Return to Amed

It’s been 26 years since I was last in Amed, Bali, and as you can imagine quite a lot has changed!

Last time I was here I was a teenager doing my first dives on a wreck or coral reef with my Dad, I can remember being amazed by the local women who could carry dive tanks on their heads with ease across the pebbly beaches between dive sites, they are still there carrying tanks but there isn’t a lot else that I could recognise.

Although it’s undeniably beautiful it’s also overrun with tourists walking all over the coral and the plastic pollution is out of control. I’m not saying that to judge or encourage people not to visit, tourism is an important part of Bali’s economy and I acknowledge that by visiting I’m also contributing to those problems no matter how much I try to keep my impact to a minimum. I hope that when I visit in the future there’s been some progress towards solving these issues.

Despite all that though there were also plenty of positives, the local people are super friendly and there was some great wildlife about, turtles, razor fish, electric disco clams and filter feeding mackerel were some highlights. I took my Nikonos V with the legendary 15mm f2.8 wet lens and Hasselblad 500 CM, with various film stocks, the most surprising being a roll of TMax 100 that was some old stock from the Australian Antarctic Division, I was sure it wasn’t going to turn out, but the lab gave it a push in development and it’s turned out pretty nice!

Mt Agung towering above Bali's north east coast. Hasselblad 500 cm, Kodak Portra 160

A hawksbill turtle shot on Kodak Ektar that expired in 1990, not too bad!