A MANTAstic Day | Guest Blog by : Diederik Francoys
Whilst the life as a Divemaster Intern at Blue Season Bali is already fairly amazing, today was an especially good day. We headed out nice and early for a 3-dive-day in Nusa Penida. The first site was Manta Point, which as the name might indicate, is famous for the numerous sightings of Reef Manta’s that visit the cleaning stations there. A previous visit to Manta Point had proven to be unfruitful (as I was doing my “Guiding Workshop” during that dive many blamed my novice guiding skills, I beg to differ…) and as such we were keen to strike gold today!
We first tried the deep (20m) cleaning area and spotted about 50 huddled up Blue Spotted Eagle Rays, which was amazing but still no sign of the godfather of rays. As we ascended and approached the shallower (12m) cleaning station, suddenly it seemed like someone had turned off the lights. Even before I could turnaround to see what was causing this darkness, my ears were nearly traumatized by my ecstatic buddy who was banging his tank so hard I’m pretty sure they could hear him over in Tulamben.. But as I looked up I understood why, a big majestic Manta was casually gliding over us on his way to get cleaned up! To state the obvious, I remained calm and professional… As the cherry on top, we were also lucky enough to spot two even bigger Manta’s a bit later on during the dive. Our first sightings of Manta’s in Bali are now a fact!!!
The day was finished off with two relaxing drift dives over in PED and SD, during which thehighly trained eye of my instructor Niels managed to spot us an Orangutan Crab hiding in the Anemones, very cool!
All in all today has been very kind to us and as it’s almost 5pm as I’m writing you this, a celebratory beverage seems proper to be in place !
