Kubu is located on the northeastern part of the Island of Bali. It is about a three-hour drive from
Kuta. I had never been there before, so before we departed I asked my friend who is also my dive
master, Widana, about what we were going to see there. He just smiled and said that we were just
going to see some fish. I could only laugh at his vague reply.
When we got there, a pack of six dolphins seemed to welcome us. We could watch them swim at some distance from the beach. From the Discovery Channel I learned that dolphins were marine mammals and that they were intelligent creatures. They could be found worldwide, mostly on the shallower sea of the continental shelves. Dolphins were carnivores; they ate fish and squids. Most of them lived a long life. It had been one of my greatest wish to dive or swim with them one day, and now it seemed that my wish would be fulfilled.
My diving partners of that day were Okky, Robert, and our dive master, Widana. Okky and Robert are advanced open water divers with over 60 dive logs experiences. After we did some preparations on the beach, we walked into the open water. The visibility here was very low, not more than 8 meters. I could not find any interesting thing at this level. Then, we went deeper at around 12 meters. I searched the sandy bottom. If I was lucky, I could spot a macro critter. Suddenly, one of my diving partners tapped me on my shoulder and pointed to one direction. A dolphin came out of nowhere. I was very excited and started taking some pictures with my under water camera. The dolphin swam very fast. I tried to follow it, but after some time I gave up.
I looked for Widana and found him beneath me looking at the coral reef at around 20 meters deep. I paced my kick cycles toward him and showed him the pictures. He then pointed to a certain direction.
It was a school of barracudas. I thought the dolphin must have been chasing the barracudas. Widana congratulated me on the dolphin pictures because it was such a rare experience. It was one of the greatest experiences in my life.