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73
F
ive was obviously the magic number. We’d had
some great dives on the wreck of the
Mawali
over
the past week, but as we began our fifth descent
toward the large freighter, we knew instinctively
that something had changed. There was more
current than on our previous dives, but the
visibility had improved. We could clearly see the
bow more than 100 feet away from the mooring.
We made a beeline for it, sensing that whatever we would
discover would be extraordinary. We were right. Three
gaudy scorpionfish sat in various positions, innocently
staring up into the water column. As we surveyed the scene,
the current abruptly strengthened. It became instantly clear
why the predators were arranged as they were. They were
hoping to ambush glassfish, which had begun clouding the
ship’s prow in the brisk flow. A
tight school of mackerel gulped
greedily at the water that moved
rapidly past the deck, and in the
distance I saw a pair of large
cuttlefish hunting next to a
cluster of sponges. With this kind
of sensory overload, it was hard
to know where to look, much less
where to point our cameras.
Our air supplies didn’t last long
in those conditions, however, and
before we knew it we were sadly
heading back to the mooring
line. But our chagrin was short-
lived. The resident school of
batfish near the line was taking
advantage of the swift current to
feed, and they swirled around us
indifferently, forming a ravenous
wall of gold and black. A pair of
scrawled filefish darted hungrily
between the offgassing divers
gripping the line, and several large
squid hovered just out of camera range, gorging themselves in
the flow. We couldn’t help but laugh — is this a shipwreck or
a buffet? I guess it depends on your perspective.
We surfaced jubilantly, and as we joined the other divers
on the boat, the elation was palpable. When the captain
started the motor for the 10-minute ride back to our resort,
however, we noticed that one diver was sitting quietly,
staring back at the mooring.
“Is everything OK?” I asked him.
“Huh? Yeah. Sorry. I just can’t believe it,” he replied.
“Can’t believe what?”
He turned to look at me, perplexed. “I’ve been all over the
world,” he said. “That was one of the best wreck dives I’ve
done anywhere, and I am in the middle of Lembeh Strait. No
one will ever believe me.”
Grains of Truth
Sand. To the average vacationer, the word brings to mind
warm sunshine, idyllic beaches dotted with swaying palm
trees and frothy umbrella drinks. To many divers however,
it is the definitive four-letter word. It gets into our wetsuit
booties, it stretches endlessly between the parking lot and
our favorite shore dive, and it threatens to destroy the
O-rings of our regulators, camera
housings and other gear.
Consequently, it can be
difficult to convince divers that
sand-heavy sites are worth a
prolonged visit. Against the
odds, Lembeh Strait has become
a dream destination. Nowhere
else do seemingly unremarkable
stretches of seafloor yield such
an astounding variety of strange,
diminutive creatures. Eager
critter hunters flock from all
corners of the globe to partake
in the bounty of this sandy
paradise, a place largely
considered to be the muck-diving
capital of the world.
The grainy stuff comes in two
varieties here: black and white.
Sites like
Hairball
,
TK
and
Air
Prang
feature fine, black volcanic
sand and are among Lembeh’s
most famous, though they require
diligent attention to positioning. One aberrant fin kick
can generate a resilient gray cloud of silt that will infuriate
nearby divers. Sites with white-sand or coral-rubble bottoms
such as
Rojos, Makawide
and
Critter Hunt
are also
popular — and they have the advantage of being somewhat
more forgiving when finning mishaps occur. In the end, the
color of the seafloor hardly matters; both are equally yielding
of incredible creatures.
The
big
and small of Lembeh
T e x t a n d P h o t o s b y A n d y a n d A l l i s o n S a l l m o n
A peacock mantis shrimp
protects a clutch of eggs at
the mouth of a rocky burrow.
