Triton Bay Divers to Lembeh Strait

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We have been longing to go to Triton Bay Divers since 2018, before COVID hit.

….AND…..

…having had the privilege of staying there ourselves, we can tell you that it is an absolutely mind blowing resort and dive destination. Yes, it will take you many hours/days to get there but if you are looking for a remote, quite, unspoilt destination, away from crowds, then look no further, put Triton Bay Divers onto your list, its an absolute gem.

From South Africa, it took us four flights, a 20 min car ride and a two hour boat ride to get to this part of paradise. The location is stunning and with only six bungalows that makes a max of 12 guests in the water. What bliss! The staff are very helpful and boy can the chefs cook! Us being vegetarian was no problem for them at all. Yummy food, thank you! The room we stayed in was very spacious, clean and most comfortable, with doors opening up directly onto the calm, sloshing sounds and jaw-dropping view of the ocean.

There is plenty of sea life here, the diving was phenomenal, including very successful Macro sightings. Beautifully coloured soft corals and massive, untouched hard corals. We would like to extend a Huge thanks to our fantastic dive guide Aion, for sharing his knowledge with us and making the diving so memorable.

BUT! ...our prime motivation for travelling to Triton Bay and naturally the major highlight, ..... was the Whale Sharks.

Local fishermen, fishing from Bagans with lights at night, attract a lot of plankton and small fish for their nets and this in turn attracts the Whale sharks. This was initially seen as a threat to the fishing catch, as the Whale shark would sometimes damage the nets while trying to feed on the nights catch.

Fortunately, the potential of Whale shark tourism was considered by the general community and the fishermen now keep a portion of their catch to one side, to feed these giants, while snorkellers and divers witness their grace and beauty.

Once a week at Triton Bay Divers, the wakeup call is around 4:30am. Everyone scrambles to the dive centre and then to the boats, in the dark. This is followed by a 90+ minute ride to the area where the fishermen have been working over night. Before the sun had even cracked the horizon, …………………………..

……………….we were kitted up and in the water, with 4 of these amazing animals.

The 2 larger sharks appeared to be around 9 or 10 meters in length and the 2 smaller ones about 6 meters in length.

We were Totally blown away by this Whale shark encounter and spent over 4 hours diving and filming these Endangered Giants….. Four Hours!

This experience was life altering………… and such a privilege.

The second reason for wanting to visit Triton Bay Divers, other than for its stunning beauty, of course, was to film the Epaulette sharks that live on their house reef. These 1 meter long sharks spend more time walking than swimming and are commonly knows as “Walking sharks”. They come out at night and where quite a treat to witness and film.

Notably, we saw no other sharks or Manta rays while diving in Triton Bay, possibly because we did not dive on the open ocean side of Aiduma Island. We do hope that this area is protected and remains as remote and unique, for as long as possible. It would be such a shame if it becomes over exploited and commercialised like some parts of Indonesia have.

While diving with the Whale sharks in Triton Bay, we noticed conservation free divers, who live locally and are studying this Whale shark population, taking photos of each animal for identification purposes. In the hopes that we could help, we submitted frame grab images of each of the sharks that we wad filmed and managed to assist in the identification of one new member to their research library.

We can not wait to return to Triton Bay Divers.
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Our next dive stop was, Two fish Divers, in Lembeh Straits

Returning to Two Fish Lembeh, was all positive and we once again enjoyed our stay.

As you may know, Lembeh Straits is one of the best known Muck Dive destinations in the world. Muck diving is quite different to conventional diving over coral reefs, or in the blue, looking for pelagic species. It is generally the pursuit of small and extremely small animals on the sea bed, many of which are smaller than a grain of rice. Very often, Muck diving takes place on black volcanic sand.

We were fortunate to have many amazing macro filming opportunities, from hatching Flamboyant Cuttlefish and hunting Ribbon Eels catching/eating Prey to egg carrying Mantis shrimp, Blue-ringed octopus and a Mototi Octopus that we we had never filmed before.

There was also a plethora of Nudibranchs, Harlequin Shrimp, Sea Horses, Pipe fish, Rhinopias etc. and a Coconut Octopus, who showing interesting behaviour with shells etc.

We will most definitely return, AGAIN.

Capturing every subject in UHD true colour and detail on both legs of this filming expedition, was made ever so easy, with our Keldan Video lights, Nauticam housings and Dive and See monitors. What a pleasure they are to work with.

RED SEA - EGYPT

All images below, are uncropped frame grabs from our 6K and 4K film stock footage, unless otherwise noted.

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2020 and COVID-19, a year of unprecedented change.

While this 'Pandemic' has had many negative effects on life as we knew it, the positive spin-off of the huge reduction in numbers of global travelers, seems to be that nature has had a chance to take a breath, to regain a little silence and possibly even recover, just a little. Once again, COVID-19 and the strict social and health protocols, that the world has put in place, has resulted in there being no better time for the exploration of our oceans, COVID risk aside, naturally.

Diving in the Red Sea has not been this tranquil since the 1970's, with so few people traveling and a 50% occupancy restriction on resorts and liveaboards, there were fewer divers and bubbles in the water than we could ever have thought possible. Divers, this is the time to get to the Red Sea.

We had three main objectives for this expedition:

• The first, was to get some alone time on the 1941 wreck of SS Thistlegorm, with no other divers, torches or bubbles in the shot, to film, what is arguably one of the most dived wreck in the world.

• The second, was to find and film one of the oceans most intriguing vegetarian mammals, currently vulnerable to Extinction, the Dugong.

• The third and final objective was to dive with and film the Carcharhinus Longimanus or Oceanic Whitetip Shark.

Filming with our 6K RED and 4K Black Magic Cameras in their Nauticam dive housings, our Dive and Sea monitors and, of course, our robust Keldan lights, we decided, considering all the travel issues and restrictions, to incorporate three separate legs to the journey so that we had 22 days of almost unlimited diving to achieving our goals.

Our journey started from Hurghada, on the Emperor divers liveaboard named 'Emperor Superior', with only 11 other divers. We were so fortunate to have our dear friend, Sonia as our dive guide. Yahooo! The itinerary was called “The Famous Five” and included our first objective, the SS Thistlegorm.

(These are Cellphone images)

We saw very few other boats on the water and almost no day boats at all. In stark contrast to reports over the past few years, of 35+ boats, being moored on this wreck at one time, 35 boats, with an average of 20 divers on each, can you imagine? However, due to COVID-19, we were the only ones there. How lucky were we? In all this tranquility, we managed 4 dives on this magnificent wreck, one of which was a night dive, with only our handful of divers in the water.

With a small amount of planning, we had almost 4 hours of filming opportunity, around and inside the wreck, making the most of this unheard of opportunity, to get 'The Shot'.

Being the only two divers in the lower sections of the ships holds, surrounded by trucks, motorbikes, aircraft parts, all frozen in time for the last 75 years, we could almost hear the horrific explosions, sounds of tearing and buckling steel, screaming from crew members, the smell of discharging explosives, the scalding heat and blinding light from raging fires, the roar of cascading sea water rushing through passages, doorways and chambers, as the ship heaved and sank below the surface, in the dark of night and then just bubbles, until the thud of her 128 meter body landed on the sea bed 30 meters below. Quite surreal.

First objective Achieved, two to go.....

Our next step was onto 'Emperor Skye' another boat in the Emperor Divers fleet, but not a safari boat. 'Emperor Skye' is a day dive boat with 4 cabins and she is moored in Marsa Ghalib, about 60 km north of Marsa Alam. We were the only divers living on the boat and were treated like King and Queen.

(These are Cellphone images)

From this location we did shore and boat entry diving, looking for the allusive Dugongs. While 'Emperor Skye' is able to get out to a number of famous dive sites in the region, we were content with spending our 6 days just searching for Dugongs in the shallow sea grass beds of the region.

Our fantastic guide, Paul, patiently indulged our obsession, dive after dive, Green sea turtle after Green sea turtle, day after day and it all paid off.

DUGONG's!! Eating, sleeping, fighting off remoras, what a delight!

On one dive, while filming yet another Green sea turtle, we were approached by a large male Dugong called Dyson, who proceeded to swim through between us and grabbed the turtle that we had been filming, by the back of its shell. The turtle, startled by the sudden physical contact, tried to get away, but Dyson held on tight and carried the turtle off into the distance and all the way up to the surface. Why?........ No idea! (see below sequence)

This portion of the expedition was also a great success, with over 60 minutes of 6K and 4K Dugong footage now in our library.

Second objective Achieved, one to go.....

(This is a Cellphone image)

….. and so we moved onto our third and final objective, finding and filming the Oceanic Whitetip shark. For this we joined the 'Emperor Elite', yet another magnificent boat in the Emperor Divers fleet.

BUT! Before we proceed with the story, we wish to Congratulate Emperor Divers on their Safari boat 'Emperor Elite', winning the “BEST LIVEABOARDS” 2020 category in the UK Dive Magazine annual competition.

Well done guys!

(Image courtesy of Divemagazine.co.uk)

We boarded 'Emperor Elite' directly from 'Emperor Skye' in Marsa Ghalib and proceeded out to Brothers, Elphinstone and Deadalus, amongst others. Here again, we were grateful for the reduced number of boats in the water, which made it so much easier to film, without getting divers, fins and bubbles in the shot.

Mother nature was holding back a little here though, as the cold water, that brings the sharks, was not welling up from below as expected and the shark encounters had dropped from the previous week, but as we all know, there are no guarantees when you are out in the wild. This being said, we had a number of superb encounters with Thresher Shark, Scalloped Hamerheads, Whaleshark ….. AND..... LONGIMANUS, our intrepid and extremely inquisitive Oceanic Whitetip Shark

That's a wrap, all tree objectives Achieved.

Although, that being said, one must not forget all the other amazing creatures, corals and sights of the Red Sea. There are world class reefs, plenty of fish and majestic Dolphins.

What an incredible expedition this was, with Emperor Divers, ticking every box, not only from the filming and sighting perspective, but in absolutely every respect.

From the very first email to Emperor Divers, to all of our transfers and specific requirements, being vegetarian and traveling with so much camera and charging gear, (120kg+) and even helping with our exit COVID-19 testing in Hurghada on leaving Egypt, to finally stepping into the airport on our return home. Amazing service. Emperor Divers performed like a well oiled machine. Even in these very hard times, the office staff and boat crews eagerly performed their duties with competence, efficiency and a big smile. Thank you Sonia, for encouraging us to visit and dive the Red Sea again. THANK YOU SO MUCH to ALL the employees of Emperor divers, you exceeded all our expectations and made the trip a resounding success.

We look forward to our return to Emperor Divers, if not in the Red Sea, then to one of your other fleet vessels in the Maldives or Indonesia.

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