November is the best month to see one of the rarest critters of the Lembeh Strait, the Hairy Octopus. In general, we’ve spotted so many cephalopods (Coconut, Algae, Longarm, Blue-Ringed, Mimic Octopus, Mototi and Wonderpus) like in no other month.
Around 60 minutes boat ride away from NAD, East Lembeh offers a completely different scenery to what most divers are used to in the Lembeh Strait. Beautiful coral reefs and walls with sea fans as well as white sand can be found here.
The NAD house reef is the perfect place if you would like to do an additional dive in the afternoon and be independent from the boat schedule. We’ve spotted Lembeh Sea Dragons, Psychedelic Batwing Slugs and Sargassum Frogfish on the house reef. However, right now we have some great wide-angle opportunities as well.
One of biggest challenges when traveling as a diver (and underwater photographer), is how to safely get all your equipment from A to B. I’ve only recently returned from a dive trip and would like to share some of my tips – preparing and packing for your dive trip has never been easier!
It’s quite common to see nudibranchs feeding on each other. As it turns out, sea slugs are their own worst enemy! This short video of a Gymnodoris swallowing a Ceratosoma nudibranch may change your perception of these colorful, “cute”, little creatures!
This month still had lots of cephalopods ready for us. Mainly Coconut, Mimic and Mototi Octopus as well as Flamboyant Cuttlefish got spotted on the dives. I’ve been shooting more video than stills this month. Therefore, here comes a short movie with our June highlights.
This month’s highlight are truly special because it doesn’t happen every day that we see a Whaleshark, Rhinopia, lots of Sargassum Frogfish and Flamboyant Cuttlefish eggs hatching diving in Lembeh!
The season is changing in Lembeh which means the winds are now coming from the South and the water temperature has dropped by a degree or two – nothing to worry about, 26-27 degrees celsius is still toasty for normal people. As a result, a lot of Sargassum sea weed together with over two dozens of Sargassum Frogfish has collected in our little bay a few days ago.
Starting in 2014, NAD had already banned the use of dive gloves. In the past year however, we’ve listened to people which we probably shouldn’t have done. Based on some guest feedback, we decided to be more lenient with gloves and trust that not the gloves as such are bad but the person wearing them.
As a result, we have now seen that people who talked about being good divers and wearing gloves, would still cause more damage than if they did not wear gloves. Therefore, we will no longer allowing people to dive with gloves at NAD Lembeh.
I’ve only recently started enjoying taking pictures of gobies. There’s around 500 different species only in the Indo-Pacific region but one of my favorites is the Magnificent Shrimp Goby. With its beautiful dorsal fin, almost like a sail, and the beautiful pattern on it, it’s very photogenic. The shrimp goby usually shares a burrow with, turns out to be quite pretty too: Randall’s Pistol Shrimp are brightly colored in red, white and yellow.