Mototi octopus
Reef cuttlefish
Green shrimp with eggs
the boat at night time and then jumping in to see what those lights have attracted . What turns up is a complete lottery , but that only adds to the excitement .
Patience is definitely a virtue as there were prolonged periods of time where we were all searching and seeing nothing . But then , usually one of the dive guides would wave their torch at us as they ’ d spotted something . A controlled waving would mean something commonplace , such as a praying mantis shrimp larvae . The more frantic the waving , the more exciting the species .
Towards the end of the last of my blackwater dives , I learned that if the frantic waving was accompanied with underwater shouting , it would mean leave whatever you ’ re looking at and get over here ! Rick and I acted as instructed , and were very glad that we did so as they had found one of the A-list blackwater species , a larval wunderpuss , looking like an alien floating in space . Is four dives a day tiring when you ’ ve seen a larval wunderpuss ? Absolutely not ! There were big grins and excited chatter on the boat all the way back to the resort that night .
Realm of the octopus
The dive guides were all expert spotters and Nope proved immediately that he was no exception . A reoccurring theme was Nope trying to point something out to either Rick or myself , while we , sometimes vainly , tried to figure out whether the creature was either extremely well camouflaged or just very small . It would usually be the latter and my photography skills ( or lack of ) meant that I would have to wait until we got back to the laptop to find out if I ’ d got something in focus . My nemeses were the green and hairy shrimps – getting one in focus was so difficult ! But I felt like a proud student showing his teacher his work when I finally got to show Nope a shot of one of those tiny shrimps . One thing that set the dive guides and NAD Lembeh apart from other excellent dive guides that I ’ ve had elsewhere in the world , is that the resort lends them cameras when they ’ re diving for fun . This meant that not only was Nope finding the subjects but would also recommend the best angle to shoot it from , which I appreciated a lot , as it saved time worrying about how to approach the animal .
For all the weird and wonderful species that I was seeing in Lembeh , the stars of the show were the octopuses . I love seeing octopus here in the UK , and it ’ s just as pleasing abroad . In Lembeh there was a wide variety of species and we saw most of them ; only the fabled hairy octopus failed to make an appearance .
It was a rollcall of octopus superstars : mototi , blue ringed , coconut , longarmed , mimic and algae octopus all throughout the two weeks . There were so many , by the end of the trip , I was being
Larval wunderpus
Adult wunderpus
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