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
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
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
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
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