Today our guest Michael from Hong Kong has finished his Open Water Course with Serge and is now a proud and newly certified diver. And he is a very lucky Open Water Diver as well: On his last dive today Serge found him an extremely rare “Hairy Octopus”. Serge was very excited and started to…
As already mentioned in previous blog posts there are many parasites here in Lembeh Strait that for example stick on the head or cheek of fishes. Another very common type of parasite is the tongue parasite (Tongue-Biter Cymathoid Isopod, Cymothoa exigua) that lives in the mouth of various fishes – mainly in Anemonefishes. They enter through…
The Flamboyant Cuttlefish (Metasepia pfefferi) is a member of the cuttlefish family – but a very untypical one. Unlike other cuttlefish it is not shy at all but displays it’s poppy colour signals to communicate the potential danger of the poison in his flesh to potential predators. This makes it really easy to observe and photograph…
Lembeh Strait is home to several species of Ghostpipefish including the Ornate, Robust, Slender, Roughsnout and Halimeda Ghostpipefish. But the rarest and most bizarre is the Velvet Ghostpipefish. It is smooth, relatively small and mimics sponges. And at the moment we are seeing them at 3 different dive sites: There are two purple pink individuals…
The Pygmy Seahorses are without doubt among the most attractive critters – they are cryptic, hard to find but yet beautiful. And for a lot of divers the Pontohi Pygmy Seahorse (Hippocampus pontohi or Weedy Pygmy Seahorse) is even more special than other Pygmy Seahorses. The Pontohi Pygmy Seahorse was first seen in 2003 in…
On one of this weeks morning dives we went diving at Tanjung Tebal – one of Lembeh Strait’s best coral dives with lots of Seafans, whips and soft corals. It is just a dive that has to be timed well with currents. We went there this week on slack tide with just a gentle water…
When i took our Guest Mood diving this week we were actually trying to find the Hairy Octopus again … but as often: You don’t always get what you ask for. Anyway: we still had a good dive with various Highlights such as several painted frogfishes, cool nudibranchs and other interesting stuff. But the best…
Happy Chinese New Year everyone and welcome in the year of the (sea) Dragon! The Lembeh Seadragon (Lembeh Pygmy Pipedragon, Kyonemichthys rumengani) is a recently dicovered species that has been seen for the first time in Lembeh Strait in 2006. It belongs to the Family of seahorses and pipefishes and is closer related to them…
This Picture of our Repeater Guest Mood shows a beautiful Pygmy seahorse found by our dive guide Paulus. Paulus has found already several of them over the last 10 years – but not many. And this is one of them. It is most probably a variation of the Denise Pygmy Seahorse and usually found in…
We found this Phycocaris species for the first time in October and since then already several times at different dive sites here in the Lembeh Strait. This one is now the 5th specimen we found and we have seen them in between 25 and 10 meters depth. It is always associated with the little green ascidians…