Our dive guides are great, they are now finding ornate ghost pipefish that were missing last year, as well harlequin shrimp, spiny tiger shrimp, Ambon scorpion fish, Wonderpus and more!
The Ornate Ghost Pipefish Are Back
As many of you know, last year was not the best as far as water temperatures go with an average water temperature of 28/29 degrees Celsius. In the South Lombok we were quite lucky in that are corals are very resilient and had very little coral bleaching.
We also found that certain species such as the ornate ghost pipefish, giant frog fish and pygmy seahorse became harder to find, but over the last month we have had already more than 10 sightings of the ornate ghostpipefish, and a few sightings of the pygmy seahorse and giant frog fish as well.
It can quite disheartening when something like this happens but there is always a silver lining: our dive guides spent the time trying to locate the missing marine life and in the process found places where we now regularly find harlequin shrimp, spiny tiger shrimp, Ambon scorpion fish, Wonderpus. They even have found a place where we can see mandarin fish all day, how cool is that?!?!
The return of all the species plus the new marine life we have found sparks hope for an amazing season here in south Lombok.
New home for Divezone
At the end of Dec 2016 our contract at our old base in Sekotong, South Lombok ended so we moved to the villa’s next door called Villa Pao Pao. Check out the slideshow below for more pictures before.
Villa Pao Pao consists of 3 x 3-bedroom villa’s, each with a/c and en-suite bathroom with hot water. There was also a lovely field in the middle where added our dive center, equipment room, relaxing area/cafe and and restaurant/log-book area.
We are very excited about our first high season in our new home, hope to see you there!
It’s All Fun and Games
Everyone who knows the boys here in South Lombok knows that there is never a dull moment. As you can see in the picture there have been some running races on the surface intervals with our captain Solihn coming out in front.
The South Lombok/Belongas team loves chasing hammerheads, navigating the currents, swimming along the epic topography, hunting macro on the sands but the boys enjoy the social aspects of the diving community too. This month we have had a few afternoon BBQ’s with some amazing food thanks to the kitchen staff and a few nights of beer fuelled fun with the guests like Marco and Lisa who joined for a night for the boy’s antics.
New Dive Guide
Also, some amazing news this month as we say congratulations to Hery as he has now made it past his training to become junior dive guide. It has been a lot of fun teaching Hery with briefings being conducted on top of tables (which he didn’t like) to improve his confidence, lots of guiding with some unruly divers (me and the boys ; ), and the rescue practice was made extra tough by the boy’s eagerness to show him how strong a panicked diver can be!
Happy Birthday West Lombok
This month in South Lombok we had a huge celebration for the birthday of west Lombok. The event took place on the 22nd but has been a week of activity with the local schools involved in a project to teach them the importance of the local environment. They conducted beach clean ups had team building exercises and lessons on how to help preserve/save the environment. This was all done leading up to the main event where there was the yearly boat race, live concert, a small fair ground and a whole variety of local delicacies.
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And don’t forget the sea horses in front of Pearl Beach 🙂
And the octapus
Good signs bro!!! Bring on the hammers!!! Yeehaaa! See you all soon.
Hammerheads have already shown up bro!!!! We had a group of 15+ on sunday!!!!!! ?
No way!!! Its gonna be a good year!!! Yeehaaaa!