The Fifth Critter Post
Posted on Nov 07, 2008 by bruce_moore
... A fine High Season at BSDR ...Idul Fitri overcrowding ...Plenty of critters before & after ... What we're finding ... Our excellent-as-always Black Sand House Reef ... Air Asia KL-Manado flights are operational ...
As we head into November, we can look back on a busy and productive first High Season at Black Sand Dive Retreat. The resort saw improvements and additions as we added more furniture in the Main Building, more lights in the rooms, larger mirrors in the bathrooms and other small touches here and there. We have also made additions to our staff and continue to plant and nurture our trees, flowers and garden. Besides the omnipresent coconuts (we are situated on a coconut plantation), guests have enjoyed bananas, mangos, papaya, guava, cassava, lemon grass, basil and more from our land and soon we'll be able to add pineapples, onions, cucumber and more to our menu from what we grow ourselves.
The diving has been fabulous, as always, though we had a period of a week or so over the busy Idul Fitri holiday period (marking the end of Ramadan) in which the critters on the popular sites mostly disappeared for a spell. My theory is that three days of simple overcrowding was to blame as the first three days of October saw an invasion of boats overwhelm some sites. The less popular sites and coral sites were unaffected, but the entire Kambahu Bay and Jahir areas became barren in short order with the critters returning a week or so later. I can't blame them. We were seeing up to six boats at a time on sites such as TK3 and Hairball and the Manado day-trippers (from Manado resorts) were overloading the rental boats. We counted at least ten divers on some of these boats and we were seeing three or more of these crowded boats dumping and retrieving their groups en masse. Add them to the regular full-up resorts in the strait, some of the scenes were ridiculous. We passed by Hairball after getting away from the madness to dive further up the strait and saw around 50 heads all bobbing about awaiting pickup. On more than one occasion over that period we counted five or six boats at once on TK3. I also saw up to four boats at once on Air Prang 3 -all there to find and photograph one single fish: the resident purple Rhinopias eschmeyeri. There isn't a lot else there, but lately we've been finding one or two giant frogfish, coleman shrimp on the toxic urchins down deeper, ribbon eels and black ornate ghost pipefish, but little else as the area isn't as productive as most muck sites. Considering the countless strobes that have been fired at the Rhinopias, I'm frankly surprised that it is still around after a-year-and-a-half in the area. Its buddy, the reddish R. frondosa has moved off or died. The last time I saw it, a "tumor" or bump or whatever you want to call it on its snout had exploded, so perhaps an infection resulted and caused the fish an early demise.
During the crowded times, most of he Lembeh-based resorts tried to move a little to the left or right to find space for their divers, but we were finding even between the established sites very thin in critters. It was only October 1-3 that were full-on overcrowded and the holiday period lasted a few more days, with the critter counts starting to pick up before the resorts began to sending their guests homeward. And a week later we were back to critters a'plenty.
Highlights? Some very cool dives at Pantai Parigi, which is one of my personal favorites. There were a number of ornate and robust ghost pipefish (the picture shows how the algae growth on the grass is copied on the ghost pipefish effectively) and up to five frogfish per dive recently along with a photogenic stonefish, a pair of white lembeh velvetfish to replace the absent black pair and I was lucky to find a small mototi octopus on a single occasion only, in September. 
One particular ornate - a large yellow one - was odd in that it attracted a number of small fish which were using it for camouflage just as it was employing the services of a yellow crinoid to hide itself. I was finding three filamented ghost pipefish at Larry's Crack along with a few of their robust and ornate bretheren for a while, though the lack of algae cover / cold water, which attracts them seasonally in August have not materialized as they should over the past two years. Still, there was some cover, so a few showed up in the area in September; Hengki found a pair at TK3 as well.
We have been seeing a green pair of filamented ghost pipefish at Aw Shucks - green being an extremely odd colour variation for "hairies". Robust ghost pipefish and then ornates moved in to infest the strait over the past few months, but at this time we're seeing just a few of the robust variety and the ornates are thinning out as the present breeding cycle comes to a close. Hengki has spotted a pair of the new pygmy pipehorse species and some tiger shrimp at Nudi Falls. Pegasus sea moths are a regular fixture at Nudi Retreat over the years, where we've seen up to five on a single dive recently, but we've also seen them over the past month at Hairball and Slow Poke and we had a guest find them on the House Reef as well.
In mid-September guests from South Africa enjoyed a dive at Jahir in which Hengki pointed out both a wonderpus and a mimic out and about along with a hairy frogfish within an arm's length of a juvenile ambon scorpionfish. But on subsequent visits all those critters had disappeared, though there was a juvenile zebra batfish for a while and these days there are a few ambons in residence. Late in October I went along on a dive to Slow Poke and the group encountered two thorny seahorses, a mimic and a wonderpus, both out within a meter of each other at times, a pair of ornate ghost pipefish, a big twin tail sea slug and a baby black frogfish with colorful "toe nails" topped off with the first flamboyant cuttlefish we've seen in a while. The next day I went back to the same place and found only one seahorse, the ghost pipefish, the slug and little else except for a long armed octopus. It happens
We have hosted guests who were interested in coral sites as well as the muck which allowed us to dive sites that we hadn't been seeing much of this year so far. The long wavy periods that struck most of the central and northern island-side sites a year ago from November through April had driven the critters off and they seemed slow in returning, but we were having excellent reactions from our guests who enjoyed sites like Pulau Putus, Kaina's Treasure, California Dreaming, Tanjung Tebal, Batu Sandar and of course Angel's Window, seeing cuttlefish laying eggs, boxer crabs, a good selection of nudibranchs, xeno crabs, various ghost pipefish and more.
As always I'll add an update regarding our fabulous Black Sand Dive Retreat House Reef. We've had plenty of guests paddle around on their own and see cool stuff. Selected highlights include coral cat sharks, giant frogfish (there are five around these days), painted frogfish, sea moths, wonderpus, white-v octopus, reef octopus, squid & cuttlefish, ornate and robust ghost pipefish, devilfish (mostly the red variation), a yellow and a brown common seahorse in the shallows, reef and estuarine stonefish, a variety of stingfish, cockatoo flounders, bobtail squid, furtive shrimp, a wide variety of crabs and other crustaceans, blue-changing-to-yellow ribbon eel (next to a black one) and much more. Being able to dive Hairball 3, TK1 and TK2 from our beach is a definite plus as this area has offered the most consistent great diving in Lembeh over the past few months. In fact, I'd rate TK1, directly off our beach and a little to the right as THE best dive site in the strait over the past two months.
I announced in the last Critter Post that Air Asia were about to start Kuala Lumpur - Manado flights in September. Now they are underway and offer an alternative to the Silk Air flight, which can often be full. The Air Asia flight is every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, departing KL at 6:40 am and arriving in Manado at 10:40 am, while the return flight departs Manado at 11:10 am and arrives in KL at 3:10 pm.
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