Diving Indonesia in January

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Sorry, now I have another question. How does the quality of the reef and corals at Bunaken compare to the Great Barrier Reef? I was just watching a few videos of the area and a lot of the areas filmed looked dead.
 
Sorry, now I have another question. How does the quality of the reef and corals at Bunaken compare to the Great Barrier Reef? I was just watching a few videos of the area and a lot of the areas filmed looked dead.
Sorry I don't know about the GBR but Bunaken reefs are not some of the most spectacular in Indonesia. Firstly this is mainly walls and yes I found too some patches looked quite "tired" to understate it a bit.
Personally I think you would be reef happier with Bangka in between Lembeh and Bunaken. In Bali Nusa Penida as well as Amed and the Liberty can be pretty spectacular, at least more than Bunaken's.
 
The corals at Bunaken have nothing on the GBR, that is true. Fish life seems to be about the same, just not the same species. You won't really see sharks at Bunaken though like you will on the GBR. That being said, I saw more turtles in Bunaken than I've seen diving anywhere else - and that includes Sipadan.

Different style of diving though. Bunaken is drift diving along the walls, colourful fish, and turtles, rather than the "jump in, swim around, and go back to the boat" type diving on the GBR. It's nice for a few days before or after Lembeh to try and break things up a bit. As amazing as Lembeh is, it's nice to do something different for a while, especially if you're not having any luck with the critters.
 
By virtue of our unique geographic location, Lembeh Strait offers fantastic critter diving year-round. Although there can be strong currents running through Lembeh Strait at some times of day, there are always areas that are protected and comfortable for muck diving. Lembeh is also protected from big swells and most of the monsoon winds, which makes it comfortably ‘divable’ throughout the year. Changing trade winds can affect the seasonal appearance of certain critters.
You can also combine Lembeh with Bangka or Bunaken.
Hope this helps :)
 
Thanks again for all of the responses so far. And thanks for commenting Lembeh Resort and Critters, I've been eyeing off your website.After doing more research on Bunaken on January I may strike it off the list and stick with Lembeh and Bali. I've read a number of reports of rubbish and sewerage issues at Bunaken at this time of year due to the winds and currents.
 
This was already addressed in your same posting on Blurb. Here's what I replied there so you know as I guess you didn't check back:Actually Rahul, the book was created as a print book in Quark Express. Blurb does not have a conversion process for this program, only for InDesign. So to create an e-book through Blurb and keep the layout intact one must output each page as an EPS file and then convert to Hi Res JPG and put that full page in the Blurb creator program. It then outputs the product as an e-book. The Optima font is a bit light and not a regular (read ugly) e-book font. So it does look a bit light. However, if you put the book into iBooks, hook your MacBook to an HDMI screen and read, you will have no problem. The book was printed 2 years ago so only a very few Macs even had Retina display at that time. It is not designed for Retina. Try an older iPad or a HDMI monitor and you will be fine.If that doesn't work for you, please get a refund from Blurb. There will be no fixing until Blurb expands it's creator program to use Quark files. Works fine on my fairly new MacBook Pro and my iPad 2 and iPad mini. And my iPhone 6S. I appreciate you purchasing the book in e-form but if it doesn't work for you, please get your money back. We have a print edition for sale on Amazon and that is not Retina Display challenged. That may be your best option.Tim Rock, Author/Publisher

Replying to this from Pearlman:

"I purchased the book "Diving and Snorkeling Guide to Bali" By Tim Rock and Simon Pridmore, and the formatting is terrible. The fonts look poor on a macbook retina - they do not scale to high-res hi-dpi screen and look smudgy and un-smoothed like a printer running out of ink. Like it has been formatted for 720p cellphone screens only. Then I tried various epub readers on windows 10 with my dell XPS13. This one has a 3K hi-res screen and the situation is even worse. The book appears thumbnail sized and does not scale to fullscreen at all. I then tried the calibre e-book convertor to read it on my Kindle. It appears to have some kind of DRM because the conversion to Mobi or AZW3 crashed my Kindle. The screen froze with some odd pattern on my screen and it required a hard reboot.

So the situation now is that -
while I can barely read this book on a $1900 macbook pro - it is not enjoyable.
I cannot read it on a $2200 Dell XPS13.
I cannot read it on a $300 Kindle Voyage.
I didnt even bother trying with my Android tablet because it has a 2K screen.

The publisher (Blurb) has only a no-reply email-id. The website contact submission form does not work. So I have been unable to get any kind of help in fixing this. I lost AUD 15 on the book, and a lot of time wasted (I am yet to finish planning the dive itinerary for my trip next week)! Sigh!

Edit: the contact form worked after I submitted this post. I will update if they fix the quality of the e-book or not. This post is just a heads up in case you are planning to purchase the e-book right away.


Pearlman"
 
Wow thats weird..mine is fine ??? no problems on either IPad or Laptop..be interested to hear what the publisher says.

At first they said read it on an ipad, so I said send me the money to buy an ipad. Then they got the message and I got a refund, so all is good. Apparently its a self-publishing for authors umbrella company and they did each page as a low-res image rather than a proper ebook.

P
 
At first they said read it on an ipad, so I said send me the money to buy an ipad. Then they got the message and I got a refund, so all is good. Apparently its a self-publishing for authors umbrella company and they did each page as a low-res image rather than a proper ebook.

P
It was done as a 600 DPI EPS file. Then converted to 300 DPI JPG file. No lo res involved. It is a proper e-book that opens in all Apple format e-book readers. I am glad you got re-imbursed. Again, there is a print version so with that you don't need to worry about how much K your computer has. It was not made for Dell or Kindle. Again, it reads fine on my new MacBook Pro. Are you using iBooks? If not, try that to open it. Yes, the fonts are Optima so they are not the hard defined fonts of Kindle. Enjoy your Bali diving.
 
Hi all, my wife and I are planning a diving holiday in January for two to three weeks. I had never really considered Indonesia before but our local airport just went international with flights direct to Bali. Not really interested in diving locally in Bali, unless I can be convinced otherwise, but thought it would be a good stepping stone to better locations in Indonesia. Lembeh and Komodo spring to mind.

First question is obviously going to be weather related at that time of year. We live in North Queensland so we understand the tropical storms at this time of year. Does this put much of a dampener on diving? Does the runoff water impact on visibility to a great extent?

We both love macro photography but I don't think either of us want to get stuck diving muck for two or three weeks. Is there much pelagic action? Should we visit a couple of locations while we are there to get variety?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I did a Bali-Komodo trip such as dirt farmer describes and loved it. So did my wife. I do not know how weather would affect things as I went in September and had flawless weather. I also second the idea of not missing Bali culture topside and i found diving the Liberty wreck at night was great. I would hire drivers in Bali as the roads and traffic are confusing and chaotic at times. Komodo was truly amazing, not to be missed diving but has currents if that's a problem. You catch the hang of it with good safety-minded guides.

My best advice: make it three weeks and give Bali and Komodo time enough to enjoy and relax.
 
This was already addressed in your same posting on Blurb. Here's what I replied there so you know as I guess you didn't check back

I just saw your post. Thank you for taking the time to respond in detail. I now understand the technicalities of what you say happened and resulted in the issue.
However I must add again, fonts are smudgy on retina and kill the desire to read the book. I got my refund and I am content about that.
Case closed.

Pearlman
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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