Up close & Personal

By admin on October 15, 2011 in Diving in Bali

During peak season we would gather our guests and leave first thing in the morning only to arrive at Nusa Penida’s Crystal Bay to find 20 other boats already waiting for the same reason… To fulfill their guests desires and dreams of seeing the legendary Mola Mola! We would drop into the water with high hopes and 4 atmospheres of pressure from guests who expect you know tricks that make a Mola magically appear. Most days we were fortunate enough to have if not several, at least one glimpse of the infamous fish. Problem is, the second one appears almost everyones logic and reason go out the window and you find 20+ people all swimming mach 3 towards this now terrified fish just to get the perfect shot or perhaps a kiss on the cheek. (in some cases, believe it or not, guests will actually attempt this) So as one could guess, although Mola season is filled with Mola’s, it’s rare that one stays around long enough for a person to truly enjoy the up close and personal experience and see this enormous fish in it’s natural habitat.

Today however, now that high season has pretty much dropped off, we arrived in Crystal Bay to find we had our own private dive site. We had a group of about 9 people and had a hell of a current to fight through, but within 5 minutes of our dive we can across the most friendly Mola I had ever seen. We all clutched on to a rock at around 23 meters and just watched in awe as this massive Mola came by for it’s regular cleaning. I’ve seen a few Mola’s in my day but I had never seen one so close for so long. No mayhem of tourist chasing them away, just you, the raging current and this 2.5 meter fish closer than you’ve ever seen it before. We all snapped a few photos then realized we were all nearing our deco limits so we took one last good look then waved goodbye to our Mola Mola. What a Day!!!