Grim's Mid-Life Crisis

Another perfect day in Atauro greeted us on our no dive Sunday. We had the whole day to rest and prepare for a week of diving and fish/coral study.

What ‘better’ way to rest than turning myself inside out with an hour of yoga followed by one and a half hours snorkeling. Exercise and domestic duties done for the day, time to escape the sun, finish our jigsaw while torturing my fellow volunteers with an endless stream of Pink Floyd.

An expedition later in the day up the hill in search of the elusive iced chocolate and french fries proved fruitful and ended a very chill day.

Let’s Play Top Trumps – Atauro Style

Name: Kyle Rogers
Nickname: Shaggy
Origin: Manchester UK
Position: Volunteer
Superpower: Timelord (not enough hours in the day unless on Atauro)
Weakness: Aniseed
Atauro Tune: Colin Hay, Beautiful World
Memorable Quotes: “Grim, you are oddly judgmental” “Grim, you cheating bastard” (note: both unjustified!)

The last day of August and mercardo (market) day when all of Atauro comes to Beloi. Saturday is also fun dives for us in the morning and the afternoon off.

Our first dive of the day at Ilik namu reef took us down to nearly 30m with a moderate current making it a bit of a drift dive. Some huge vase sponges, fields of foliose coral, scorpion fish and massive school of barracuda made up for a shortish dive……as usual I seem to be the only one sucking air like it’s going out of fashion.

Our second dive swapped out for a snorkel in a low tide with our dive boat following us like a mother hen to make sure we don’t get run over by the market day traffic.

Stocking up on fruit at the market, pineapples, guava & sour oranges led to a lazy afternoon playing cards in the sea breeze watching the world go by.

It’s a public holiday in Timor-Leste for the local staff so no diving today. Instead we caught a local Tuktuk south to the village of Vila and spent the morning trekking along the coast further south to the fishing village of Maquili, returning via a hill track in the blistering heat

A quick stop near the top of the hill at a locals house (Marcos) for timely fresh coconut. encountering on the way some local boys dragging canoes down the hill, still unsure of the reason. Some spectacular views up the coast to Beloi where our expedition base is before our descent back down to Vila

The afternoon was spent in our soft coral identification lecture, weekly beach clean and home made ice cream at one of the local dive resorts. Rum & Rasin…yum yum

Wash, rinse, repeat…Swap out dive tank exercises for yoga, swap out fish ID for coral ID and day 13 was pretty much day 12. At last a space to provide a bit of background.

1. Why am I here ?
2. What is the purpose of the expedition ?

Q1 Why am I here ? I don’t know the answer to the big “Why am I here” question but the little one I ‘think’ the answer is:

• I needed an extended break for my sanity
• I wanted to get outside my ever increasing comfort zone
• I wanted to do something useful
• I wanted to do something interesting
• It was less expensive than buying a Harley Davidson
• It was less complicated than getting a new girlfriend
• My wife said yes

Q2 What is the purpose of the expedition ?

To quote Blue Ventures :

Rising up from the waters at the heart of the Coral Triangle,
Atauro is blessed with extraordinary marine biodiversity,
which makes it a key area for conservation efforts. The island
and its waters are, however, very poorly known, and data to
support effective conservation measures is directly needed.
Volunteers play a key role in this, working side by side with a
growing community-based monitoring team and mapping out
previously unknown – and truly spectacular – reefs, seagrass
beds and fish populations. All this information is made available
to the communities of Atauro, who are using it to understand
their marine environment and how to manage fisheries
and biodiversity in a sustainable way. With fishing being a
main source of income for many families, sustainability and
conservation are key concerns for the community.

With a week under my belt I feel the expedition will well and truly eclipse my expectations and I might even make a few new friends along the way !

Dive tank exercise session, 6am at the beach started the day followed by an excellent breakfast of pikelets with sprinkles, geometrically shaped fried eggs and fresh papaya. Certainly the standout breakfast to date and timely as I need something solid in the guts today as the wind is blowing and the waves are rolling.

Our first dive of the day was to be our final advanced drift dive, unfortunately the currents were not our friend so it turned into a fish ID dive. The second dive of the was also a fish ID along an amazing wall. banded sea snakes, blue spotted rays and as always lots of fish.

Following our dives, the boat needed her weekly bottom wipe so we all piled back into the ocean with scrapers and scrubbers to give her hull a good clean. The Blue Ventures staff all wore masks and it was soon obvious that this would have been a good idea….next week!

A coral lecture occupied a large part of the afternoon, to give us background to our benthic (everything on the ocean floor) ID dives and eventually surveys. A quick break to crack open some of the treats we bought in Dili and straight into our first Tetun language lesson. Dinner and early to bed

Kalan Di’ak (Goodnight)

Two more advanced dive practical modules completed this morning. The first our deep dive training at just under 30m including testing to see if we were impaired by the effects of nitrogen narcosis. This involved doing a word search and writing our address backwards at depth and comparing with surface times. We also broke a raw egg at depth to observe how the yolk was held intact by the water pressure and you were able to hit it around like a beach ball…….hmm very useful!

The second module was on underwater navigation which saw us measuring our typical kick distance and using a compass to navigate our way around the reef.

After lunch and a siesta we met on the beach with students from the local AHA (English language) school to play some games. The locals took down the malae (foreigners) with much satisfaction and laughter. Noted that NZ was the last malae nation standing!

Along with the Atauro village elders, the AHA students joined us for another presentation by the American shark advocate David McGuire. The purpose of the talk was to raise the topic of conservation of sharks and the local coral environment which are unlike anywhere else on the planet. Looking at the potential significant benefits to Atauro and the wider Timor-Leste people. Well considered (and long) questions by many of the elders showed understanding of the potential but real concern for a community where subsistence fishing is the only way many of the inhabitants survive and the need to find strategies to transition to an island with wider tourism benefits.

Watercolour postcard painting by some and cards finished off another long day. Hopefully with one drift dive to do I will be a qualified Advanced Open Water Diver tomorrow!

6am and most of us were lined up on the beach with anticipation or trepidation and a full dive tank. A warmup run led into a series of exercises using the dive tank like a barbell, any locals walking past must have considered our sanity. Finally over, we dragged our bodies and tanks back to the dive pit to set up our gear before a 7am breakfast.

Load up the boat and off on our first dive for the day back at Watu Aii reef which was all about fish identification..or not. Back for a quick tank change and the second dive for the day at the training reef Raiketarala where some of us completed our diving module on buoyancy control, which was just the excuse needed to play games at the bottom of the ocean including a running race and reenacting scenes from the Matrix.

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Kyle & Ellen underwater + Ellen practicing her damsel fish sign language someone isn’t impressed (Photos by Rachel)

Theory on fish identification and a presentation on the reefs we will be diving over the expedition kept us occupied all afternoon. Dive modules on deep diving and underwater navigation studied for tomorrow’s dives.

Finished the jigsaw minus 16 missing pieces and we were then allowed to hit the sack

An amazing sunrise greeted us once again this morning (cover image) with a ball of orange framed by our dive boat. Sunday is our diving day off so following a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and three types of bread buns:

1. Fresh bread straight out of the oven
2. Yesterday’s fresh bread
3. Deep fried, the day before yesterday’s fresh bread

We attempted a leisurely yoga session to kick the day into gear….didn’t break anything!

To cool down, a lengthy snorkel along the beach to check out the ‘local’ reef and also allowed me to check some running repairs of my dive fins were working

The afternoon was a little less energetic playing games, doing a jigsaw with lots of bits missing and no box lid. Some of us needed to swat up on theory for our PADI advanced open water diving which starts tomorrow.

The ingredients from the Saturday’s market were successfully arranged into banana bread. Unlike lunch bread, it wouldn’t make it to the deep frying stage due to it being all gulped down in record time.

There was a suggestion that I would be involved in the next cake experiment, I would think my wife would agree for the safety of all involved not a great idea!

A proposed dive tank exercise session at 6am sent everyone scuttling off to bed for an early night, but not until one more piece of the increasingly difficult puzzle had to be found.

Lugging freshly filled dive tanks at 6:45am from the compressor shed and prepping kit will become our morning ritual but today it’s still a novelty, and everyone is there keen for what the diving will entail for the day

Breakfast, kit up, a briefing then out to the first reef of the day (Vila South) about 20 minutes down the coast near the small fishing village of Vila. Another spectacular dive spot with some strongish currents which made pointing in the right direction a challenge at times, highlight was a large turtle, banded sea snake and as always amazing coral.

Back to our base in Beloi to refresh our tanks and get a briefing on our second dive (Watu Aii) which was my pick of he dives to date. This was a sloping wall dive with incredible table coral and abundant fish life every way you looked. Some large blue fin trevelly, peacock grouper and many spotted sweetlips made species identification easy amongst the myriad of darting tiny fish. Back to base clean up kit and the afternoon off.

Saturday in Beloi is market day and some of the team are keen to make banana bread so off to the market for a walk around to see what ingredients could be found. Like markets the world over an eclectic mix of life’s necessities, handicrafts and random objects you wonder who will ever buy. The dried fish, octopuses and rays department was a delightful odour in the hot mid afternoon sun but not the place to find eggs and flour.

The rest of my afternoon was occupied with moving house to my new hut by the beach. I sure my old room mates will miss my dad jokes and early morning wake up calls.

A gorgeous sunrise greeted us as we prepped gear for our first dive on Atauro. A short boat ride to the training reef, but long enough to be cooking in our wetsuits in the morning sun. Lots of buddy checks and a roll off the boat into the most spectacular 26 degree, coral and tropical fish marine garden. A few refresher skills and a tour around the reef and it was time to head back to shore to get fresh air tanks.

Fresh tanks on board we headed back out to the ‘home’ reef directly offshore from our site. This wall reef allowed us to get a bit more depth and get a look at some amazing coral formations.

Gear and lunch all cleaned up, we sat back and were presented a session on plastics in our ocean prior to our first beach clean up. The stats are horrific and a real reminder of the plastic waste crisis we have got ourselves in.

A world renown shark conservationist and marine biologist David McGuire just happened to be on the island so came to in give us a lecture on the issues facing the destruction of shark species, especially due to the delicacy shark fin soup. The impact this is having on smaller species is a significant problem to smaller fish species and the whole marine ecological balance.

A sunset beach clean up and the resulting waste sort and recording finished the day and apart from a few games of cards later on we all slipped away to the huts for some dreams of the following days diving.