The Lembeh Straight - A Muck Place to Dive

 

Sounds absolutely terrible right? So why on earth did Laura and I, like thousands of other divers, plan on visiting such a place for our Christmas holiday? The answer is simple - if not believable based on the description above - the muck is the perfect environment for unusual, exotic and juvenile organisms that frequent every diver's ‘bucket list’ of things to see underwater.

 

Laura and I arrived at Kungkungan Bay Resort (or KBR), situated on the northern Sulawesi coast and midway along the ocean straight that separates the island of Sulawesi from the island of Lembeh, for a highly anticipated four days of diving, and more precisely, muck diving. KBR was a brilliant location from which to dive Lembeh and being greeted with an ice cold beer made for a perfect start. The super efficient and friendly staff got the formalities out of the way with a quick introductory briefing about the resort and then left us to while away the evening as we gazed out over the gentle lapping waters and twirling current eddies and watched the tide quietly rise into the Lembeh Straight.

 

If we thought the resort was beautiful at sunset then we were blown away as we experienced it at sunrise the next morning. The chocolate chip pancake breakfast - and every meal thereafter - was amazing, and the extensive menu catered for all tastes with eastern favourites such as nasi goreng and sashimi, to western favourites such as burritos and hamburgers and everything in-between. Every day presented us with an additional 'test' menu, with new items that the kitchen thought might be interesting, as well as a nightly special that was deliciously local. Our favourite item was one of the 'test' menu items - gohu tuna - made with fresh, raw tuna and served with lime juice, peanuts, onions and basil. Delicious!4

 

That first morning, the sun was bright and beautiful as we rose early for our first dive. During our arrival briefing we were informed that not all sites in Lembeh are muck sites. We could expect muck, coral, sand and wrecks, all of which made for a dive location with a higher concentration of marine life than the Great Barrier Reef. We were told that all guests could put their creature wish list on the dive boards so the guides knew what to try find for us - and let me be clear on this as a diver who does not like diving with dive GUIDES, there is no way you will find these bizarre creatures without the unbelievable eyes and experience of the Lembeh dive guides. When we finally did get underwater, the diving was unreal. Firstly, and a little disturbingly, we did not expect that much rubbish. Laura and I both started in our normal conscience diver mode and picked up the first few pieces of rubbish we found - naïve. Interestingly, once we acclimatised to the very different seascape, there was a strange beauty in the lava-blackened sand and explosions of life occurred where least expected. On our first dive (and for the next two) we found nothing, luckily our dive guide, Ade, was significantly more skilled than us and we started racking up a list of the most crazy sightings. Our very first, and probably one of the weirdest of all, was the pegasus sea moth. In the interest of giving you a view of what our ‘wish list’ should have looked like, these are the strange creatures we saw just on the first day, which consisted of four dives and the last being a dusk dive.