Wednesday 9 September Diving Lembeh Straits

An early morning trip in to Black Sand Dive Resort to meet dive manager Kim and the team was one of those opportune meetings from which many, many good things were to follow. He offered an unrefusable offer to go diving using their dive boats and guides on the condition we brought all our own gear and did our own tank fills.

pygmy seahorse

flamboyant cuttlefish

banggai cardinal

At 11am the dive boat turned up alongside Jackster, collected us and kit and whisked us away to dive site Jahir. Before I continue I should fill in the background to why Lembeh Straits is so very special as a location. Why are these waters so rich? It most probably is no coincidence that the largest water movement on the planet, known as the Indonesian Throughflow, splits past the northern tip of Sulawesi. To the north of Sulawesi, a string of volcanic islands form a chain all the way to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Below the water this chain forms the Sarangani Sill, which divides deepwater basins to the east and west.

I take that to mean in an otherwise unremarkable underwater topography we find an abundance of small, rare and weird critters, animals which rely on camouflage and subterfuge to survive. Who live on unremarkable black sand bottoms, muck diving, yet lend themselves to macro photography.

hairy frogfish

On our first dive, black volcanic sand, no pretty corals, we saw frogfish, leaf fish, devil scorpion fish, colourful nudibranchs and sea worms, sea horses, tiny shrimps and Banggai cardinal fish which are only found here, the Banggai islands and in aquariums. The last time I saw a frog fish would have been Komodo 8 years ago, a leaf fish the same, but all of these in one hour, the last time I was in Lembeh which was 12 years ago and before I knew David.

Our second guided dive was 200m off Jackster's starboard bow; frogfish, leaf fish, sea horses, etc etc. It was easy diving in no current so we'll be able to do more here when we've finished our paid dives.