Rest of Lembeh

 

Under the Sea…the rest of day5, day 6, and day 7

After relaxing in our hammocks, we headed out for our first night dive in Lembeh. We anchored the boat in some small port; there were literally tons of boats all around us! As we descended, the first thing that stood out to us was all the trash under the water. It is such a shame, there is litter everywhere here, Indonesian people have a lot of trouble removing their garbage from the small islands so they have gotten into the habit of just throwing the trash into the sea. Undeterred by all the litter, the most amazing animals have used the trash to build habitats for themselves! We saw several false fire sea urchins that were neon red and purple on the inside, at night the inside of them glows and their black thorns blend into the night, so curious fish swim up to see the light and whammo…dinner.

We saw this little green and gold cuttlefish, which was the size of Jeremy’s finger. It was

“anchored” to a plant that was exactly the same green/gold color! Cuttlefish are masters at camouflage, we have literally seen them change texture and color before our eyes. The have these weird tentacle like things in the front of them..when they get threatened they spread them all out in crazy directions to intimate the potential predator. We saw another white cuttlefish that dive and I shined my flashlight on him, and literally within a minute he was glowing yellow just like the color of the flashlight! It’s really unbelievable! Our dive guide found this tiny, tiny purple bobtail squid that was no bigger than a thumbnail! He was just bopping around right in the sand looking like something right out of a spongebob cartoon.  We saw a sea hermit crab, which is called the “common hermit crab”, but it was anything but common! It had these fancy “feathers” poking out one side of it and it was all kinds of colors. It looked like a crab that had gone through a dress up closet!  I wasn’t sure what it was so when we got to the surface I kept trying to explain it…”you know, the crab that looked so fancy!” We saw a sponge crab the size of a football walking around with bright orange coral stuck to his back to blend in! It was really a cool dive, the creatures that you see while muck diving are soooo strange!

Day 6

We did two boat dives in the morning and saw all kinds of things as always, several eels, these things called ghost pipe fish which “hang” right beside these sea corals that are black and white and look like a hairy plant. You guessed it, the ghost pipe is this thin creepy creature that is as skinny as the plant-coral he lives in and he is hairy and colored exactly like it! Then we saw this soccerball sized green frogfish, called the “giant frog fish”. It doesn’t swim like a normal fish, it has 4 strange “legs” that are a cross between a webbed foot and a fin and he walks on them. But when he finds a coral that he likes and wants to sit in, he wedges himself in it and stretches out his little “legs” to stay perched in place! He has a little whitish colored “string” that comes out of his head and dangles around like a worm. This “string” attracts other fish to him and then he eats them! They were really prehistoric looking! We saw sting rays, porcupine fish, a ton of nudi branchs. Nudi branchs are the most amazing little creatures, they look like the shape of a slug and they can be sooooo tiny like a fingernail or as big as your arm. They come in the most outrageous colors, orange with white polka dots, deep purple with white and black stripes, sleek with pink “feathers” sticking out of it, they never cease to amaze me! Its like God took out his tiny tiny paintbrush for each on of these little creatures! Towards the end of the second dive, Jeremy starts gesturing wildly (which in our underwater language means “look at this!”) so I swim over to him and he is pointing out some purple clam-like thing on the underside of a rock. Our dive guide is giving the “good find!” signal, but I am still not sure what I am looking at. Our guide then stirs the sand right by this purple clam and whala! The clam becomes the most brilliant octopus! He “climbed” out of his hole so we could eye him up, then was happy to quickly retreat again! We got some great video of this to show you in person! Good find Jeremy!

Lembeh is a Straight, less than a mile wide, so when we are diving all around us are these beautiful islands of jungle and sharp cliffs. People are always going by on these impossibly fragile fishing boats! This place is really something.

My ears have been a little sore, so I passed on the afternoon dive today, but Jeremy went out. He saw a blue ringed octopus, tons of lionfish, anemone cleaner shrimp, scorpion fish, and more of those creepy pipe fish.

Then we rested up for our last day of diving! 

Day 7

Today is our last day of diving in Indonesia. In total we have done 17 dives here, and the experience has been totally incredible! We cannot even explain or summarize these experiences very well. The creatures that our under the sea are really just something that everyone should make it a point to see…on google, on tv, or in a aquarium. We feel VERY BLESSED to have gotten to see these creatures in the wild. Today we saw a lot more of the same kinds of bizarre creatures, but we did see a new type of frogfish…called the “shaggy frogfish”. Remember this is the weird “fish” who doesn’t swim, he walks on his little leg-fins. Well the Shaggy one has these….i don’t know what they are…but they look just the a hairy sheep dog or a rug from the 1970s! The bits of debris and algae floating along get caught in this “shag” and the fish almost completely blends into the muck around it! JUST CRAZY! We are sad to be done diving, but we are looking forward to the next leg of our jungle adventure, which actually started before we even left Sulawesi! You shouldn’t dive within 24 hours of flying due to pressure changes, so we booked a little trip off the island of Lembeh to the mainland to visit national park/nature preserve. We went with this lovely Scottish couple that we had met at the “resort”. We took the boat to the mainland, then drove forever through these intense winding roads. While en route it began to pour rain and we began to question our deep rooted interest in this little excursion. We arrived at this little shack where a man charged us $8.50 for a tour and “to see the monkeys”. We peed in a hole in the ground. All signs pointed to this being a bit of a sham. We followed these 2 guides (it was just us and this Scottish couple) and the one guide suddenly gets on his walkie talkie thing and says this way. So we walk “this way” for a while, all 4 of us are really suspect about what is happening, when the walkie talkie guy starts walking REALLY FAST saying, “the monkeys are fast tonight!” We were thinking “what the…?” So we are walking fast in this incredible, wet jungle; sweat is literally pouring off of us when all of a sudden we are IN A FAMILY OF 18 BLACK MACAQUE MONKEYS! I mean they were on the ground all around us! Big ones, little tiny baby ones, they were walking, sometimes leaping from tree to tree, sometimes stopping to watch us. We just kept walking with them (they were fast). At one point, I crouched down and waited, and a middle-sized Macaque came within 2 feet of me and just sat down! UNREAL! We had no idea we were in for this kind of treat! Then just as suddenly as we came upon them, they knew it was bedtime and all took to the trees all around us! What an experience! But we weren’t done….

Then our guides took us for more sweaty fast walking to a huge fig tree (the trees in this jungle were enormous and jurassic looking!) and says “the tarsiers lives here". Tarsiers are one of the smallest primates in the world. They look like an overgrown rat with huge eyes and those suction cup feet. We waited and waited and the guide said “they come out at 5:30pm” and sure enough, right on the dot the whole family starts climbing out of the holes in the tree! We saw five of them…they were 3 feet from us! WILD!

So then we returned and after the windy road back and the boat ride, we could have slept through dinner if we were so hungry!

Today we are off to fly to Sumatra (via Singapore). Will check in with you as the internet allows!

Here's some photos...