By: Bima Prasena (Escapade)

That day, on our last dive in the southern part of Solor Island, I chose a wide lens with a fairly large dome housing. As we descended to the bottom, we were immediately greeted by a fairly strong current.

This current made Kusnanto (WWF-Indonesia) as the roll master quite overwhelmed to stabilize the transect. Om Rusdy (Universitas Muhammadiyah Kupang) - 'Om' is a common nickname for men on board the Menami, as a benthic observer, serving at the rear. I tried to protect the dome from the coral as the current was throwing us right and left.

My original plan was to photograph all the team members, but nature said otherwise. The scenery down here is quite beautiful, although it turns out that there is not much living coral. The cover of dead coral makes large gullies as well as natural bridges. I also saw volcanic rock under the dead coral cover, I don't know where it came from.

Dive computer beeped loudly, I struggled to look at the alarm. The strong current made it very difficult to make small movements. Without realizing it, the current had thrown me from a depth of 9 meters to 5 meters! That's bad!

It was the same as me ascending at high speed, which risked exposing me to nitrogen decompression. I quickly went back trying to return to my original depth. However, the current always brought me back to 5 meters.

On the fourth transect, I looked for the end of the next transect, which I did not find. I decided to wait for Kusnanto there. He appeared after a while, while calmly rolling up the transect.

We followed the path of the third transect until we found an umbrella-shaped stone. Then, there was another rock in the shape of a cobra! Funnily enough, there was a sitting puppy on the cobra's back. It became the target of my camera shots with Kusnanto as the model.

In the evening during the evaluation, the snake stone spot became one of the most exciting findings that became a laughing stock. Finally, we agreed to call it the "Legend of the White Snake", to resemble the title of a Chinese soap opera when we were kids. There's always a great story to tell when adventuring, it's just a matter of us being smart enough to capture the moment in the field.