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Lembeh Strait, Sulawesi
After Raja Ampat, it was time to do some easy, relaxing, muck diving in the world famous Lembeh Strait. This region is famous for seeing lots of small but unusual marine life in the mud or trash. Muck dives are usually shallow, with no current, corals or large schools of fish. The first day we arrived in Lembeh, Sander and I did an afternoon dive which was spectacular. We saw lots of nudibranchs (sea slugs), a baby cuttlefish, and a hard to find halimeda arrowhead crab I've never seen before.
Later dives proved just as exciting. We were fortunate enough to have an excellent dive guide, Steven, who found almost everything he said we would look for, plus more. Some things we found were a white and yellow weedy scorpionfish, ambon scorpionfish, wonderpus octopus, mimic octopus, flying gurnards, thorny seahorses, hairy frogfish, spiny devilfish (Indian walkman), hairy squat lobster, bobbit worms, zebra crab, flamboyant cuttlefish, waspfish, and many new nudibranchs.
October 16 was our last day of diving for our trip. Even on our last day, with two dives, we saw quite a bit of interesting things. I left Lembeh Strait completely satisfied with what we saw. There wasn't a fish that I wanted to see that we didn't. This was the case for our entire 7 week trip. Though, all good things must come to an end, and we couldn't stay forever. The next day we embarked on our 20 hour journey back to the Philippines.
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© 2009 Jason Jue. All rights reserved
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