The Fourth Critter Post
Posted on Aug 19, 2008 by bruce_moore
... High Season ... Busy-Busy-Busy ... Crowds = Damage ... Lazy Guides ... Avoiding the mob ... At least we're having Great Dives ... What's on the House Reef ... Rain ... New International Flights ...
July signals the start of the High Season and this year was no different for Black Sand Dive Retreat. During the busy times dive sites tend to see more boats and the resulting pressure results in critters moving around and consecutive dives on the same site can be surprisingly different.
The established resorts in Lembeh are fairly adept these days at herding their guests away from other groups in order to avoid crowding and confusion (eg:guests following the wrong guide or guests barging into other groups to see what they are looking at). We never have problems with KBR, Lembeh Resort or Divers Lodge Lembeh underwater. But the liveaboards still cause dismay by occasionally dumping large groups on top of sites that are already hosting a few divers. Then there are the rental boats from Manado, which, especially for Asian groups who like to dive in a bunch, can really cause mayhem and damage, dumping two or three boatloads in one mob on sensitive sites, with predictable results. It is up to the dive guides to control their guests and in the strait we have a gentleman's agreement between the resorts to have a maximum of four guests per guide, but liveaboards and day-trippers can often have 5, 6 or more guests per guide. In these cases the guides cannot possibly control their divers and fins are not only stirring up the bottom, but sending critters flying or even crushing critters as guests bang along the bottom unawares. On Good Friday a few months back I counted six boats at once on TK3. One would think that the quality of the experience is diminished by diving on such a crowded site, but lazy guides seem determined to put their group on any of only 5 sites or so in their quest to provide guaranteed critters. There are always divers who want the cheapest option and in most cases that means less concern for the environment. It is obviously an ongoing concern.
But back to how quickly sites can change. A case in point is Larry's Crack. Like most sites, this place can blow hot and cold, but after some time away I went along in mid-July and was pleasantly surprised. We started off not finding much, but Hengki spotted a nice red/orange estuarine stonefish and then things went into high gear as I found two courting giant frogfish, then only meters away, a yellow striated ("hairy") frogfish I while circling trying to find the two solar-powered nudibranchs that have been there for quite some time. We found the nudis, but they were away from their leather coral food source, prowling the sand with one of them hosting a small cleaner shrimp. There was serious egg-laying action from some squid on a nearby rope and Hengki then found one of the most co-operative flamboyant cuttlefish I'd ever encountered. It was obviously hungry, hunting relentlessly on the slope and totally oblivious to my presence and camera. This species can be quite shy when exposed to flash-happy divers, but my guess is that this specimen was new to the area. The sand divers were busily displaying and we came across a few other cool critters before I finished off with a small "regular" cuttlefish and surfaced a happy camper. Then Hengki returned with another guest three days later and found the two solar-powered nudis, but nothing else from our previous dive. There were different frogfish and other nudis and the dive rated as a success, but it was a radically different dive on the same site. Since then we've re-found the flamboyant cuttlefish along with a second and the night dives there have been top drawer, with bobbit worms a highlight, but then again, night dives anywhere in our bay tend to be truly fantastic.
Being an active GM in a relatively new resort in Lembeh Strait, I don't get as much time to dive as I'd like. But my dives have been all great. Before the Larry's Crack jump I ventured along on a dive at Pantai Parigi, which is always excellent for commensals and small stuff, but Hengki had been finding some other notable critters there recently. Hengki pointed out skeleton shrimp, a lovely orange striated frogfish with white hair, a velvet fish and a red/orange seahorse as highlights. I found a smaller velvet fish and a veined ("coconut") octopus, though both had disappeared by the time our guest arrived, but I did better with a pair of ghost pipefish - a filamented female squired by a robust male - a small white painted frogfish and a wonderpus. Only two weeks later all those critters were gone, aside from the small white froggie, replaced by a chubby orange Lembeh frogfish and other interesting finds.
Another recent jump was a check-out dive just in front at TK2, finding furtive shrimp, 2 black ribbon eels, a red coral trout eating a juvenile pipefish, with the victim's tail extending out from its jaws, a giant frogfish along with an orange painted frogfish, an angler flatfish "fishing" and a few fingered dragonets and flying gunards among other things while a guest came across a nice yellow juvenile clown frogfish and Hengki found a pair of zebra crabs photogenically together as well as a pair of cuddling giant frogfish nestled in an elephant ear sponge. Seeing five frogfish on a dive is always reason for unbridled joy and we related our finds to the other boat of divers and they went off on the next dive and bettered us, finding 8! The other three (painted, in 3 different hues) were all together in the shallows in a place we didn't get to, but I feel compelled to get to next time.
How's the Black Sand Dive Retreat House Reef?
Excellent as always. There are always plenty of young squid these days, as well as a wide variety of snails (sometimes preying on each other - see photo), tozeuma shrimp, juvenile sole (looking like flatworms) and much more. We had two guests recently, up from Bali - Annabel and Ketut from Aquamarine Diving and they both (obviously), can find things on their own. They were doing solo House Reef dives daily and found enough to keep returning. On their first House Reef jump Ketut found a monkey fish and later found a second. They found numerous frogfish (giant and painted) along with a wonderpus and numerous other highlights.
We're getting more rain than normal. It doesn't affect the visibility underwater, but does certainly make things greener above the waterline. The villagers say that they've never had this kind of rain in July and August in living memory and that it's normally windy and dusty. I can't complain. I recall when we'd get up to six months of no rain over this part of the year, but over the past few years weather patterns have changed to the point that the rainfall is distributed almost evenly over ten months of the year, leaving only September and October dry. In our area we get less rain than Bitung or even just down the strait, but the amount we are getting is allowing us to keep planting and we're impressed with our growth so far. Besides trees and flowers we have plenty of lemon grass as well as basil, chili bushes, pumpkins, lemon trees, guava and numerous varieties of bananas. Of our few mango trees, the best one is coming into fruit for the second time this year so we look forward to a very mango-ish August.
A final piece of good news is that Air Asia, a popular budget carrier, will be starting an international service to Manado from Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) starting in mid-September, flying three times weekly on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. This is great news as there aren't enough plane seats available on Silk Air coming in from Singapore and we've had a number of cancellations for the simple reason that folks can't get to us. So this new service is welcome news.
[ << Return to News Page ]