Did something unexpected and different today -- drove to the northwest side of North Sulawesi to dive at Pulau Bunaken. Another couple had made all the plans and I just tagged along. It's a completely different sort of diving there, all wall dives where you just drift along the current.
I'd hoped this meant that I'd be able to put my wide angle lens to better use, but the visibility there was working against me and most of my shots came out less than satisfactory. It's entirely possible that I just don't know how to take these kinds of shots/how to work with these conditions...
The first dive was at Mandolin; a fun, relaxing and enjoyable affair. The wall was teeming with life of all sorts, and there were large schools of fishes everywhere (very unlike what I'd been seeing in the Lembeh Strait), but I have to report that there was nothing really impressive per se. This of course only in comparison to the amazing critters I'd been seeing the past couple days.
The second dive at Lekuan 2 was a little better: saw an orang-utan crab as well as a green turtle which swam by us in the open water. Tried to go after it, but couldn't really get a good shot (the visibility issue).
Totally unrelated to diving, but still pretty cool nonetheless was who I went to Bunaken with: Joshua Marston, the writer/director of Maria Full of Grace, who was nice enough to talk a little about the movie business.
I made it back to KBR just in time to go watch the mandarinfish perform their mating dance at twilight. Unfortunately, they weren't in the mood tonight and we ended up spending a really boring 45 minutes hanging out underwater before we called it quits and cruised around for another 35 minutes. The only shot I was happy with from this dive was of a couple nudibranchs:
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