There was something severely wrong about the scenario before me. A colorful deep- sea Nautilus shell appeared strikingly out of place against the dull background of a muck site bottom at gorontalo, on the south-western coast of North Sulawesi. With jerky motions, it moved awkwardly forward, not backwards, away from me.
My dive computer read a depth of only 8m, and the possibility of hallucinations from narcosis was quickly ruled out. My logical conclusion what that is wan an injured Nautilus having trouble going back to its home in the abyss. As I got nearer, its movements halted and it collapsed onto the sand bottom.
Reaching over for a closer look, I couldn’t help bursting into uncontrollable laughter- a different cephalopod, namely a coconut octopus, had taken residence in a discarded Nautilus shell, carrying this prime piece of real estate wherever it went. Ahh…it was good to the back.
I had pestered Rance, owner OF Miguel’s Diving, to bring me to the exact sites where Stephen Wong and Takako Uno had captured their stunning images for the book-Gorontalo: Hidden paradise (2005). This was my first return to Gorontalo since its publication.
Rance took me to Sponge Wall to see the Salvador Dali sponge that wong and Uno famously photographed, which was published on the cover of Asian Diver issue #96. Even with a fisheye lens on my camera, I had trouble fitting the entire sponge inti the frame. Futilely swimming around it, I developed a great respect for Uno’s incredible effort. Up shallower, Rance showed me some 10 large cornet fish congregating around a soft coral. I found it annoying that they allowed me to get close to absorve them, but dispered the very moment I attempted to lift up my camera.
Marlin encounter
In an attempt to “copy” Wong’s image of Gorontalo’s governor swimming with a shoal of razor fish, I dived Sentinels in front of olele village. The resident razor fish were most uncooperative. They either hid behind a nearby black coral bush, or gathered in front to block my model.In the chaos, my eagle-eyed model-cum-dive master, showed me a tiny nudibranch climbing onto a sensitive, blue tunicate which was curling up at its touch, just below the black coral bush. Accepting the fact that I am not the great wide-angle wizards that Wong and Uno are, I reverted to what was more manageable-macro photography.
Back on the surface, after we had taken our masks off, we noticed a half-submerged log-like structure just 2m away from us. It had three long branches sticking out of the water. The dive master took some time to convince us that it was a marlin with its bill and the tips of its dorsal and tail fins sticking out the water surface. Before we could put our masks back on, it flicked its tail fin and disappeared with splash, thus ending the possibility of my first marlin encounter.
Jinn’s caves
The weather was good the next day and we visited jinn’s Caves. I was able to keep myself occupied in front of a big bush of overgrown hydroids at a submerged pinnacle down deep. With my camera trained on it. I saw that a long-nosed hawkfish moved into the foreground. At that depth, I was slow to focus, but my trigger-happy fingers immediately went into involuntary action.
I almost used up the entire roll of film, only to regret that when Rance showed me a smaller Salvador Dali sponge growing just outside a cract on the wall. With only a few frames left on the wide-angle camera, I planned my shots carefully. Fortunately, the sun was in a perfect position, and the dive master was the best model I could hope for
All of us were low on air when we reached the reef flat and the group was heading for even shallower water. I stayed behind and found a unique piperfish living inside a small cluster of white xenia coral. The patterns on its body were totally different from a similar pipefish I had seen in Manado. Reaching for my macro camera. I saw another photographer from the group turn and fin towards me. I gestured to thank him for coming back to keep me company, but found he actually.
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SEJARAH BUDAYA
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