The Sighting of a Lifetime

By admin on October 23, 2011 in Diving in Bali

Yesterday was a typical day over at Blue Season Bali. I arrived just after 6am and did the usual reviewing of the schedule, sorting of the tanks & weight belts and organizing my own kit. After a quick breakfast of corn flakes, a pear and a kiwi our guest trickled in and filled out the usual PADI paperwork and a short while later after some tea and coffee, we were on our way to our chosen destinations. For me, I was off to Amed which is a nice little dive site just east of Tulamben and Seraya. I had actually never dived there before so of course anytime you’re diving a new site, there’s a certain element of excitement before even setting fin into the water. A group of 5 of us geared up and hoped on a Jukung, a small boat that brings you to the dive site just off shore. Everything up until now was quite typical in terms of a day leading up to the dive so why would I ever expect otherwise… We started with a dive called The Pyramids which has a large arrangement of stacks of hollow blocks forming several artificial reefs which stretches just past 20 meters or so. Half way through the dive, we came across a large sandy patch with spotted rays buried as far as the eye can see. (seriously I lost count after about a hundred) After that we had a little encounter with a green turtle chomping on some reef and after a 45 minute dive we slowly started our ascent. Right as we were nearing the end of our safety stop, we saw something else that was rather interesting… A WHALE SHARK!!!! It was absolutely incredible! One of the most fascinating sights I’ve ever laid my eyes on. One of the holy grail’s of diving right in front of my face! Luckily I had the time to snap a quick shot but I was almost frozen in the moment just mesmerized at this incredible sight, almost in disbelief. The visit was brief and the whale shark was quite small, (round 5 meters) considering the enormous sizes it can reach, but none the less it blew my mind away! It was a dream come true. Even more so because 4 years back in Mozambique I was set to go on a snorkel tour with my mom but last minute changed my mind and decided to try a discover scuba for the very first time. Although the scuba experience was great and ignited my love for diving, on that snorkel tour my mom swam alongside a whale shark for about 20 minutes and has bragged about it ever since. So thank god I can finally say I too swam alongside a whale shark!