Raja Ampat 2015 Video Highlights

It has taken some time but I have finally edited down my video clips from the Underwater Tribe Raja Ampat trip aboard the Mermaid II liveaboard in March 2015.  As expected, the Raja area delivered some amazing diving for our group of explorers and the Misool area was especially abundant with clear water and plenty of fish.  If you would like to read a brief trip report on our 2015 adventures then please head on over to our Trip Report from March.  If you are interested in joining us on a trip of a lifetime to Raja Ampat we have booked the Mermaid II for the same moon phase at the same time of year in 2017 and we still have spaces available, please check out the 2017 trip page here: Underwater Tribe Raja Ampat 2017

Giant Trevally Hunting a Baitball

One of the best things to experience underwater is a true baitball happening right in front of your eyes.  Areas such as South Africa are famous for its’ Sardine Run but it’s certainly not the only place in the world to see this sort of activity.  In Indonesia, Komodo National Park is a great place to witness baitballs at a couple of the popular dive sites, including where this one was filmed: Batu Bolong.  For those who don’t know Batu Bolong, it’s a large pinnacle sticking out of the middle of a large channel with a massive amount of water running through it.  On this occasion, instead of going to the “safe side” of the rock, I stayed on the current side in the shallow water in order to watch what sort of action would happen.  I was very happy to find that there was a massive school of fusiliers hanging just off the reef which were being hunted by several dozen giant trevally, napolean wrasse, and even a few white tip and grey reef sharks.  The best way to describe it?  Watch the video!  (perhaps the speed was played with a bit on this one…)

 

Fibre Optic Internet!

Well well well.. its a great month for me here in Bali, I have now finally graduated to somewhat of a modern internet!   Fibre optic internet!

For years, I have struggled with internet speeds and this has always been a source of much frustration for me trying to upload high resolution photos, upload videos, watch any videos online or any other rather mundane tasks that most people (not my friends in Palau mind you..) pretty much take for granted.  When I lived in Yap I believe we had 128 kbps, once I made it to Lembeh I was up to 256, then until last week here in Bali I had 512kbps (all of which were expensive and satellite based).  However, Telkom Indihome Fibre Optic Internet has now been released here in Bali and it finally reached my area and I now boast a booming 10mbps!  Last week I was FTPing uploads at 8 to 15 kbps, needless to say, a 200mb video file would take a very long time!  Today, I am now uploading at 100 kbps, now I can even utilize the Cloud to backup my images.. That is reassuring.

Huzzah!

Speed Test Photo

(no comments from you fast internet people ruining my day 😛 )