Eco Divers News

Kungkungan Bay's new bar is now officially open! And it's rather grand. The whole of the second floor of the main building has been converted for the very serious business of unwinding at the end of the day.

Sip your favourite cocktail, enjoy the great views out over the house reef and the Lembeh Strait from the balcony. Under cover you will find a fully stocked air conditioned bar, lending library and lounge with a new flat screen TV.

Steve & Miranda Coverdale will be at the DEMA show, Las Vegas, USA from October 22 to October 25. You can find them on Booth 3107 in the Indonesian Pavilion. This show is the only international trade event for the diving, action water sports and adventure travel industries, so if you're in the trade, make sure you visit us and find out more.


Eco Divers will be at the Dive 2008 show at the Birmingham NEC on November 1 & 2. Steve & Miranda will be at Stand 831 ready to offer advice and answer your questions about the amazing diving on offer in North Sulawesi.

Air Asia has started a new direct service between Kuala Lumpur and Manado. This flight service will run three times a week. Kuala Lumpur is a major Travel hub in Asia with most international airlines flying there.

Air Asia offers some unbelievable bargains on their flights. They even have a special rate for excess dive equipment. Check out www.airasia.com for more information.

After two years of doing a great job for Eco Divers at Tasik Ria Resort, Bjorn Ramault and Caroline Gerresch have decided to return to Belgium in order to bring up their young son, Moé.

Everyone at Eco Divers is sad to see them leave. Not only will we miss their professional work but also their personal friendship. We thank them for the great job they did during their time with us and we wish them the best of success in their new life.

For the time being, Cary & Jim Yanny will take over the management of Eco Divers at Tasik Ria Resort. For our French-speaking clients, we’re happy to still provide a French language service through our Swiss Dive Manager at Kima Bajo Resort & Spa, Mr. Luca Vaime.

But all connections are not lost as Caroline will continue to write Eco Divers' French newsletter and to develop our new French website from her home office in Belgium.

Guests choosing to stay at Kima Bajo Resort & Spa will be in the experienced and capable hands of the General Manager, South African born Karin van Zyl.

Karin started diving 20 years ago and as is so often the case, diving changed her life. She swapped her business suit and pumps for a wetsuit and fins and started travelling the world. She spent almost 10 years in the Fiji islands, where she managed small luxury boutique resorts. The Caribbean lured her away and she accepted a position as manager of a very busy 5 Star PADI dive centre in Belize. During this time she became a PADI course director. Karin fell in love with the diving and the people of Indonesia during a month long visit to Tasik Ria and KBR about 2 years ago, and soon thereafter made the big move to North Sulawesi. Now that she has taken the reins at Kima Bajo, guests can expect her wealth of knowledge of resort management and the needs of divers to make a real difference to their holiday experience. How may resorts can claim to be managed by a PADI Course Director? Kima Bajo can!

We still have a few places left for the Scuba Diver Australasia Digital shoot-out. All previous shoot out events that have been held at Kungkungan Bay Resort have been a fabulous success and all have been completely sold out. We are expecting nothing less from this upcoming event so don't wait too long before you book.

Scuba Diver Australasia magazine has also just announced that we will have one extra judge for the event. William Tan is one of Asia's leading Photographers and North Sulawesi is like a second home to him. Only last year William and his dive guide Noldy discovered a new species of Pipefish here in the Lembeh Strait.

For further details and prices on this year's Digital Download, please click here or contact Eco Divers at info@eco-divers.com.

We're delighted to be welcoming Luca Vaime and Miho Takeda to Eco Divers team on July 1. They will manage our new dive operation at Kima Bajo Resort & Spa. Luca and Miho, who were recently married, come to us with a wealth of experience in diving. They have worked previously in the Red Sea, the Maldives, Thailand and, most recently, have managed an upscale dive centre right here in Manado. Luca is Italian and Miho Japanese and between them can speak Japanese, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Indonesian. We wish them success and enjoyment in their new job.

"Keep your wide angle in your bag, this is the Lembeh Strait!" We really can't remember how many times we have said that to our guests. However, on 3rd March we were forced to think again. On a dive to Angels Window a group diving with guide Robbie Manialup came across a whale shark. We fondly called it a pygmy whale shark as it was still young and only reached a length of 6 meters!

This is the biggest fish in the sea and there are only a few whale species that are larger. Thought to reach up to a possible 20 meters and 34 tonnes it seems difficult to believe that they feed on microscopic plankton rarely more than 3mm in size. The combination of its immense size and characteristic checkerboard pattern makes this creature almost unmistakable and completely unforgettable.

The whale shark belongs to the order Orectolobiformes, or carpet sharks, and comprises the only member of its family, Rhincodontidae. Most families of carpet sharks are small, benthic (sea-floor) species with a limited distribution through the tropical and temperate indo-pacific waters (e.g. wobbegongs and bamboo sharks). A few species such as the whale shark, Zebra shark and two out of the three species of nurse Shark are larger and more geographically widespread. (Info from the Shark Trust)

If you have a particular critter that you would like to learn more about, email steve.coverdale@eco-divers.com and we'll look into featuring it in a future article.

Kungkungan Bay Resort is proud to have been selected by Scuba Diver Australasia Magazine as host resort for its Digital Download photo shoot-out event 2008.

The shoot-out is in a 5-night format between 26 November and 01 December. All are welcome to join irrespective of level of experience, with the emphasis firmly on having fun and learning. There is no entrance fee to pay - all you need to do to join this exciting event is make a normal booking into the resort on those dates and let us know you'd like to join the event.

Prizes will be in three categories with 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize awarded in each category:

CATEGORY	1st prize	2nd prize	3rd prize
Macro Behaviour	Canon EOS 450D Tusa Selene BCD (female)	KBR 7D/7N trip for one	PDS Membership Camaro wetsuit
Portrait	Canon EOS 450D Tusa Xpert Zoom fins	Tasik Ria 7D/7N trip for one	PDS Membership Camaro wetsuit
Portfolio	Canon EOS 450D Scubapro Xtender computer	Kima Bajo 7D/7N trip for one	PDS Membership Camaro wetsuit

Judging the event will be two very well known personalities from the world of scuba diving and underwater photography, Simon Buxton and Mike Veitch.

Simon Buxton has spent most of his working life in and around the sea. After graduating with a degree in marine biology, he journeyed to Asia to work in the diving industry as an instructor, guide, and videographer. As time passed he began to specialise more in imaging, and the only dives now without a camera are while teaching students about photography on his underwater photo workshops. Simon has placed highly in several competitions in the past few years, and when not diving spends his time designing Web sites and performing studio photography. He is a contributor for various magazines around the world and a Field Editor for ScubaDiver AustralAsia. Highlights of his underwater career so far have been seeing humpback whales underwater, and finding his first mimic octopus in the Philippines. Within Asia he tries to dive Indonesia and the Philippines at least once a year, as he feels these areas offer more than most other locations.

Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Mike Veitch has been working as a full-time dive professional in the tropical Pacific since the '90s. As a photo/video pro aboard live-aboards and resorts, Mike has spent many years photographing the incredible marine life of the Indo Pacific region on a near daily basis. Along with his underwater photography and video work, Mike conducts photo classes throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific (www.divephotofest.com, www.OceanStockImages.com), and currently resides in Bali where he hones his photography and video skills on an almost daily basis.

For further details contact Eco Divers at info@eco-divers.com

It's not often we get something for free these day, and so the Eco Team are extremely happy to tell you that Bill MacDonald will be at Kungkungan Bay Resort for the first 3 weeks of November 2008. This is your big chance to learn from one of the most experienced underwater videographers in the world. And Bill's advice is completely free of charge.

Bill is an established environmental film producer and CEO of Bill Macdonald Productions and stock footage archive and is the producer of the popular Synthetic Sea series that chronicles the unfortunate impact of marine debris on the world ocean ecosystem.

He has a B.S in Political Science from CSULB as well as some forty years of filming and video experience including a six-year period as a member of the Cousteau Society's Calypso diving and filming team. You can learn more about Bill and his work by checking out these links – and when you've done that you will then want to click here and book your diving holiday to make sure you get some of the best free advice this side of Christmas!

Links: www.macdonaldproductions.com and www.youtube.com/007bmac