Alex Mustard in Bali: Part 3
In the third installment of his Bali trip notes, Alex Mustard (amustard.com) tells us about his amazing experiences at Scuba Seraya Resort.
Scuba Seraya Resort, just to the east of Tulamben, is about a two-and-a-half hour drive from Pemuteran. It is also one of my absolute favourite dive resorts, and I have been making an annual pilgrimage to this charming and intimate hotel since its soft opening.
The last 12 months have been a busy time at Seraya, and new investment has seen the addition of several new buildings, including a new restaurant and two new rooms (taking the total to 12) and coming soon is a dedicated spa to complete the resort. Our diving was once again run by Bali Hai, and I have to say a big “thank you” to the guides and boat crews who really went out of their way to make sure everyone got the diving they wanted.
Many photographers visit Scuba Seraya Resort and are perfectly content diving on the house reef. It’s an exceptional critter dive - regularly home to multiple frogfish, seahorses (although currently absent), ghost pipefish (currently in massive numbers), boxer crabs and one of the most reliable places to see three of my favourite shrimps: harlequin, Coleman’s and tiger! All this is within a few fin kicks of the dive centre. There was even a mimic octopus on the house reef during our stay. It’s also easy to take the boat up to Tulamben and dive the USAT Liberty Wreck.
But this is really only scratching the surface of diving in this area, and on this trip we made use of Bali Hai’s fast dive boats to explore the wider area from Kubu in the west to Gili Selang in the east. A particular favourite was the picturesque and vibrant reefs at the Japanese Wreck.
Talented Swiss underwater photographer, Mirko Zanni, had been in the resort a few days before us, and he had told the guides that he had got his best ever gorgonian shots on his dives at this site - which is saying something, as anyone who has seen his glorious book “Water Vision” will attest! Scuba Seraya is always a place where you will run into interesting underwater photography sorts.
Perhaps the highlight of our stay at Seraya was our serendipitous discovery of a fantastic spot for octopuses in Amed. We found a wonderpus and three mimics all within an area smaller than a tennis court, in water just 5m deep.
We had actually set out to dive at Japanese Wreck, but the current was too fierce for model photography. We didn’t have a dive guide, so we stopped off at the nearest site I knew in Amed…and boy, was it hot!
The cleaning stations were thick with shrimp. I photographed mating ornate ghost pipefish, and later we ran into the octopuses. The wonderpus came out and hunted exactly on cue for three days running, offering great photo oppurtunities. Scuba Seraya is just one of those places where exceptional surprises just seem to happen all the time.