The Sea Monster 

This morning I woke up pretty early to walk to my fun dive at The Blue Marine which was a 45 minute trek from where I was staying.

I got a juice along the way at a cute cafe called Coffee & Thyme. I got a carrot, apple, and ginger juice which was delicious.

My dive was at 8:30am but I needed to be there a half an hour early to set up and check all my equipment. My guides name was Sam who’s originally from London and has been on the island for about a month. And my scuba partner was a tall guy from Holland named Rob. We took a boat out to Sunset Reef near Gili Trawangan and got there at around 9am. The tide had changed once we got out there and the water was at a 5 degree temperature change from 31 C to 26 C. I didn’t realize it at the time but the water down where we were diving was very cold. And because of the tide changing we swayed a lot, moving with the currents. 

I was very happy that we ended up diving in colder waters because a lot of fish made their way towards the islands from the open ocean that I would have never seen otherwise.

I saw octopus, a black eel, trumble fish, sweet lip fish, butterfly fish, angel fish, spine cheek fish, blue and bat fish. And then… the sea monster! 

I was swimming south trying to stay with the current, when our guide Sam pulled at my ankles and gestured for me to follow him. He and Rob were swimming fast towards something that I couldn’t see. As we swam along a big black object started to appear. It was moving very slowly in the water, and the faster we swam towards the monster the bigger it got! At first I thought it was a whale or some mutant (ninja) turtle that was beyond its record size. But once we ascended and finished our dive was when I was told that it was a fish called a Mola Mola. The Mola Mola is classified as a sun fish, at a height of 14 feet and the length of 10ft. The fish weighs between 3,000 and 5,000 pounds (that’s more than an average pickup truck)!! They are known for being the world largest bony fish. AMAZING!!!

After the dive I met up with Jamie and we went to our new favorite restaurant on the island called Captain Coconuts. We are until our tummies were full and then went to the north part of the island to watch the sunset.

Pretty epic day if I do say so myself. 🙂