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Indonesia

Travelogue

We opted out of diving on our last day in Lembeh, Indonesia. We could have squeezed in a last morning dive and still had time to decompress before our flight out of the country, but why push the limits? You may be aware that flying too closely after diving is about the equivalent to your insides as opening up a bottle of soda that has just been dropped down the stairs. I don’t know about you, but I’m not in any great hurry to drink that soda. (The recommended time between diving and flying is 18 hours if you were

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

I've had the remainder of my blog posts on Indonesia sitting in the drafts folder for far too long now collecting dust. Don't ask me why. I guess I was hoping I could come up with something cheekier to say about the last of the little critters in my photos. But there really isn't all the much written about these sea-dwelling creatures, not compared to the widely adored seahorse or the fiercely fascinating mantis shrimp anyway. So I'll just throw the last of my photos at you with a tidbit of information or two. This is the ghost pipefish. Little is

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Did you know that the male seahorse is the member of the couple that gives birth? They’re quite unique that way in the animal kingdom. I meant to have some fun facts like that ready to go for you, but instead ended up geeking out on words, so bear with me here for a second. Or skip down to the numbered list below if you don’t share my enthusiasm for completely random (and probably useless) linguistics trivia. Seahorses, funny looking things that they are, belong to the genus Hippocampus. This word originally comes from the Greek hippos, or “horse,” and kampos,

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

One of the most remarkable creatures beneath the surface of the ocean is the mantis shrimp, which isn't actually a mantis or a shrimp. (It belongs to an order called stomatopoda). This incredible crustacean has what is thought to be the most complex set of eyes in the animal kingdom, can punch with the same velocity as a .22 caliber rifle, and is being studied to create stronger and lighter armor for military use. If those facts don't distract you from the cat video on your Facebook feed, then read no further, I've got nothing for you. The beautiful, infamous, Peacock

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

I wrote a dozen different (failed) attempts at a (not-so) humorous intro, tying this little fellow in with a current topic of debate, but they all made me cringe, and so I'll just cut straight to the chase here.  It just so happens that there are many cases of changing sex amongst marine organisms. One of these examples is found in the beautiful and elegant ribbon eel, so named because when free-swimming, it looks like the rippling ribbon of a rhythmic gymnast. As hypnotizing as they are, it is incredibly rare to see ribbon eels free-swimming. They are usually burrowed down

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

The number one thing I really wanted to see in Lembeh, Indonesia was a mimic octopus. Normally I don't dive with expectations, I just enjoy whatever show Mother Nature feels like putting on that day. As dive guides, Fletch and I have really grown to loath the question, 'What are we going to see today?' It's a silly question. You can never guarantee anything but water. And the list of things you might see could fill up the pages of a bible. We were told that the way to dive Lembeh though was to give our dive guides a wish list of

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Sounds like the start of a joke doesn’t it? An octopus, a ghost, and a muffin walk into a bar… I wish I knew the punch line, but sadly I’m a rubbish joke-teller. If you have any ideas, drop a comment. I wish this story were as funny as a joke but it’s actually kind of sad. I wrote down these three individual stories at the end of our day in Lembeh, thinking they were all unrelated, only to realize that they were in fact completely related. You may find them sad. You may find it creepy that the same story

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Nudibranchs, the pride and joy of many seasoned divers. Finding one of these little colorful blobs of jelly takes a keen eye, and results in some serious bragging rights. Why mother nature decided to make sea slugs in so many different shapes and sizes and colors is beyond me. I mean land slugs are kind of gross. Sea slugs though? Show me more! Not a fan of slugs? Check out this frilly purple dude and tell me how you feel about them now! (Flabellina rubrolineata, size: 25mm) Their vibrant colors are derived from the foods that they eat. It's a bit ironic

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

Ok that title might be a little bit misleading. I’m actually going to present you with a species of fish known as dragonets, which include the psychedelically colored mandarinfish, so named because their vivid colors are reminiscent of the robes an Imperial Chinese ruler might wear. Our dive guides brought us to a site called Trikora, which had a plethora of cool critters to stare at in awe. That is probably why it was one of the busier sites we visited. Most of the dive sites we hadn’t had to share with other divers, but unfortunately, this site had another group

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

When people envision scuba diving, they probably see crystal clear blue water, a reef full of corals in every color and texture, and a kaleidoscope of various fish in every hue of the rainbow. Perhaps a turtle is munching algae off of a rock. Perhaps a shark cruises along the reef. Everything looks like an aquarium. What they probably don’t envision is the mucky, sandy bottom of a strait that hosts a busy boat port. Why would anyone ever want to dive in a place like that? Because that muck is home to a weird and wonderful assortment of critters. Some

Indonesia

Travelogue

Before we knew it, it was time to journey across the northern tip of Sulawesi to the east coast, and across the Lembeh strait to the island of the same name. The entire journey took less than two hours, and the perks of booking with the same resort in both locations included not having to painstakingly dry out our dive gear, and Tetris it back into our luggage. Yes, I just used Tetris as a verb. Instead, the resort simply loaded each of our crates, labeled with Candy Crush name tags, into the truck, and off we went. They also

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences

In no time at all, our vacation was half gone and it was our last day of diving in the Bunaken area. For our last day of diving, we requested two of our favorite spots we had been to during the week: Sachiko’s Point and Mandolin. Sachiko’s Point proved that no two dives are ever the same. You simply cannot repeat an experience. There is always something new waiting for you in the ocean. In this case, the plethora of dogtooth tuna that had been cruising the reef previously, were now nowhere to be found. On to Mandolin for our final

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

On our penultimate day of Manado diving, we dove a site with some crazy current. It was the most fun I’d had being swept along at high speeds since Palau. It kept switching directions too; we’d be flying down the reef in one direction, arms outstretched as if we were flying up in the sky, only to suddenly be kicking into the current and have our guide, clad in snorkel fins, signal for us to go back the other way. We swapped directions three or four times, and I loved every moment of it. The first time I dove in any

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Travelogue

And so we fell into a comfortable routine of waking up and going to breakfast each morning for a beautiful selection of fresh, tropical fruits. There would also be an omelette station set up. After breakfast, we would head out on the boat for the two morning dives, venturing into the underwater world, to one colorful wall bursting with healthy corals after another. The state of the thriving reef was a happy sight. There were times when I would look for a bit of rock or dead coral to steady myself with a fingertip while taking a photo, and would

Indonesia

Scuba Diving, Underwater Photography

On our third morning in Manado, I finally felt refreshed and like my body was caught up and rested and ready for the task of diving. No more wimping out in the cold for me! We had the boat to ourselves, allowing us to make the longer trip over to Bunaken National Park. The previous days a German diver had joined us for only the second dive, meaning we had to stay close to the mainland so that we could make the trip back to the resort to pick her up between dives. We had figured out that the mainland

Indonesia

Scuba Diving

The first few days at Thalassa Dive Resort were a blur as the stress of travel wore off. Fletch and I had left the US four days prior to our arrival, flown 12,000 miles via four different flights, and had jumped ahead sixteen time zones in the process. Tanja and Stefan had their own stress not just from the journey from the Maldives, but from work as well. We attempted to do the two morning dives each morning, but each of us more or less took a turn sitting out for half a day to rest. Fletch and I did the

Indonesia

Travelogue

When I told people that we were going to Indonesia, most of them assumed Bali. That’s fair; Bali is the tourist hotspot that everyone associates with Indonesia. As it turns out, Bali is only one of about 17,000 or 18,000 (depending on which source you refer to) islands that make up the country of Indonesia. Only 6,000 of these are inhabited. The four biggest of these islands are Java (shared with Papua New Guinea), Borneo (shared with Brunei and Malaysia), Sumatra, and Sulawesi. We are on that fourth largest island, which has an area of 67,000 square miles (roughly the