Nudi Gal: Krackin' Komodo

The guys across the hall snore so loud, I can hear them from my bunk. Whoa.

I cannot wait to get in the water today.

This is not the nicest Aggressor boat. The layout is weird and there is some serious wear and tear on the boat. The deck head is really nasty. There is something in there that used to resemble a sink and although the toilet still flushes, there was no toilet paper (nor even a holder) to be found. The deck shower is also in there.

The camera table is outside but the charging station is inside. And it is right next to the two really big coffee and hot water vats. So if they were to over fall over, they’d end up right on my electronics. Gah!

There are a lot of photographers on this boat.

The first dive was good. It was just a checkout dive at a place they don’t usually go and I found 8 unique species all by myself. That’s pretty good!

My Lightroom was giving me issues again but I seem to have gotten it figured out (I think). All of my photos from Alor got corrupted and the program is not displaying them correctly. Thank God that I copied them to my new hard drive when I arrived on the boat. Regardless, I’m not going to worry about fixing them or labeling a larger number of other photos until I get back to Chicago. It’s just too stressful to think about losing all my pictures.

One of the guys on my boat (Dr. Siva) is having issues with his ear. He is in pain and he keeps saying he’s not congested but he has a terrible cough. Then he was asking me advice if he should keep diving or not. Really? I told him that if he was in pain, then it just wasn’t worth it. But he went anyway. Garry gave him some eardrops, but to me it sounds like it is worse than what a few eardrops can do for him. Siva and I chatted over dinner, he and his childhood friend are exactly my age.

The afternoon dive was to see mantas. I did take a few Go Pro videos but then I started looking for nudis. It was pretty sparce then. Bam. Bam. Bam Bam Bam! I found five new species! Everyone was laughing that I was ignoring the mantas.

I totally forgot that the Colpodaspis thompsoni was a nudi! I was thinking it was a colpopod. I took a picture just to prove to Diego that it is something. Yay! One more in the count.

I wasn’t cold on any of the dives even though I was wearing the crazy wetsuit. It is completely falling apart. I swear there is no neoprene left in the butt. Even with all of that, Eve still wants to know where I bought it because she wants one. Maybe I’ll leave mine in Tulamben for Christianne to wear.

Diego flooded his dive computer on the second dive. Then on the night dive, his torch was not working after first two minutes, so I lent him my second one to continue the dive. It was fine, but this young guy needs to get more experience (or at least better gear). The awesome thing about him is his enthusiasm for nudis. He saw my pictures after the second dive and was in awe! He said that he just wanted to follow me to see how I find them. So during the Manta dive, when I was turning over rocks he hung out with me and I showed him the tiniest little nudis. On the night dive he found the biggest Spanish Dancer I think I’ve ever seen. Seriously, like the size of two footballs. There was no chance of me getting it in a photo, but I took pictures of its rhinophores and gill.

Not a bad day for nudis (even though I was really the only one looking for them):

1 - Goniobranchus geometricus