from a rope directly in front of the door. From 5 to 25 meters we discovered so much, that it would have taken some more nightdives to see it all. The variety was unbelievable. Here a few examples:
After the nightdives and bonfiredives we enjoyed the cocktails and the fine dining on the Island including also a barbecue on the beach.
Just wonderful.
Bill and Nannette van Antwerp did bonfiredives. They also discovered weird black water creatures that can be seen under: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LCfL3BrSDs
Nannette’s videos are just so good, so that I’m all of a sudden not so happy with my stills anymore, but nevertheless a few shots of my favourite critters:
On the boat we had a great atmosphere and a lot of fun when we started each dive with: Ladies first!
Special thanks to our guides Boa Jhenli and Theos and the whole Sunshineteam. The whole crew did a great job , we had help dressing and undressing and were very fast and smooth picked up from the dive when we came up.
We decided we will be back for another great trip.
Thank you Anke for the hospitality and meals in your beautiful resort on Saronde. I still dream of cocktails and ropes with hundreds of rare nudis.
