of weeks of inspecting the sand, however, we knew we’d hit a
wall. We needed a rest, and it was time to focus our eyes (and
our camera lenses) on something larger than a deck of cards.
Our dive guide welcomed our request to do something a bit
different, and he signed us up for a visit to
Bangka Island
, just
north of the mainland of Sulawesi. The boat ride would take
about two hours if the ocean cooperated, he told us, so we’d
stay there for three dives, conditions permitting. The weather
obliged, and we spent the day photographing Bangka’s
renowned soft-coral-covered reefs in crystal-clear water.
That one-day trip inspired our curiosity. What other offbeat
diving opportunities could be found near the muck-diving
capital of the world? And would they all require long boat trips?
When we approached the dive staff about paying some visits to
other local reefs and wrecks, they excitedly got on board with
the idea and helped us set up a week’s worth of dives that would
allow us to view a very different side of Lembeh.
The next day, while everyone else’s boat went to search
for tiny creatures, ours ventured around the southern tip of
Lembeh Island. As we motored toward an uninspiring rock
that pierced the surface of the water, I felt a momentary
pang of regret about missing that morning’s muck dives.
(Would the guides find the pair of pygmy seahorses that
had been seen on Tuesday?) But then a thought occurred
to me: Some of the best dives I’ve ever done started with an
uninspiring rock piercing the surface of the water.
When we reached the rock, we looked down and were
greeted by the sight of the seafloor 95 feet below. Thoughts
of tiny creatures immediately disappeared. We geared up
and entered the water in record time.
Buniang
was the polar opposite of the strait’s archetypal
critter dives. Under the ocean’s surface not an inch of that
incredible rock was bare. Colorful soft corals and tubastrea swept
with anthias and fusiliers overwhelmed every inch of the site. We
watched a pair of whitetip reef sharks swim lazily past and then
turned to watch as two banded sea kraits weaved between the
rocks. When we began our ascent we discovered a huge canyon
down the center of the pinnacle that was crowded with large
crimson sea fans and a swirling school of striped catfish.
To occupy our surface interval, we headed over to a
nearby beach,
Pantai Jiko,
for some snorkeling. The water
was incredibly clear, and as I looked down I noticed a sheer
wall rimmed with large sponges. As it turned out, that was
our next dive site; we soon descended to discover a pristine
wall covered with huge sponges of all shapes and colors.
We passed a patch of barrel sponges as big as motorcycles
to discover that the wall was covered with a tangle of rope,
paddle-shaped and encrusting sponges.
That was just the beginning, and as the days passed,
the guide who made finding blue-ringed octopuses look
like child’s play began to get very skilled at locating larger
subjects.
Dante’s Wall,
at the northeast corner of the strait,
was a lovely drop-off frequented by turtles and coated
in multihued gorgonians, soft corals and starfish. Dense
pockets of anthias swarmed the shallows, and predatory
lionfish had followed; they moved between the sea fans
and whip corals with graceful, ominous ease. A bit farther
south lay the addictive
California Dreaming
, a stunning,
current-swept reef loaded with fiery orange and pink soft
corals. Unbelievably, we were just around the bend from a
site where we’d searched for nudibranchs in the rubble two
days earlier, a fact that quickly became a bit of a joke (“Are
you sure you want to dive California Dreaming? We could
go around the corner and hunt in the rubble instead.”).
Even traditional critter-hunting sites such as
Nudi Retreat
and
Nudi Falls
yielded some incredible wide-angle photo
opportunities, including gorgonian-covered bommies and
soft-coral branches within inches of the water’s surface.
There are also some lovely artificial reefs in the strait. The
Mawali
, the wreck featured in our introductory tale, became
a favorite. This large World War II-era Japanese freighter,
which rests on its port side in 95 feet of water, has attracted a
phenomenal array of marine life and is located minutes away
from many of the popular dive resorts. The propeller, engines
and bridge are intact, and the superstructure is layered with
hard and soft corals that compete for space with sea fans
and barrel and vase sponges. Nearer to the southern edge
of the strait is the smaller
Kapal Indah
, which translates
appropriately as “beautiful ship.” This fishing boat sits on its
keel in 90 feet of water near an equally beautiful sloping reef.
The intact engines are easily visible, and the superstructure is
overgrown with soft and black coral.
With our research concluded, our outlook toward Lembeh
had shifted decidedly. We had only a few days of our visit
remaining, and we didn’t want to miss a single thing the
strait had to offer. We began bringing cameras suitable for
both small creatures and larger vistas on the dive boat, no
matter the destination, just in case.
On our final day, this heedfulness (some might call it
paranoia) came in handy. During my safety stop at a well-
known macro site, I spotted a lovely, pale pink giant frogfish
on a gray sponge. I sighed regretfully. The frogfish was simply
too large to photograph with the camera I carried, which was
equipped to take images of creatures no bigger than a dime.
Seconds later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to discover
that my guide, one of the best critter spotters in the strait,
was proudly holding my wide-angle camera rig, which was
perfectly set up to photograph the giant frogfish. Delightedly,
I exchanged cameras with him and snapped a few images
before surfacing to meet the waiting boat.
I looked at my guide and said effusively, “Thank you so
much! You knew?”
He smiled shyly, shrugged and simply responded, “That
was wide-angle, right?”
“Yes,” I replied, laughing. “Yes, that was absolutely wide-
angle!”
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