last year's MantaWatch internship photos: part 2

view from Rinca Island boat deck

accepting certificate on the last day of internship :')

usual drill before getting in the water

new friends :)

last year's MantaWatch internship photos: part 1

i just missed those moments so much i just have to post some pictures of my internship with MantaWatch. some maybe you never seen before ;) and kinda bit of a spoiler alert for the new interns (congratulation by the way).

front deck of Dive Komodo boat

our cray schedule! complete with manta drawings :)

the horrible road Ichsan and I have to go trough to Sano Nggoang Lake

your everyday view. GORGEOUS!

two great mentor: Andy and Laura!

off the water: paper works

first of my adventure in Komodo Island

had to stay in one of those 'hut' for a night @Kanawa Island Resort

snorkeling with the king

the best day of my internship. period. to swim so close with those amazing creatures. my heart almost stopped. take me with you please..

and the manta awareness still going on..

although our 'Komodo' times has passed, Ichsan and I still very much wanted people to know about mantas. so our dive organization decided making us as one of the keynote speaker in our second annual expo! and yes, it was nerve wracking! i mean come on, i never am confident enough to talk in front of my class, and now i have to do what?! but it went well, don't get me wrong. i was just sweating like crazy, and i talked really fast. after this? no more public speaking please ;p (well maybe not this time around)

by the way, i am very proud to be one of the two people that got an amazing opportunity as a MantaWatch intern. i mean come on, for one month i got to meet mantas (that means constantly diving) and i don't have to think about all my campus assignments? what could be better than that? haha! PS: if you guys want to know more about mantas and how you could contribute to conserve them, go here. come join us to be the manta protector :D

(not) the last time

me with Andy (my mentor), Fabi (the winner of the Canon S100 and housing! lucky guy), and Ichsan (fellow intern). one month seems really quick. miss everyone in Labuan Bajo. but not to worry, i will be back. sooner or later :)

dragon and decompression

this week there are two highlight of my internship with MantaWatch. first of all, the fact that i couldn't dive for a day! well this is because i spent too much time in the deep (if i'm not wrong, it think it's around 25-27 m). i did realize that there was something wrong with my dive computer because it showed that i have to come up (ascending time) to shallow water no more than 3 m. but because Andy and Ichsan looked fine, so i thought maybe it is fine. that was my first mistake. after i surface, the computer started beeping and showing error sign. and i thought maybe the error would go away itself. that was my second mistake. so the following day i went diving again, and it still showing error. so i asked Andy why, and he told me that i shouldn't dive anymore until the computer stop showing error, and he told me that i won't get a decompression sickness (fiuh!), only a higher risk to get one. so i have to sit on the boat for a day. 

but that day turned up pretty great when Andy told me that whether we want to switch boat from Divine Diving boat to DiveKomodo boat because they are going to Rinca Island to see the dragon! of course i said yes immediately! i have been waiting for that moment. and that was my second highlight of this week, to finally see the dragon!

first of everything great

 the them for this week is obviously experiencing first things, which i will explain it to you one by one.

first, i had my first live-aboard experience for four days. MantaWatch arranged a four days manta safari. we went with a small group of amazing people. the boat was very nice, even though at my third day in it i felt a little seasick. i had my own cabin, and my favorite part was the food! the food was always nicely prepared and so tasty, it was always take the hunger away after diving.

second, and this was the most memorable of all, my very first ever night dive! at first when they asked me if i wanted to go, i felt hesitant. because i always have anxiety every time before i dive (i don't know why and i still couldn't get rid of it). but thankfully i said yes, and i had a great time during that night dive although most of the time i'm always thinking: 'don't get lost, Dita. try to look over everybody around you.'

third, still about my first diving experience, my first deep dive! the water was so cold and even though i was wearing 5 mm wet suit, i still feel cold. but i love the dive site. it's called the arch. as i was explained by the dive master on the boat, it has a chair like contour with may reef fishes and corals. at first they didn't tell me how deep we're going to dive, so when i looked at my dive computer, i was surprised that we went until 34 m! but it wasn't so scary because i was mesmerized by how there are so many fishes, and of course, the highlight of that dive is when we passed to a little cave. that felt amazing and i wish the cave were longer and wider so it could be like experiencing a little bit of cave diving ;p

fourth, and i think this was the most challenging of all, my first English presentation about mantas. it was pretty hard for me to present something with indonesian language, i couldn't imagine how it goes. but to my surprise, and for the helpful advise from Andy and Laura, i did pretty well (well at least for me it did).

so to wrap things up, i had an amazing weekend, a lot of things for y head to wrap into, but in a good way though. so how's your week? did you experience first things like i did?

just ordinary days

september has been really fun for me. first i 'celebrated' my 21st birthday on a boat in the middle of the sea between Indramayu and Biawak island, and it only gets better: right now i'm in Labuan Bajo, NTT, doing an internship with MantaWatch and supported by the Guy's Trust Foundation. both of them are based in UK. and as you can see by the name of the organization, yes, they are specialized in manta rays. and yes, i will be (well hopefully) diving with mantas a lot. from the second i applied for this internship i knew that i would be having a blast. no kidding. my first day with them, we spend a night in Bali and i got the chance to go to a shark sanctuary in Serangan Island, and actually swam with them! never i my teenage life that i thought i would ever swam with a shark! well i know they're only reef sharks, but hey, shark's a shark.

of course the excitement didn't end there. by the time i got to Labuan Bajo, i went straight into the water after a day break exploring the town and settling in. the first dive that i did here was to refresh some underwater techniques such as mask clearing and regulator recovery and just to be comfortable in the water. second dive that i did was the following day, the same spot which is in Bidadari Island. but this second dive is to know how well we are to take a picture underwater (of course i got my own camera, lend by MantaWatch) and to experiment and to get familiar with the camere we're using.

my third and fourth dive were probably the most exciting dive i've ever done because i saw 4 mantas in total with one that was really huge and swimming just a few feet from me! if only i could swim away with it, i probably would and turn myself to a mermaid. but that wasn't just the reason though. i encountered some animals that i've never seen before such as cuttlefish and leaf scorpion fish. last but not least, and may i say, the cherry on top, was the drift diving. i'm not a fan of strong underwater current, but after i just let the current take me, i started to feel more relaxed.

by the way, if you're wondering about the 'we' i mentioned above, that's because for the next four weeks i'm going to be accompanied by Andy and Laura (MantaWatch staff) and my fellow intern, Ichsan who happens to be my classmate from marine science.