When the party's over...

I slept in a little and finished my packing.  My thumb is KILLNG me.  Underwater yesterday, I brushed it up against something that stung.  So bad.  And now it is all red and puffy.  Oh well.  I guess I’m glad it only happened on the last day of diving.

Every morning, I have been eating Mie Goreng.  It is fried noodles with an egg on top.  It is so delicious.  It feels like cheating to have noodles for breakfast.  I need to make this for myself once in a while.

Josh has developed a crush on Rhome, so he has decided to stay.  I sure am going to miss him...

Wet Willani

Today is my last day of diving.  I have two this morning.  I was given a choice as to which boat I will be on since there are many guests.  I am just going to follow Nikko as he is my best bet of finding nudis.

I found one new species on the first dive.  During the surface interval there was lightning and thunder.  The second dive was pretty boring except for three huge Jorunna rubescens nudis.  On the way back it rained pretty hard.

Two new people came to the resort today.  An American guy from Texas married to a Scottish woman.  They are living in Jakarta.

I packed a little and then took a huge nap in the afternoon.  I was still tired and felt like I was vibrating.

We found more nudis than I thought on the first dive.  The last two were both willani.  Crazy!

211 - Chromodoris alcalai

212 - Phyllidia cf. elegans

213 - Phyllidia willani

214 - Chromodoris willani

I did 75 dives while I was here.  This brings me up to 2188 lifetime dives.

Here is the count by day:

Winding Down

I woke up to a party in the dining area.  They are all watching France vs. Morocco.  France is ahead for now…. And they won!  They play Argentina on Sunday but I will be gone by then.

I just have today and half of tomorrow to dive.

Lightroom keeps crashing now when I do a certain edit and I have to keep restarting the program.  So annoying.

When rolling in on the first dive, my regulator was free flowing.  Bad enough that I really wasn’t going to be able to do the dive.  But Reilly suggested that I turn the tank off, purge the regulator and then slowly turn the tank valve back on.  It totally worked!  I owe him one.  That was a great hint.

Two new people arrived from Alaska.  They are also pretty young.  So now I am on the older side of the resort.

Reilly and I did the house reef together and he got me all the way over to the fishy part this time.  It was pretty cool and had lots of big boulders.  We saw two Stonefish – each with its own personality.  Waldorf and Staetler.  

We had another rainy day and it was thundering throughout dinner.

I am officially sick of being wet all the time.

We found a few new ones today:

209 - Noalda sp. 6

210 - Godiva sp. 2

Dialed In

Max and Rhome’s brother were already up when I made it to the dining table.  They were watching the World Cup: Argentina vs. Croatia.  At 3am.  That’s commitment.  But whoever wins this match would play France if they win their match tomorrow.  In the end, Argentina won.

We broke the 200 count barrier on the first dive at Babylon.  It just Lois and me diving with Reilly leading Lois and Nikko leading me.  We had so many great ones!  And everything just felt right.

Dotty McSpotty (Tambja gabrielae) was rearing his head and found me.  OMG.  So cool.

Three new Americans arrived today.  All young people.  One works as a lawyer in Jakarta and the other guy/gal are from Miami.  He is doing a Masters in Ocean Conservation at Miami University like Cheryl did.

The afternoon dive was incredible.  We were all dialed in looking for nudis.  I found some new ones!  I saw a couple Siphopteron sp. 9. nudis. They are SO SMALL.  I was shooting shooting shooting and then Lois kicked and they went everywhere.  I yelled through my regulator.  But god love Nikko.  He was right there and put them back on a rock in an even better position for photos.  So I guess I actually need to thank Lois.  

Then we found Tiger Shrimp again!!!  We determined that these are the Rock and Roll shrimp with electric guitars.  (vs. the Harlequin Shrimp that have knitting needles).

Nikko also found me a Micromelo undatus!  Woot!  I wanted to kiss him underwater.  So great.

I jumped the house reef and I think I got a couple more nudis.  Dialed in.

Afterward I took a shower in the rain.  It was pretty cool.  The whole bathroom here is outside and it is just awesome.

I keep thinking I need to do a visual storyboard of the lifecycle of a nudibrancher.  I have lots of funny stages.

Nudis found today:

196 - Myja longicornis

197 - Phyllidiella rudmani

198 - Tambja gabrielae

199 - Phyllidia sp.

200 - Chromodoris annae

201 - Hermaea sp. 4

202 - Sagaminopteron pohnpei

203 - Gymnodoris citrina

204 - Micromelo undatus

205 - Goniodoridella sp. 8

206 - Costasiella usagi

207 - Trapania caerulea

208 - Hypselodoris sp.

Vie Panyarachun says: It’s an undescribed species that may be a Hypselodoris.

Solar Powered Orgy

Lightroom has been pretty good to me this trip.  Today I had to reboot to get it to work properly, but it’s not that bad.  Every morning, I give it time to sync photos up to the cloud, but it is still showing that there are many more to go.  Today it finally caught up!

On the way to the first dive site, we saw a manta at the surface.  Reilly was so excited.  I guess they never see mantas here.

We did the Jetty and then Black Rhino.  They were awesome peaceful great visibility no current dives.  I felt good.  My mask was just right.  My buoyancy was just right.  I saw some great stuff and a few nudis, but only one of them may be new.

It’s not new, but Nikko found an awesome Phyllodesmium poindimiei right at the end of our jetty dive.  Sparkles!

This one is not new either but we found a really fun “pocket poodle” Jorunna rubescens.  I love these guys.

At the end of the second dive, the Pindito Liveaboard pulled up and dropped in three skiffs’ worth of divers on us.  Luckily we were almost done and I was so focused on the small stuff, I didn’t even see them.

Rhome’s brother flew in today from France.  Lots of flights.

OMG OMG OMG!!!  Reilly, Lois and I dove the House Reef after lunch.  I told Reilly I wanted to dive it his way so we went to the left and pretty fast but whoa… I found the Phyllodesmium longcirrum on the HOUSE REEF.  I was so excited and taking pictures and then Reilly started yelling.  He found a MASS of cerata.  Just a HUGE ball.  I just stopped moving right then and there and took pictures and just watched.  There were at least four of them.  One crawling.  One baby one on top and two massive ones mating below… although I could have been convinced that there were three of them.  I knew when Rhome and I found the one cerata on Sunday, they were there.  Who knew there would be a whole PARTY of them!  

The night dive was great.  Reilly found a tiger shrimp and Nikko found a BUNCH of new nudis at the end.  As I surfaced, I noticed that the stars were SO bright.  OMG.  I may never go back home.

What a day.

190 - Phyllodesmium magnum (juvenile)

191 - Tenellia sp.

With eggs.

192 - Doris immonda

193 - Aplysia sp.

194 - Atagema spongiosa

195 - Thordisa villosa

Rainy Monday

I have officially now resorted to using nasal spray to help my nasal drip.

Rhome keeps teasing me that I’m a bit autistic about my nudis.  I agree because underwater I keep unconsciously saying the name of each one I see as I’m photographing it.  So weird.  I can’t remember some day to day things, but I can remember latin names of nudibranchs.

During the surface interval, Rhome told Lois and I about some nightmare guests in the past.  Oh boy.  I also learned that they have as many snorkel bookings as they do SCUBA.  That’s interesting.

It’s Peter and Inca’s last day of diving.  They are headed to Thailand for massages before flying back to Hawaii.

It rained today.  Like lightning and thunder.  I was wondering if the afternoon dive was still going… but we did and it was fine.  I also noticed that it hadn’t really rained much the whole time I’ve been here.

I was so tired today, I only did the afternoon dive and relaxed a little before dinner instead of jumping the house reef.

We decided we are going to do two more night dives: on Tuesday night and Thursday night.  Lois and Dick leave on Saturday too.

A few new nudis today:

186 - Glossodoris pallida

187 - Phyllodesmium colemani

188 - Discodoris boholiensis

189 - Philinopsis speciosa