After 4 days of great diving at the coral cliffs of Bunaken, we popped by next-door Lembeh straight out of curiosity. Lembeh is famous for its “muck diving,” a poorly-branded but enchanting subspecialty of scuba.
In contrast to Bunaken’s dramatic walls and breathtaking coral reefs, Lembeh is a shipping channel with a black sandy bottom – the eponymous “muck”. Hiding in that volcanic dust are some of the strangest creatures known underwater – all of which are crazy poisonous, crazy camouflaged, or both. One of the dive instructors at Gili had shared an amazing story of a coconut octopus he’d seen there and inspired us to check it out at least for a day.
When we arrived, it quickly became clear that Lembeh is a pilgrimage for experienced divers. No flailing novices as in the Gilis or Bunaken - well, unless you count us!
We had only planned to do two dives, but were completely entranced by our first dives and stayed for six. Highlights of the strange sea life we encountered included two coconut octopuses, a flamboyant cuttlefish (these guys amble across the sea floor with a night-club strobe light on their backs), flamboyant cuttlefish eggs about to hatch, two black hairy frog fish hanging out among the sea urchins, a spiny devilfish that Robynn was proud to spot, the cockatoo waspfish (it looks just like a leaf floating in the current), and a flying gunnard with its wings sweeping along the sand. It was such a crazy place that sting rays and countless lion fish became mundane. The experience was infused with an overwhelming sense of wonder – we had no idea what we might find next.
The crazy wildlife at Lembeh attracts serious underwater photographers, with big camera rigs and an impressive ability to hover perfectly still underwater. They come with special lenses to shoot the impressive “macro” life – diving’s counterintuitive diving term for really small stuff: pygmy seahorses, colorful and crazy nudibranches, and shrimp the length of a fingernail. At our dive shop, we met Andreas, a former electrician from Norway who had spent the last eight weeks taking beautiful photographs in Bunaken and Lembeh. But the most extraordinary underwater footage was that of Danny Van Belle, whose film Secrets of the Sea lives on the shelf of Lembeh dive resorts, and captures the rarest Lembeh creatures in action: eating, fighting, yawning. That film blew our minds.
We did one night dive in Lembeh. Night dives always feel a bit creepy at first. After the sun sets, you can’t see anything beyond the light of your torch. There was a significant current on our Lembeh night dive, whisking us into the darkness beyond our flashlights. But once you relax, night dives are really special. Creatures awake that are hiding or still in the day time, lion fish come out to hunt and crabs amble around the sea floor. The light of the torch brings out colors lost to the depth in the daytime. And there is an even greater sense of discovery when your light falls on something special amidst the black.
Our Lembeh dive resort, Two Fish, had just a single expat on staff, a Canadian named Luke. This was unusual – most dive shops have a few Indonesian guides but are dominated by westerners. This is in part because most dive shops make significant money from scuba certification courses and locals rarely become official PADI or SSI instructors. Since Lembeh was a magnet for incredibly experienced divers, there seemed less need to keep a stable of instructors on staff.
In some ways, this unusual balance was a nice change. While communication is imperfect with local guides, the conventional wisdom is that local guides are far better than ex-pats in finding the toughest-to-spot marine life. At one point in Bunaken, our Finnish guide explicitly followed an Indonesian guide so he could show us all pygmy sea horses hiding in the reef – something she said she’d never find on her own. There’s really no reason this discrepancy should exist, but the generalization did resonate with our own experience. Of course, we don’t have good enough eyes to know what our expats guides might have missed, so it’s hard to know.
The young, Indonesian-dominated dive staff also made for some charming evening entertainment. Fueled by palm wine, the local dive guides ended most nights with a enthusiastic jam session – with a guitar, a bass drum, and a thick song book of Indonesian love songs. They also sprinkled in a few American hits – “Leaving on a Jet Plane” seemed to be a favorite.
While the diving was fantastic in Bunaken and Lembeh, we were feeling a bit couped up after nearly a week in all-inclusive resorts isolated from the rest of the country. So on our mandatory day-off before flying, we declined the 50 Euro transport back to the Manado airport offered by our dive shop and made our way by public transport instead. Even with a taxi to our homestay in Manado, the total came to less than $10. There were also some fun surprises – for example, instead of the “mirkolets” (public minibuses) we expected to find at the harbor, there were only “ojek” (motorcycles). So with our big backpacks on our back and our smaller daypacks in front, we hopped on behind the drivers and clung on as our weight shifted up and down the steep hills. And, of course, we got the requisite live-chickens-on-the-bus experience that’s a ubiquitous feature of Asia transport.