Diving Krakatau with Whale Shark

Participants:

1. Delien of Immersion Quest
2. Maikel
3. Bob
4. Corey Wong
5. Susanto
6. Andi
7. Jusuf

It has been more than two weeks since my last dive in Bali during the Lebaran holiday, when i knew that there will be a Krakatau dive on Saturday, 19 November 2005 with Delien of Immersion Quest and other friends.

We started from Jakarta at 05.15 am, hoping to reach Carita early enough to do 3 dives as we planned.
There were five persons in the car (including me), Delien, Maikel, Corey (a Canadian) and my self, and also Bob (Maikel's friend from Medan) which plan to do the snorkeling only, as he never had a diving lesson before.
Well, perhaps after watching us in this trip he will be interested in diving and will take his diving course.
We had many jokes in the car, and talked about our diving experience and life.
It was also good to have the jokes in the car, to keep awaking our friend who drive the car during the way to Carita.

We arrived on Carita Pier at 07.30 am and Susanto had been waiting for us and preparing his Olympus 7070 under water camera.
We got the information from the boat crew that the visibility was good in Krakatau for the last days (same like what Delien had checked before), and that make us become so exciting for starting the dive.
While waiting for another friend, Andi, we had a quick breakfast (Indomie) in front of the street.
Andi arrived and had a faster quick breakfast than us, that we finished the breakfast at the same time.
The lunch box had also been prepared for us, as we planned to have the lunch on the Anak Krakatau island.

Then seven of us together with 3 boat crews left the pier around 08.30am.
During the way to Krakatau island, we saw many Marlin fishes jump out from the sea, feels like they welcoming us for this trip.
The weather was so nice that morning, sunny and the surface wave was not strong, we had a smooth boat trip.
From the distance, we saw the two mountains of Krakatau and Anak Krakatau.
Watching these mountains was quite amazing for us, especially to know that actually Anak Krakatau just appeared to the surface at the year of 1928 (after the eruption of Krakatau mountain in 1883) and become an active volcano until now.
The top of the mountain grows about 4 meters each year, and now has reached about 240 meters above the sea level.
We could recognise that Anak Krakatau has the beach of the black sand and the stone/rock on the island is so black with big porous and this make us to guess that the young stone was made of the lava.

We reached the Batu Mandi dive spot within 90 minutes after we left the pier.
Delien, our trip leader had an explanation about the spot and we will dive with the reef on our left, for 45 to 50 minutes, with the maximum depth of 35 meters.
First after getting into the sea, i realise that it was true the visibility was quite good.
Delien said that we were lucky as the viz was so good that day. It was about 10 to 15 meters.

This dive area was different with other Jakarta area.
As we found in Batu Mandi, the most wall was made of the volcanic slab stone. It was quite astonishing for us to see these walls. It was seemed like the facture of the temple's stone wall, as the wall surface was so flat and big.
Many soft coral grows on these stones.
Some different colours of the sea fan also can be seemed in this spot.
We dove for 47 minutes with the maximum depth of 31.1 meters.
Bob also did his snorkling and told us that he saw the nice hard coral.

We had the surface time on the Anak Krakatau island. As all of us still feel hungry, then we decided to have our early lunch here.
No body not ate up their lunch, seems every body missed their meals the day before.
During our break, we saw some families stay in that island for a picnic.
The boat crew also told us that there was also another group that climbed the volcano on that time, as it needs a short time to reach it. But just be aware of the hot weather there, as seems there is no trees on the way to the top.

After the surface time of 1:14 minutes, we dove in the Anak Krakatau spot.
This was a bit different with our previous plan, as actually we planned Batu Candi spot as our second dive.
Delien again explained that the reef will be on our right side for this dive.
In the beginning of the dive, the curent was not so strong.
We saw the similar scenery with the first dive, the mountain stone and also the large block of the volcanic rock.
There was not much soft coral in this dive spot.
The curent was a bit confusing here, as some times the direction of the curent was changed.
There was a time that suddenly we dive against the curent, whereas previously we had a slow drift dive following the curent.
Delien decided to change the direction of our dive, when we feel that we had been diving against the curent for a couple of minutes, and it took much of our energy.
During this dive, there was also the up curent that brings our body swing up and we had to hang on to the rock to stay.
This dive gave us an important experience in facing the up curent.
As there was not much we can see in this spot, and because of the unpredictable curent, Delien asked us and decided to go ascend.
We had about 24 minutes of dive time in this spot, with the safety stop of 3 minutes at the level of 3 to 5 meters.
On the boat, Andi told me that it was the right decision to stop the dive earlier, as there was not much we could see and the curent made us confused and take our energy, whereas we still had some more dive.

Then we directly continue to the Batu Candi dive spot.
During the way, we passed the Anak Krakatau island again and could see the group who just back from climbing the volcano.
Well, seems they only need several hours to climb and back again.

After the surface time of 32 minutes on the boat, we started the dive at 13:32pm with the maximum depth of 24.1 meters and dive for 21 minutes, with the same previous tank from the second dive (Anak Krakatau) as there was still much air left.
We descended from the nice dropping area with fully and beautifully hard coral.
Similar with other dive spot, Batu Candi also consist of many big slab of volcano rock.
There was also a big wall with the yellow soft coral on it, made this spot special.
We did a nice drift dive, the curent was not strong in this spot.
At the end of the dive, the visibility was drop to less than 10 meters, because of the mud bottom.
After coming up to the surface, we decided to do the surface time on the Krakatau island. The beach of this island is the white sand.
No body else was there at the moment, but we could see that there were two tends was made there before.

After the surface time of 1:07 minutes, we start the fourth dive to the dive spot called Lagon Cabe.
Again Delien explained that the reef would be on our right and we will dive for 45 to 50 minutes.
We started the dive at 15:02 pm from the boat, as it was a bit far to reach the dive spot from the beach,as Andi suggested.
The dropping area was nice, but not like the Batu Candi which was rich of the hard coral.
But later on, after several minutes of ive, we also found an area full of hard coral like a cabbage planting area. On some certain places, we found much variety of soft coral. I think we were lucky that the visibility was quite good that day for this area , around 10 to 15 meters.

We had a slow dive when Maikel which was in front of me, told us there was a big Morey Eel. The depth was about 10 meters.
The morey eel was about 2 meters long and all of us (except Susanto and Corey which were behind me) watched it staying in its grave.
We watched the morey eel for a short minutes and continue the dive.
Susanto and Corey which just arrived at the morey eel grave and Susanto sound his sea horn, try to attract us to see the morey eel again.
As the others had seen it, they just let Susanto and Corey to watch it.
I decided to see the morey eel again, this time will be from a closer distance.
Susanto was busy with his camera to take the photographs and Corey was busy with his exploration to the morey eel. We stay about 3 minutes there, when we realised that the other three friends had dissapeared from our sight.
But suddenly i felt that some body (Corey) touch my shoulder.
And when i looked back, i was quite shocked that there was a big creature swim toward us and just about 1 meter away passing us.
It was a WHALE SHARK !!!!

For the three of us, it was our first time to meet this nice big creature.
There were plenty of small fish swimming following that whale shark.
For a few seconds, i was still completely dazed when Corey give a sign to chase the whale shark, and he moved fast without waiting for us.
Corey was far in front of us.
That whale shark moved slowly her body, but it was enough for us to be not able to chase her.
If it was not because of the whale shark turn right back around, Corey would never be able to touch her.
He swam quite close under her, and i could see that Corey (together with his fin), was just about one third of the whale shark.
So i estimated that she must be about 6 meters long.
Corey was lucky that he could touch the shark's fin.
Me and Susanto were just watching the whale shark for a distance, not trying to be closer again. This whale shark was still swimming for a moment around us when later on she moved further and dissapeared.
We had a chance to stay with her for several minutes (the depth was about 10 to 6 meter), and that was enough to make this trip so worth it (actually eventhough without meeting the whale shark, the trip was still so worth it as the scenery and the visibility was good).
We had about 3 minutes safety stop, and go ascend to the surface.
We talked (shouting, yelling) each other for a couple minute, when the other three friends showed up.
They didnot believe us in the first time that we met the whale shark, but when we insist about it then they started to realise that it was really our day.

We end up our dive and go back to Carita again.
In the boat, we talked about the whale shark that actually it could reach about 12 meter long. We also discuss, who brings this luck that we could see this beautifull creature.
On the middle way back to Carita, the heavy rain fall. Some of us wear the mask again to get a better visibility on the boat.
But this heavy rain could not take our satisfactory of what we did that day, and we arrived in the Carita Pier at 17:30.
We packed up our gear again and had a bath in the pier's bath room.
The dinner we had in front of Marbella was quite delicious, but as divers do, we never had the shark's fin dishes of course.

Back to Jakarta again, we arrived about 21.30pm, thinking of enough rest with a good memory of the trip (and for some divers with the memory of the whale shark).
Perhaps she is still there now.