Snorkel Clean-Up in Sanur Channel

Here at Joe’s Gone Diving in Bali we are passionate about the health of our reefs and our oceans and we do what we can to help keep our seas safe. In the rainy season large quantities of rubbish is often washed down from the mountains into the sea where it accumulates into large floating masses in our local bays and channels where many of our dive sites are located. While it is upsetting that there is so much debris the advantage is that it tends to collect in a few specific locations and so makes it easier to remove and dispose of safely. 

As a result we decided to organise a snorkel clean-up. As most of the debris tends to float on the surface it made more sense to collect it snorkelling than rather than diving. A snorkelling event also allows a wider variety of people to actively participate, including non-divers and younger children, and so raises awareness among a larger group.

Our first event was a trial run consisting mostly of the staff at our dive centre. We had a lot of fun collecting floating rubbish and enjoying the marine life at Sanur Channel, a lovely shallow little dive site with a sandy bottom, small house reef and a disproportionately large amount of fish that call it their home!

We were able to collect a large amount of debris, mostly consisting of plastics such as carrier bags and food wrappers. Our buddy teams had to return to the boat several times to empty their mesh bags!

We collected as much as we could find and on our return to the shore decided to make the most of our time by doing a quick beach clean-up to prevent the beach debris from being blown out or washed down into the sea. We were able to collect and remove large quantities of rubbish from the beach, including clothing, lighters, lots and lots of plastic carrier bags and the occasional flip-flop. We found four flip-flops, two lefts and two rights but unfortunately they were of different sizes so we were unable to make matching pairs!

All in all our event was a success and we will be running it again soon and making a regular occurrence of it. We plan to include divers as well next time as there is a small amount of debris on the bottom of the site as that is often entangled in the delicate corals and so is difficult to safely remove on a single breath. Keep an eye on the Joe's Gone Diving Bali website for more information on our next snorkel clean-up and our other activities.

Many thanks to Project Aware for the many tools and resources it provided to help make this snorkel clean up easy and efficient!

The staff goes diving...

Does it make sense to work in a bakery and never eat bread? Or to work at an car dealership and don't drive a car? Can it be done? Off course it can, but does it make sense?

Not everyone working in a dive shop is a diver, you have people at the reception, people filling tanks, cleaning equipment, security staff and so on. These people are in contact with the customers all the time, but actually never experienced what the customers are doing, or why they do it.

Low season is a great time to change this, we spoke to the staff and asked them if they would like to try diving out (in the swimming pool). Yes the all shouted, so we planned a date and took them out to the swimming pool over here you can find some photographs. It was a great success and everyone wanted to join the trip next day. Whoo not so quick... :-) We will take them one by one to places such as Padang Bay and Tulamben, so they can see why our customers smile when they come back :-) 

Is the Rebreather revolution is here?

Last week I was lucky enough to be among the first people to be trained on the new Poseidon MK VI Rebreather.

For those who have not read or heard about it PADI has designed and released two new courses, Recreational Rebreather Open Water and Advanced. For now The Poseidon is the only approved Rebreather to be used for this PADI course, I will not bore you with the details, but most probably more brands will either adjust their existing Rebreathers or come out with new Rebreathers to get them approved for these new courses. As you might think, well isn't this technical diving for people who want to go deep? Let me list a few benefits of using a Rebreather compared to the traditional Open Circuit.

You don't make bubbles or sound, meaning you can get much closer to the marine life. Years ago Draeger had a advertising campaign for the semi closed Rebreather, with a close up picture of the eye of a hammerhead shark and the text "How close do you want to get?". For me this was the main reason to think about diving with a Rebreather, being a underwater Photographer and Videographer it sounds like a dream coming true.

Longer bottom times, to keep it simple a Rebreather is optimising the amount of Oxygen you are breathing on different depths, for you who have been taking a Nitrox course it will make sense whwn I say a Rebreather will have your PO2 on 1.4 no matter what depth you are going (well not completely true but good enough for this example) meaning you will adsorb less Nitrogen resulting in longer bottom times. You can make dives up to 3 hours.


Less Heat Loss, because of the chemical reaction that takes place inside the machine to get ride of the CO2. You are actually breathing warm air. Even in warm water like here in Bali, this is a blessing, during my course I did a 2 hour dive and when I came out of the water I was not cold at all, with normal scuba gear after one hour I will start freezing.

As long as I have been diving I have been intrigued by Rebreathers, but never took the time to take a course, mainly because I thought to technical, too much hassle, too expensive.
When I heard about the PADI course which is focusing on recreational diving not technical diving, and when I got the invitation to join the course I knew this was my time to try it myself, see what it is and check out if it is something that we should be doing.

The course was great fun, first all theory and the DVD had be done before we started the course. As I said I was among the first people in Indonesia to take this course, this course was meant as a kick-off for the new courses and machines. The people invited where all dive shop owners, instructors and Course Directors, interested to see what's new.

The Pool sessions gave me a first feel and glimpse of how it is to dive these machines. Setting up and testing the equipment is a way bigger deal than with open scuba. It will take more time before you are in the water, but once in the water....
You are immediately punished for bad habits that you might have picked up as a open circuit diver, for example breathing through your nose. Your buoyancy works different, there is no effect when you breath in or out. You will feel clumsy, awkward like learning it all over again...
You need to get used to the fact you don't make bubbles and no sound. it's like breathing above the water, you need to start trusting the machine.

For the Open Water sessions we took of to Tulamben, one of the great dive sites in Bali, where we stayed for two days.
These Open Water dives really gave me an inside in diving with these machines. We dove Seraya and the USAT Liberty wreck. It was fantastic, completely different than diving Open Circuit, no noise, the fish where close up, I even had a few Lionfish that did turn there back to me as the normally do but turned around to look at me.

So after the course it was time to make up the balance, is the new way of diving? It, as Poseidon says, the Rebreather revolution here? Honestly I don't know, I know one thing Rebreather diving is not for everyone, there much more preparation and much more work after the diving. You have to be precise and patient. But if you are and you don't mind the extra preparation time, the diving is great.
I believe that Rebreather diving will earn a higher status in the recreational diving world, and much more more people will take it on, I just don't believe it's for everyone.
I think it's a big step forward for the diving industry to have these recreational Rebreather units, which makes it much more accessible for a bigger group, but I also know that this is just the beginning units will get easier, cheaper it's just a matter of time.
So what does this mean for Joe's Gone Diving well we are thinking about it, keep following us and I will let you know :-)

Putu and Ryadi

When most people talk about a dive shop or dive experience the normally talk about the people with whom they had a direct contact. I wanted to use this post to tell you a little bit more about the people behind the scenes who make it possible for you to go diving in Bali every day and or take a PADI course. In and around the equipment room we have Putu and Ryadi these two guys make sure that your equipment is clean, safe and ready to use. Next to this they fill and check all the tanks on a daily basis, both compressed air and Nitrox. Ryadi has been with us from day 1 and I really mean day 1, he was one of the original builders who helped out with the renovation of our building. He is a hardworker and has mastered all the skills to look after the equiment and tanks. Putu has joined us about a month ago, he is a fast learner and eager to know what, why, when.  Without them, tanks would be empty, equipment dirty the cycle would stop very quickly.
So next time you are over look to the right and you will see  two friendly faces, being part of the circle to make it all happen for you.

Looking back on Year 1

December is always a good month to look back at the year, see what you hoped to achieve and see what you really have accomplished. Well it has been an interesting year, finishing the renovation of the building, completing the paperwork and open our dive shop. Little did we know that the new lifestyle we have chosen would be a such a busy one..The first year has been much more busy than we expected and looking at the feedback we received from our customers who have been diving on Bali with us on places like Tripadvisor, Goole Places and many other places including our own website it seems we have done a good job.
Not that we are ready and there is nothing to improve anymore.
One of the things we wanted to accomplish is that Joe's Gone Diving would be a PADI 5 star dive center within a year. I very happy to let you know we did it, thanks to our customers who believed in us and our staff who have been very supportive. For us this has been a recognition that we are on the right track. A few other things we have accomplished this year, we have and constantly are improving our dive centre, we have added a specifically designed equipment drying area to our building, changed the layout of our equipment room to allow more equipment to be stored and facilitate customer specific equipment storing areas. Installed a nitrox facility made the reception area bigger upgraded our store to facilitate the sale of equipment, implemented software to able to help our customers more efficient and 1005 other jobs.... We still have a lot of plans for the coming years and hopefully when I look back next December I will get the same great feeling of accomplishment.