One of the highlights of this vacation was the snorkeling. I thought it’d be a bit boring and wasn’t really excited about it, I’m not soo much into staying on the beach for the whole day and doing nothing when I’m on vacation. Rather, I’m much more keen to go around temples, jungles, cities, see animals etc. However, we booked a tour to go around the so-called “Secret Gilis” around Lombok and also pink beaches. The pink beaches appeared so because of particles from broken down red/pink coral. There’s a photo of this coral below. However, what I had no idea I’d see, were the sea stars. I didn’t expect to see them, again bc of my lack of research and when i saw a sea star I got soooo excited, I was a bit afraid to touch it at first, because I imagined it’d be something like a jellyfish to the touch, but it’s actually hard-ish. It’s amazing to see the little tentacles which the star uses to “walk” with. As soon as you lift the star from the seabed it retracts these tentacles but you can see them for a few seconds before that happens. And so our tour guide in Lombok, Ridwan, or just Wan, for short, showed us the star and decided to joke with me saying that the star will die if it’s out on the beach 😀 So i started moving all the stars back to the water and then.. in 15 min, they were back out 😀 😀 😀 AHUHAAhaaha, then I realized what a fool i’ve been 😀 And ofc Wan was laughing 😀
There were soo many beautifully coloured starfish but also many sea urchins. The urchins were attacking the starfish and eating them, there was a star with only 4 “legs” instead of 5. We also saw a box fish which I love, they look like a tiny cube with a little mouth in shaped as if you’re giving a kiss to someone, google “cowfish” or “boxfish” they are different species but both are just insanely cute, my favourite fish :d Sadly i couldn’t take a picture of it as I was still trying to understand how my GoPro camera worked :/ Anyway, there was also dragonfish, which is very dangerous and you must not touch it, although it’s sooo beautiful. Pufferfish were also swimming around as well as some colourful iridescent fish which changed its colours if you look at it from different angles.
(the iridescent fish i mentioned, it’s fairly big, but looks small bc of the GoPro)
I was really amazed at all the colours and shapes of the corals and the fish. There were blue, green, purple, white, yellow, all colours of corals, it was really soo beautiful. Radena and Tony (her mom) couldn’t get me out of the water and I didn’t realize how badly sunburnt I had gotten. But i didn’t really care, i couldn’t stop following the fish around and staring at the corals and diving and trying to touch them. I know, you shouldn’t touch them, but i didn’t really manage anyway, only one time. That one time i touched it i was wearing gloves because the rocks around were very sharp and cut you pretty badly, so you need to wear water shoes and gloves. So there was a weird creature in the water that I saw the guide touch with no problem. Something like a sea cucumber and the damn thing got attached to my glove as if it had velcro 😀 I got panicked and started like.. shouting or so and the guide had to take it off of me 😀
Anyway, on one of the secret gilis, they had a rescue and rehab center for sea turtles. It seems that when fisherman catch their fish, sometimes they catch turtles and because it’s not clear how long turtles have stayed there, they might need to recover first before being let go. So the fishermen bring the turtles there and if you want, you can donate to the center and release the turtle back to the ocean. You also get a certificate for this. We decided to release the only one currently at the center and to name it Noni, after a fruit that Rad really wanted to try and which none of us, the rest, dared to try. This fruit tastes like a mix of puke and blue cheese 😀 Kinda weird 😀 Aaanyway.. it was amazing to release the turtle. The animal was sooo heavy the guy couldn’t lift it for more than a few seconds at a time and it took a while to bring it to the beach and then I started lifting it a bit and pushing it towards the water so that the turtle wouldn’t drain all of it’s energy in the sand. It was such an amazing experience <3
Here’s a little more information on the Sea Turtle program on Gili Nanggu where we released Noni from (i googled it, because I wanted to make sure it’s a legitimate rescue location):
GILI NANGGU SEA TURTLE CONSERVATION PROGRAM has been functioning since 1995. Over the past 11 years, Gili Nanggu has hatched about 4.500 sea turtle eggs. Such record emphasizes the natural conservative attitudes and concerns that the management of Gili Nanggu have contributed to the global conservation program for the : sea turtle. The program is carried out in the most practical way, incorporating traditional values. First of all, Management takes the initiative in protecting the sea turtle eggs from being sold in a free market by purchasing those eggs from fishermen. The eggs are then buried in coastal sand for about 30-35 days.
The level of birth success using this method is about 80%. The baby sea turtles are carefully nourished till they reach the age of 5 – 6 months. At this age, a young sea turtle has developed a sufficient level of maturity and is able to take care of itself, especially from predators. The baby sea turtles will normally survive when they return to their natural habitat. (based on data of Wikipedia, the level of survival rate of sea turtles returning to sea is found to be only 1 out of 100).
Gallery with more photos
