Today we dived headfirst into the sand with Villa Markisa for some incredible macro and muck diving.
Bali is a dive destination known for many things, which is why we had to explore several resorts on the Best of Southeast Asia tour – 14 resorts in 8 weeks, creating a video episode from each resort plus articles to showcase the local diving.
Bali is known for big fish like mantas and mola molas, beautiful reefs, wrecks like the Liberty and incredible macro and muck diving.
Today after a dawn dive on the Liberty where we saw the school of bumphead parrotfish, we were treated to black sand dives at Batu Belah and Batu Niti. The critter life is astounding, and I could barely keep up with our guide Darma! Villa Markisa has some of the best dive guides in the business and it shows. We selected our dive sites based on our critter wish list, which was delivered with the bumblebee shrimp.
Batu Belah had a wide variety of critters, from tiger shrimp to ornate ghost pipefish, while Batu Niti was blanketed in nudibranchs with many peacock mantis shrimp in the shallows.
Here is a small sampling from the dives. Stay tuned as I’ll be creating a post on the macro of Bali (yes, several of my favorite shots didn’t make the cut for this post so you’ll have to check back!…).
Gear:
Canon 5DMk3, 100mm Lens
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- We found several different colored skeleton shrimp on our muck dives, including this orange one.
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- Tiny macro subjects are everywhere you look in Bali.
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- Villa Markisa is world-famous for their nudibranch diving, with an enormous species diversity.
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- This Donald Duck Shrimp was waiting for a photographer to come along.
