After leaving in mid-May to spend some time quality time with the big pelagics in Mexico, Costa Rica, and the U.S., I’m back to stay for a while at NAD. After embarking on my open-ended trip to Indonesia last August, I spent eight of the past twelve months split between Bali and Lembeh, and have truly fallen in love with the amazing variety of diving that Indonesia has to offer. I had planned to split the year between working as a dive instructor and advancing my underwater photography, but in the end the camera won out, and I’ve had it with me on over 600 dives this year. Looking back through my images I’ve photographed some amazing things this year, and met some really great people along the way, with a good number of them during the four months that I spent here at NAD.
Apart from the rainy weather during the week that I’ve been back, the critter count is high, and we’re seeing lots of cool stuff. One of my favorite places is a particular sea fan at Jojos. The draw for most guests on this particular sea fan are the Denise’s Pygmy Seahorses (Hippocampus denise), but what you have to look closely for are the hundreds of shrimp that also live on this particular sea fan; Gorgonian shrimp, skeleton shrimp, and a couple of others that I haven’t ID’d yet. The below shot of the Denise almost went into the bin until I noticed that it had adopted a baby skeleton shrimp, riding on its belly. Just another amazing Lembeh moment.
