Getting stung for Ralph Lazar

Jemeluk Bay, Amed, Bali, Thursday 22nd Nov.

In December 2011 Ralph Lazar showed up with his new GoPro camera for action and underwater shots. He boasted of its outstanding characteristics, its flexibility, its clarity, action video, in water out water photos, fish eye lens. He jumped into the pool to demonstrate and quickly edited a movie of it all to excite us.

Suitably excited I bought one for Eva for her birthday and she brought in on our trip as we have spent much of the past two months in or under the water.

On Wednesday early evening I went snorkeling. That’s when the fish are feeding, including the sharks.

From October to December Mackeral visit the eastern shores of Bali. Among the things I saw was a large school of mackeral swimming up and down with their mouths wide open. So wide open that their gills flared. They were there because their food was there. A thick cloud of tiny crimson jelly fish.

I didn’t stay in the water long, the jelly fish stung.

But I was determined the next day to video the scene for Eva and Ralph. Yannay thought it a good idea, and shirtless he joined me. We checked that we had enough memory and then searched for the mackeral for half an hour. We found the jellyfish, or more correctly they found us, but we stayed in the water for the sake of the video. We saw damselfish eating off the coral, butterfly fish eating, some parrot fish eating. We got chased by a trigger fish. And then we saw a mass of balck damsel fish eating and above them, the bright silver reflection of the mackeral. I turned on the video. The jellyfish continued to sting. Little stings like a red ant biting. Or a light bee sting. Sting, sting. We stayed in the water and swam after the fish. They came towards us. We videoed it. They swam away. We videoed it. Up and down. An amazing sight. Hundreds of mackeral feeding on thousands of jellyfish. Yannay and I surfaced. We agreed to stay in to video some more.

For o=another hour we followed the fish. By the time the stinging became too great we swam for shore and plunged into the pool. I immediately gave Eva the GoPro to download the video so that she, Dani and Avia could see what we saw.

After three minutes the Go Pro had run out of battery.

 

4 Comments

• 
  Mpandangare November 25, 2012 at 5:42 pm

  [1] Truly honoured.
  [2] I look forward to seeing the first 3 minutes 🙂
  • 
    David November 28, 2012 at 3:43 am

    They’re amazing. Absolutely unbelievable. Just remarkable. You should see them.
• 
  Lisa, wife of the Great Baboon November 26, 2012 at 12:03 pm

  Holy Mackerel! Get back in the water!
  • 
    David November 28, 2012 at 3:41 am

    Ouch!
    We now see who wields the whip in San Anselmo.