Lembeh Resort - Day 2

  Bitung, Sulawesi, Indonesia
Sunday, November 9, 2008

You know the drill by now!  Same routine.  Up at 6 so we can make it to breakfast and then start the day's diving.  As we figured, we did get used to the jungle noises very easily and it was no problem sleeping at all.  The A/C power-up can still be a bit disconcerting, but we're adapting to that as well.  What we didn't know was coming was the absolute downpour in the middle of the night!  Holy crap, what a rain storm.  The cabin has a corrugated metal roof, and wow did that ever accentuate the rainfall.  It was incredible.  What was really funny though was that we both woke up enough to comment on it, then quickly fell right back to sleep not really actually caring.  Pretty tired from day 1!
 
Out on the boat again with our dive leader, Abner.  Today we would hit three more dive sites, all with even more bizarre critters.

Huh??

Some of them we've already been introduced to, however many new ones caught our eye.  The first site was octopus heaven.

Mimic octopus

We saw at least a dozen different octopuses, both of the mimic and coconut variety.

Mimic octopus

They seemed to be everywhere, and even we were able to spot a few without the assistance of our guide.

Coconut octopus

Dive 2 was an attempt to look for more frog fish, but there were none to be had.  Still, a great dive with many other things to see.  More cool nudibranchs, as always!  Dive 3 was very cool as well, as we dove the coral and sandy slope to the south of a very small island.

Emperor shrimp

By small I mean less than 75 feet diameter.  It just rises up from the bottom at that point, not too far from shore, and made for a very cool location.  It was there that we saw more mantis shrimp.

Mantis shrimp!

Still just as creepy!  

Giant mantis shrimp eyes

We saw a fingered dragonette, which is a fish that basically walks around on the bottom clawing its way along with what look like little skeletal fingers.

Fingered dragonette

We also spotted a clown snake eel, which is a type of eel that lies in the sand poking only its head out, and attempts to resemble the poisonous sea snake. 

Clown snake eel

It gave us a bit of a shock when the guide was able to coax it out of its hole and it started swimming around.  More creepy!!  And finally, we also saw our first seahorse!  

Seahorse!

Very cool, and not easy to come across.

 

Ghost pipefish

 

Devilfish - BAD!

 

Ghost pipefish

 

Nudibranch

 
With the dive day complete, we're headed back to the resort where we'll be treated to an in-room one our couples aromatherapy massage.  Now that should be the ticket! 
Oops.  Got that wrong.  Actually, the desk got it wrong.  They wrote down the wrong room number, so no massage tonight.  Rescheduled for tomorrow night, which should feel just as good if not better after three more dives tomorrow.  Stay tuned! 
Pam & Andy