The majority of our guests are not only divers but also photographers. Therefore, it is a big plus if you can provide dive guides with a photography background. We have several camera setups for rental, available for our guides whenever they want to go fun diving. In order to give them an incentive to improve their photo skills, we organized a little dive guide photo competition with some great prices!
Being here in Lembeh this time I have been to a couple of mandarin dives. The site used now under Bianca is probably one of the best I have ever seen, with many males coming down before dusk to establish their territory and some minutes later, a bunch of females Read more…
In general, the numbers of individuals of different species are limited. To a degree, this is very obvious, as no species can ever grow to unlimited numbers, which if not kept in check by something, all species could. The actual regulatory mechanism is often thought to be either by competition Read more…
The IWUPC 2013 (Indonesia World Underwater Photo Contest) is a competition by the indonesian government inteded to promote Indonesia as a diving destination. With prices valued at 200,000 US$ and a Jury of well known Names in Underwater Photography it surely also attracted many first class Photographers. The basic priciple of Read more…
This morning all contestants of the Underwater.kr Lembeh Photo Shootout submitted their Photo Entries and the judging will start this afternoon. This Group shot was taken before todays morning dive … no more competition pressure – just shooting for fun. We keep fingers crossed for all contestants and are hoping to Read more…
A couple of weeks ago the title for being the ugliest animal in the world was awarded by the British science festival. Top contenders were the proboscis monkey, lice, the nowadays famous blobfish and a frog from lake Titicaca with the catching name the scrotum frog (it is, I promise! Read more…
Prey are well adapted to evade predators, and predators are correspondingly well adapted to catch prey. For most of us it is pretty reasonable to accept that such adaptation happens by natural selection, leading to long-term evolution of animals, making them better to either catch prey or evade predators, whatever end of the food chain you happen to be on. Thus natural selection affects traits such as foraging efficiency or anti-predator behaviours that lead to longer lives, quicker growth rates and, both directly and indirectly, higher reproduction rates. Most of my earlier blogs have more or less built on the assumption of natural selection affecting adaptations of animals.
Bright warning colours on nudibranch. Probably a result of natural selection favouring nudis clearly advertising their poisonous properties.
There is another kind of selection, sexual selection, that is a little bit harder to understand. Sexual selection is the process where traits that directly affect the likelihood of securing a mate is changed over time, leading to the evolution of traits that sometimes seem to act contrary to natural selection in that sexually selected traits rather decrease life expectancy and growth rates. There are many examples of traits governed by sexual selection on land. Bird song, brightly colored males in many birds and lizards, antlers on deer and males adapted for fighting other males for access to females are examples that we all can relate to. It is thought that sexual selection in terrestrial systems are well as important as natural selection in shaping many aspects of populations and also a major force in driving speciation. (more…)
In every documentary I have seen and book I have read about Lembeh, it is stated that the waters of Lembeh are exceptionally productive partly due to the currents that bring nutritious water through Lembeh strait regularly, partly due the black lava sand more or less defining Lembeh that leaks Read more…
Our first Lembeh Shootout in association with Underwater.kr has just finished, and it was a blast. We made our rules very strict, specifically in relation to trying to limit our environmental impact, as one contestant put it… ‘It was refreshing to shoot with the discipline we sometimes forget.’ We laid Read more…
Since today the Underwater.kr Lembeh Shoot-Out started. Nad-Lembeh is hosting this international Underwater Photo Competition, where Photographers from Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, USA, Indonesia and Europe compete in different categories such as “Interchangeable Lens Cameras”, “Compact Cameras”, “Portfolio”, “Super-Macro” and “Unrestricted”. To give a good example for the whole underwater photography Read more…