Very warm wishes from the Arenui Team!
We hope that you and your loved ones are well during these past few, COVID-19 affected months. Although we are in another part of the world and the situation has meant different things to us all, we've all been impacted. But with every cloud, can come a silver lining.
What can you expect to see once you’re onboard?...
Photographic evidence has been posted on Facebook showing that names have been carved into coral at Crystal Bay, Nusa Penida, and it has enraged social media users.
What’s wrong with some people? Seriously, do they need to scratch their name on this beautiful coral. Unbelievable!
It is thought that tourists are responsible. The Bali Sun stated that one post observed “how can you be so stupid?”
The Bajau are an indigenous people in parts of Indonesia renowned for their breath-holding ability when diving for food. They have been known to dive up to 70 metres using nothing more than a set of weights and a pair of wooden goggles.
Previously, scientists have speculated on whether dive capacity is related to spleen size, though no formal studies have been done on humans on a genetic level.
Coral reefs are places of immense natural diversity. They accommodate some of the highest densities of animals on earth and have more species than any other marine habitat. However, the species inhabiting coral reefs are not distributed evenly through the oceans.
Standing on the beach staring out at the deep blue water, it’s hard to imagine a world so vibrant and full of life lying just a few meters away from our feet. My dive group and I shuffle slowly into the water, careful not to slip on the smooth black stones beneath our boots. With all our gear in place and a quick press of our deflators, we descend down into this beautiful wonderland hidden just below the surface.
Barely beaten tracks are an increasingly rare find for travellers in this ever more accessible world. Yet on the shores of Tomini Bay on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi, one such place still exists.
We’re swimming fast. Too fast for my liking. I’m taking heaving gulps, and I know my tank won’t last very long if we don’t slow down soon. Just as I’m about to stop and risk losing my group, we hear a rapid series of bangs coming from our dive boat in the distance. Our guide, a lithe Indonesian with pistons for legs and bottomless iron lungs, points into the blue and somehow quickens his pace.
Indonesian divers have discovered the wreck of a WW2 Nazi U-boat, with 17 skeletons of its crew still aboard. A tip-off from local divers led a team to the wreck, located 100km northeast of Karimunjawa Island off Java.
Initial research concluded the sub to be U-168, a hunter-killer of the German 'Kriegsmarine' that claimed several Allied vessels before being sunk by torpedoes in 1944. Numerous artefacts were also recovered including dinner plates bearing swastikas, batteries, binoculars and a bottle of hair oil.
The apparently contradictory choice of adding teleconverters to fish-eye lenses to obtain arresting “wide-macro” images has long been adopted by many rainforest and insect specialists—notably Frans Lanting, the grand master of them all—while several Japanese authors have pioneered its use in underwater photography since the last decade.
There are very few places in the world that remain unknown to the dive community. Let’s face it, scuba enthusiasts are nothing if not resourceful when it comes to finding new and uncharted waters to dive in. But chances are excellent that when you read the title of this article you asked yourself, “Buyat Bay? Where the heck is that?”
