Ocean Canvas 2024

This November we joined ten good friends to visit Tulamben, Bali again for the second annual “Ocean Canvas” underwater photography workshop.

image loading... — The Ocean Canvas Workshop

Highlight Reel

Here is a video montage from this year’s Ocean Canvas 2024:

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Video source: https://justinthedeeps.com/video/OceanCanvas2024-12-06/manifest.mpd

(If a video does not appear here–it uses the open DASH platform, which Apple does not support–then please stay tuned, this will be added soon.)

Tulamben, Bali, Indonesia

Tulamben is one of the best places in the world to see a wide diversity of small and wonderful nudibranchs, shrimps, octopus and other things.

A thriving collection of dive centres and modest ‘resorts’ line the waterfront, which is a series of black lava stone beaches formed by millennia of eruptions from the impressively close Mount Agung Volcano.

Prior to the diving boom, this sparsely populated and relatively dry area has been home to small boat (‘jukung’) fisherfolk and some dryland agriculture (including peanuts, and some livestock).

For decades, a small economy of diving-centered services supports a great number of people, including some very expert photography guides, whose skills and appreciation for the finer points of ‘macro’ (small subject) photography are now truly impressive.

I first came to Tulamben in the first days of January 2020 for a training course on a rebreather, with a deeply experienced instructor Will Goodman @blackwatertek.

The seaside vaguely reminds me of lava shores on the Big Island of Hawai’i, albeit much busier with divers and industrious villagers!

Indonesian divemaster, photographer and professional video editor Dira and family have been fans of Tulamben (and nearby Amed) for years as well.

Photography Workshop

Photography is big in Tulamben, with many wonders and awards won here, cementing it as a mecca for worldwide lovers of ‘macro’ (and micro) sea life.

Our first ‘Ocean Canvas’ workshop was organized for late 2023. Our keen group of photographers spent about a week exploring various diving sites within a short radius, shuttled around in the back of compact local work trucks.

Each drive-up beach is furnished with covered platforms and some kind of rudimentary freshwater shower. Upon entering the water, we find shallow sand and stones teeming with little fish and the odd coral or sponges, giving way to sand or ‘rubble’ slopes packed with little surprises.

The Divers’ Canvas

We slowly perused the lava sand and rubble slopes below many beaches for interesting photographic specimens, following the local guides who have intimate knowledge of what’s been seen there, as well as very sharp instincts to find anything unexpected.

A fascinating tube anemone in the sand slope

Exotic diversity

During this year’s (2024) workshop, I was intent to promote iNaturalist as a platform for curating and sharing what we observe.

A ‘computer vision’ approach there is very good at suggesting species identifications, and the highly featured interface is also frequented by many other very well informed amateur and professional ’naturalists.’ I even wrote a little webapp (in Angular) to explore the web API more enjoyably.

Here are some of the amazing things we found on the slopes of Tulamben shores:

Thriving Reefs

While the macro photographers often don’t spend enough time on the ordinary coral reefs walls, each sandy beach is abutted by steep lava points adorned with cascading coral and sponge reefs, fed by daily tides and currents.

I once explored these down past 100 metres in depth, where the hard substrate and current-blessed reef life continues, and one can see thresher sharks (the ‘hiu ticus’ or ‘mouse shark’ for their big round eyes and cute face).

Reef fish schooling under a makeshift bamboo platform

A large variety and abundance of corals thrive throughout Indonesia

Indonesia is (of course) interesting above the water as well!

A jumping spider seen on flowers at the villa