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 Just
offshore from Candi Dasa is tiny Tepekong, a little outcrop that offers some spectacular
diving. The coral walls are steep, the water is cold, and the current can be strong. But
for an experienced diver, drifting with a 3 knot current through The Canyon offers an
unforgettable underwater experience. You can reach Tepekong from anywhere along the
south-east coast, but access is easiest from Candi Dasa.There are actually three dive
sites here : Tepekong (sometimes called Kambing-''Goat"-Island); Gili Mimpang (three
mini-islands sometimes called Batu Tiga,"Three Rocks"); and Biaha Island,
sometimes called Likuan Island. Your ride to the dive site is a fishing boat or jukung,
fitted with a tiny outboard. Two or three divers at most will fit in a jukung.
The boats must cross the edge of a fringing reef about 75 meters offshore. This will give
you a thorough soaking, the skills of your boatmen notwithstanding. When the tide is low,
you might even have to get out of the jukung to help push it over the reef flat.
Once across the reef, you are 10-15 minutes from Mimpang ortepekong. Tepekong has the best
diving.It is also the coldest-occasionally a bone-chilling 19°C-and most difficult. Tiny
Tepekong is just 100 meters long and 50 meters wide. There are no beaches. The sides of
the island plunge straight into the sea.
Diving the Canyon
With Wall Siagian as my dive buddy and guide, we twice tried to dive his
favorite spot, the The Canyon southside Canyon, but the combination of over 4 knot current
and undertow from swell and waves crashing into Tepekong's western side defeated our
attempts. On the third try, however, it worked. We dropped in about halfway along the
western side of Tepekong descending in a slight current to a sloping bottom at 9 meters,
near the vertical under-water continuation of Tepekong's above-water cliff. We were just
nearing the bottom when a large Napoleon wrasse appeared at the edge of our 10 meter
visibility. He drifted out of sight, as did a school of 30 - odd roundfaced batfish (Platax
teira). We followed the slope, dotted with coral knolls, to 24 meters, then dropped
down into a canyon. The Canyon was lined with huge boulders, and bottomed out at 32
meters. Here, visibility increased to close to 20 meters and the fish life also increased
considerably.
So did the current, to 2.5-3 knots. Sometimes the current here swirls around the Canyon
with a downward pull, leading to Wally's nickname for the place: "The Toilet."
The conditions that produce this unforgettable experience are usually strong swell from
the north or northeast. If these are the conditions on the surface, do not dive the
Canyon. Unless you want to be sucked down in a swirling current. As soon as we entered the
Canyon we saw a huge aggregation of sweetlips, 50 or 60 of them, hovering next to a
pinnacle: Goldman's sweetlips, oriental sweetlips, and yellow ribbon sweetlips. Then we
saw a very healthy looking grouper, well thought the fish we saw was an Australian potato
cod (Epinephelus tukula), perhaps north for a quick vacation. Groups of schooling fish
hung in the current, which "gusted" occasionally to such speeds that I almost
felt my mask was going to tear off. We hung on to outcrops, watching schools of rainbow
runners, bigeye trevally, sleek unicornfish and little packs of Moorish idols. We
occasionally shifted our position, disturbing a resident whitetip shark at one point, and
a cubefish at another.
Each coral-covered pinnacle hosted firefish, which flicked their long dorsal spines in the
current, and clouds of lyretail coralfish (Pseudanthias squam-mipinnis). These were all at
our 5-meter decompression stop. This dive was one of the best I have experienced in
Indonesia.But it was far from easy. Conditions could well have postponed this dive until
my time in the area had run out. And even for an experienced diver, this is a tricky dive.
Wally doesn't call it "The Toilet" for nothing. The teeming fish life makes it
well worth whatever effort it takes, however. It is particularly easy here to get very
close to normally wary fish. You might even see an oceanic sunfish, the strange Mola
mola. Wally has seen one on three occasions in his more than 100 dives here.
East Tepekong
After one of our aborted attempts on the Canyon, Wally
directed our jukung to the far eastern end of the island. We dropped into
surging, cold water, and shivered as we descended. Visibility was restricted by the water
movement to around 8 meters. And the surge was too strong to allow
us to peer into the many caves - between 16 and 32 meters as well as a 10-meter-long
passage between several huge boulders that appear to have fallen from the topside cliff.
We spotted a tuna, a fairly big grouper and a cuttlefish after we made our way down the
slope to about 25 meters. The coral cover was good, including both stony corals and soft
corals, and several blunt pinnacles sheltered reef fish in shallow pockets. Fish huddled
between overlapping layers of table coral, each irregular "shelf" holding
several species. All this was fine, but the strong continuing surge, lack of visibility
and cold water led us to surface before our air ran out.
Gili Mimpang
These same conditions plagued our dive on Gili Mimpang, a
cluster of three little exposed rocks between Tepekong and the coast of Bali. Despite our
wet suits, we were freezing. Descending to the 12-meter bottom, we disturbed a small blue
spotted stingray, and a much larger black-spotted ray. We swam against a slight current to
the top of a wall around 30 meters, working our way around detached clumps of coral. About
10 minutes into the dive I was ready to quit, mainly because of the cold, but also because
of the cold, but also be increasing current and restricted visibility. I signalle Wally
and we headed up. Around 18 meters we hit a thermocline, and life took a very definite
turn for the better. Almost instantaneously, the water temperature increased 6°C. Fish
life improved considerably as well, beginning with a docile star puffer, three easily
spooked (as usual) reef white-tip sharks and several blue-finned trevally. A school of
blue-lined snappers buzzed us from above. As we stopped on top of a pinnacle at around 7-8
meters, a school of bignose unicornfish parted just enough to afford us a glimpse of a
Napoleon wrasse on one side and several bumphead parrotfish on the other. A small school
of longfin bannerfish accompanied us, from a safe distance, almost to the surface. Back in
the jukung, Wally said that had we not turned back, we could well have seen lots of large
pelagics ahead. But I was well satisfied, and very happy to be warm ind dry. |
