At the end of May we wrapped up our second season in Triton Bay. It started in late September last year with the biggest El Nino’s ever wrecking havoc on the global climate. Triton Bay saw colder than normal water temperatures to start the season and a long stretch of many months without much rain. We focused on nudibranchs and other critters as they seemed to come out with the colder water, however by February the water had begun to warm and the rains came. Triton Bay did not escape the effects of the El Nino, as in the last month of the season many of the coral in the shallows were bleached. We hope that the changing of the seasons in June and colder water coming in from the south will be timely enough to reverse the bleaching and will know in a few months.
This past season we explored Triton Bay a bit more, found a few more dive sites, and discovered a few new critters, 2 of them being the sailfin anthias and Bulbonaricus pipefish – big thanks to Ned & Anna DeLoach and the crew of the Dewi Nusantara! If you’ve never heard of either of these fish, don’t worry neither have most divers. We even heard that a diver aboard one of the visiting liveaboards saw and photographed a rhinopia, which we believe has never been seen before in Triton Bay. But there is still a lot waiting to be discovered, and we hope to be able to do a bit more exploratory diving with guests who have the time and inclination to do so.
Among the visitors we had the pleasure of hosting were some amazing photographers, with select photos of theirs added to our Guest Galleries. A few visitors were part of the very first exploratory trip to Triton Bay in 2006 and came back to see the place they had such fond memories of. It was amazing to hear their stories of the beginning. We had visitors from the first season who came back to see us after less than a year. We had families with young children and certified a whole family of new Open Water divers! We even hosted Indonesian government officials and generals, including the military commander of West Papua!
On the marketing side, we took part in trade shows in Hong Kong and Deep Indonesia in Jakarta. We were represented at the Boot show in Germany via an agent, and need to give out a special thanks to Connie, a guest from the first season, who helped represent us there. We look forward to hosting all the friends we met at the these trade shows at the resort some time in the not too distant future!
It is June now and we have begun construction of two more bungalows, which should be ready to house new guests by the beginning of next season. Updates as usual will be through FaceBook.
Below is a gallery of some of our favorite photos that were never posted onto either Facebook or the Guest Galleries:
