The night dive at the end of the universe

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If you had to choose the last night dive you did before you hung up your regs, this would be a great place for it.

Nothing during the daylight, less than 5 minutes from the bar and peir its a deep night dive site on multi levels which makes for lots of equalising and Marco the excellent dive guide and one of the owners of Cubadak described it as a bit of a mixed bag offering walls, drop offs, nooks and crannys and caves, a bit of a sandy bottom rubble muck dive area, this is one dive worth the travel to get to.

I love night diving and this is one dive I would do again. I dont have any pics as to do it justice is way beyond my ability in years of learning the art of photography and the tonnes of gear required to show exactly how special this site is.

We set off at twilight, a pretty special time at Cubadak and were gearing up as soon as we left the pier. I wear a hoody lava core under my wetsuit on night dives as I have a bad habit of feeling the cold..so I had one ear poking out while listening to Marcos breifing.

We descended a few metres from the wall formed by the edge of the island. As you drop down your torch beam picks up beautiful massive scarlet fan corals with shrimps and critters hiding in the corals lace work. Behind as you drop down further there are soft corals in purple and yellow fluttering softly in the gentle current adorned the walls with caves and holes bustling with fish. The wall here undulates along forming interesting crevices sporting every kind of soft coral and the giant fans. Sponges love these waters and are very prevalent. There are nudis on the walls, fish everywhere and you can pretty much say that you will be the only divers at Cubadak. There is zero chance of bumping into divers from another boat. You are alone in the underwater world full of dazzling colours and movement. Whip corals with tiny shrimp and the funniest thing ive ever seen underwater.

The decorator crabs. There must be a home beautiful competition amongst decorator crabs that we humans are not privy to knowledge of. Or they were dressed for some ceremonial occassion and were expecting some crustacean dignatory to come along and crown one king crab for the year. Ive never seen decorator crabs this big or doing this much..decorating. These guys had BLING going on. One had a peice of carpet on his back with a sponge and a peice of soft coral. And a few baby fish buzzing around him. He had it going on. Other contenders had shrimp and sponges in tufts and one had a comical strand of doormat perched jauntily his back, scuttling around importantly. One had a button and some shells amongst his sponges so walked like an egyptian elegantly making sure none of his treasures should tumble off.

We descended further and came to a big crevice in the wall. Marco shone his torch in and i followed with mine to find myself face to face with Grandpa. A VERY big turtle. Around the size of a dining table and well over 100 years old with a massive hump on his back. And very laid back. He doesnt get many visitors per year so is generally very tolerant. We sat with him for a few minutes and watched as he swam off into the black. At the edge of the wall we descended onto a rubbly area with lots of curious muck dive type critters, anenomes, eels, worms, shrimp and myriad fish and marbled and blue spotted rays. You could easily dive here for a week to see all the different animals who come out to play here. Its a fun dive but also an easy dive. Other than the multi levels and frequent equalising the water is warm and there are no real currents to speak of its laid back night diving.

We looked around in the rubble for a while before heading back and following the wall. We came across a big moray who had obviously had a run in with a shark and bore wounds on his back but showed no aggression or annoyance when Marco stroked him. Further up more morays this time a pale cream smaller moray popping his head out like a jack in the box of his hole.

And more ridiculously attired decorator crabs!'

We came across Grandpa again, this time back in his cave, but with a decent size female in an adjoining crevice. As I took one last look at grandpa I must have drifted back slightly and felt the instant sting of anenome spines through my wetsuit. Ouch. My elbow burned and I knew I had spines in there but im not talking serious agony..and besides I was having too much fun to abort the dive for something so trivial.

We continued ascending amongst the fish and sponges and corals our torchbeams showed us and I found myself singing Van Morrisons Moondance softly through my reg as Marco was playing with a school of squid fluttering around us. Changing colour and undulating their sides as they drift into you then dart away. They looked like dancing white angels in an alien world. A world that exists only in your torchbeam for a breif moment because its their world not ours and we are only transient visitors. And im glad its that way still in some places on this planet.

Our time underwater nearly up - at 55 minutes not too bad for a deep night dive. As we drifted around for our deco stop a couple of cuttlefish played around and the squid came back to dance around in our torch beams for a few minutes more. I watched them dancing, singing moondance, happy. In my happy place. I love a great dive and this one was really worth doing. Id do it again any night.

We surfaced and handed our gear up to the very professional local crew and climbed onto the boat. As we were being whisked back to a hot shower, coffee and a sumptious dinner Marco pulled as many of the spines as he could see out of my elbow. I dive with a 3mm wetsuit on so even with a wetsuit dont expect to be protected from them. Stingy ouchie things are pretty common down there, which is the reason I dive with one glove on..styling..Michael Jackson didnt start that look, i did.

When we got back by the time I had showered and dressed and walked across to the restaurant area dinner was on the table. A beautiful huge meal with lots of courses, european style dining at big communal tables in the open air thatched area.

I sat down to the appetiser of prawns with black dots everywhere on my elbow where the sea urchin spines had broken off inside my wetsuit. They burnt a little but nothing too serious.

The next day, by the time the whole resort packed up and headed to a nearby island to have a picnic and for us to go for another couple of dives between a lunch of lobster salad and tropical fruit ( life is so hard! ) the spines had disappeared..The final dive at Cubadak while mum stayed on the picnic island and fossicked around finding shells was again totally different to the sponge dive or the night dive. Pinacles and decent size caves you can explore with a couple of chambers (No. No. Do not even start thinking of Cave Diving as a hobby..mum is cool but she has watched the movie Sanctum). Exploring caves is a great way of finding hidden treasures and these caves were teeming with fish and crustacean life. So many fish it became impossible to see what was what.

Away from a wall down across a rubble area to a few pinacles with clams and anenome gardens amongst the sponges with schools of mackerel heading out into the blue. Its heartening to see big tuna by Asian standards swimming past. A beautiful big marbled grouper had flattened himself out amongst one of the cave walls and I was impressed by his size. I hadnt seen a fish that big out diving asia in a long while. There were turtles applenty including a curious youngster who cruised past and did an arc tantalisingly close to my face. A new type of clownfish particularly to these islands and anenomes with porcelain crabs everywhere. Lionfish and Antheas hovered over coral bombie heads and a big marbled ray hid half below a rock overhang at the edge of the rubble. An Octopus hiding in his cave. We ascended up the wall spotting more turtles and a beautiful array of tropical fish. While the viz isnt great, its the richness that makes the viz poor that provides nutriets to these waters.

Traditional fishermen fish here every night, but it appears to be sustainable at the moment. I couldnt see any evidence of dynamite fishing or cyanide fishing. There was a little bit of litter around but nothing compared to Bunaken. Marco said they had spoken to the authorities about that and were getting on reasonably well with the fishermen. There is a small enterprise fish farm on the picnic island spot which is where we spent our lunch..on lobster salad..before heading out to another spot for a final dive.

I was horrified to see Padang beach famous for selling turtle eggs. Stalls with hundreds of eggs lined the beachfront. Im researching the issue and want to see if anything can be done to stop the sale.

As we headed up the pier at Cubadak to begin the journey home I heard the local staff mentioning the two baby blacktip reef sharks swimming under the pier. It was lovely to end the time on the island that way. I waded down into the waters of Cubadak and watched two little baby reefies swim amongst the corals just a couple of metres away from my legs. Good luck little guys 😊

But the diving? Awesome 😊



I will remember my time with Mum on Cubadak and treasure it. I think we found something to share. When I mentioned I planned to spend one year of my life living on islands she would always frown and throw up 100 reasons why this was irrational and irresponsible. When I mentioned it while we were eating our picnic lunch on an island without a name she smiled shrugged her shoulders and said..well who would look after the dogs?

Time at Cubadak came to an end too fast. We had to go through the trip back to Bali for a few days the next day.



I smiled when I heard mum say..oh, we have to leave the island tommorow, i dont want to leave...

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Comments

[Home and Away]

As you described your dive, I was thinking of the song "Under the Sea" from the Little Mermaid...
with all the swirling color of the many kinds of fish. Thanks for the visual imagery. I'm glad your trip with your mom went well.