Continued Trip Report
Trash. There’s no proper garbage disposal on land, so that trash makes it into the ocean. All the diving except for one site was relatively light on trash. The one site we had trash was after a night dive. The boat was surrounded and it was disheartening. Under the layer of trash, with a flashlight you could see a layer of nighttime fish, squid, jellyfish, bait fish.
Photography. This was a photography-focused trip through Bluewater, so there was mention during the briefing as to what kind of lens you’d need for the type of marine life we’d see. I have an Olympus TG6 with a single strobe, so this information didn’t matter to me, but those with the big rigs needed to know so they could have the proper lens for shooting. On a couple of dives, the guides either forgot or didn’t pay attention to the needs of the photographers and on a wide angle dive, they were pointing out macro critters. When it was brought up, the guides were happy to listen to the feedback and adjust. Irrelevant of the fact that this was a photo trip, I think RA gets a fair number of photographers, so they will listen to what you want to see or photograph.
Bioluminescence. I’m like a kid in a candy store when it comes to this stuff, and it was thick and colorful during the trip, especially at the new moon. At night, you could use a flashlight and see it floating like a raft in the ocean. When the boat was coming back from the night dive, the waves were sparkling green.
Night Diving. This itinerary included daily night dives, but that was disrupted due to the accident, so we only got four night dives on the trip, one muck and three reef dives. I’ve never done a muck dive, so this was my first muck dive and it was at night. While it was nice to see what I saw, I wouldn’t have been able to see most of the stuff without the guide or another diver pointing it out. IMO, the super small critters are too much work to hunt for on a sandy bottom. It’s not for me, so I know when I plan the next trip, I’ll sit out the muck diving.
I like to swim away from the reef and look for larval critters, kind of my own version of blackwater diving. I take my torch and point a narrow beam straight out or straight up and watch for the stuff that’s attracted to the light. And, boy, was there some nice things to look at. Several larval squid, salp chain, and a bunch of other wiggly stuff that illuminates under the light.
The Critters and Coral. As a first-timer here and having most of my dive experience in the Caribbean, most of what I saw was new to me. Manta rays (reef and oceanic), wobbegong sharks, electric clam, juvenile electric clam, frogfish, peacock mantis shrimp, crocodile fish, white tip shark, schooling yellow-tail barracuda, humphead wrasse, goliath grouper, lots of nudibranchs, seahorses, pipe seahorses, flamboyant cuttlefish and other species of cuttlefish, crabs from super tiny and larger, giant clams, rainbow scorpionfish, leaf scorpionfish, broad-banded pipefish, blue-spotted stingray, bumphead parrotfish, purple lobster, giant cucumbers, black tip shark, flat worms and other worms, turtles, several species of eels, schooling sergeant majors and jacks, schooling fish that I couldn’t identify, crown of thorns, pygmy seahorses, basket stars, very few lionfish, octopus, various species of shrimp. Never have I ever seen such an abundance of virtually everything underwater!
The wide variety in colorful soft and hard corals was stunning! I think I said in a previous post that every shade, hue, contrast of every color in the rainbow can be found here. The spectrum of diversity is hard to put to words. The reefs are covered and overlapping in coral, and there’s so many layers to the coral that you can’t see the bottom of where it starts to grow.
What I Wanted to See But Didn’t. Blue ring octopus, walking shark, ribbon eel. I'm sure there's more. I just can't remember right now.
The Dive Sites Visited. Some of these were repeated from my stay at SBR.
Saonek
Lau Lau
Saporkren
Cape Kri
Sawadurek
Arborek Jetty
Mioskin
Blue Magic
2 Tree
Puri Pinnacle
Four Kings
Wedding Cake
Wacko Seamount
Nudi Rock
Boo Window
Magic Mountain
Candy Store
Andiamo
Trip Costs. The liveaboard portion of the trip as a solo traveler on the Damai was $9900. This was a one-time, bucket list trip, and although I’m retired, I’m not rich, so this was a big bite off the travel funds. I traveled in business class using miles and cash for a total of $1865 for the international portion and $572 for the domestic (Jakarta to Sorong) economy class portion. I used points and cash for my various hotel stays along the way, which was roughly $500.
Tipping. Their policy for tipping is similar to SBR. Personal money given to the staff is strictly prohibited and causes tension among the staff. You can, however, give giifts to a single person or as a group. I brought gifts and added some cash to it. They have a raffle of sorts for gifts that the guests leave. The owner of Damai gave us the rundown of the tipping procedure. He said all the money goes into a pool and it’s divided equally among everyone, including the office staff in Bali, but not the owners. IMO, the office staff is not on the boat having a face-to-face interaction with the guests. Anyone offsite from the boat shouldn’t be receiving a portion of my tip. As I said in my post about SBR, a poor performer gets the same share as an outstanding performer, and that’s just not fair. Also, to be fair, the staff on this boat were all top performers.
During the three days of the incident, there were no diving activities to tip on. The crew had retreated into their quarters except if they were called upon for questioning related to the incident. The rooms were not cleaned and serviced. We were given meals, but otherwise, the ship was absent of staff. Do you tip on that? (Rhetorical question.)
This number of 10% is thrown around a lot for liveaboard tipping, and that’s on the base fare only, not extras like fuel fees, port, harbor & marine park fees, Nitrox, courses, rental gear. Personally, I’m not going to tip on $9900. I’ve already paid the penalty for being single and that’s spread around the company to pay for the staff in Bali, the owners’ profit, the operational costs. I think a better formula is a per day guideline. We were a group of Americans that paid American pricing for a third-world country trip. Ten percent on American pricing in Indonesia is unbalanced. Just my opinion.
Is Damai Responsible for My Loss? The owner of Damai took the time to ask each guest in private about their experience, how it was handled, how are we doing mentally, and if Damai is responsible to give us compensation. In talking with the others, we all agreed Damai did nothing wrong. All safety protocols and briefings were done well. My comment to the owner was that, no, legally, they are not obligated to compensate me for the lost days, but my hope would be that a gesture of goodwill compensation would be fair.
As for tipping, for Indo, I tip my guide IDR 100,000-150,000 ($7-$10) per day (2-3 dives). When I stay at a resort for a week or two, when I leave, I'll also tip the tank boy/driver IDR 300k-400. If it's a tip pool for all staff on a LOB, IMO, IDR300,000 per day ($20) is more than adequate. Sorry to read earlier about the added stress of the diver accident you experienced on this trip, I don't know what my reaction to such an event would be but you seemed to handle it well.
