Indonesia May-June 2008

Photos in this gallery were taken while diving: 1) aboard Ondina on a 12-day journey from Raja Ampat to Lembeh via Halmahera, diving little-known dive sites (mangroves, seamounts, etc., some with phenomenal numbers of fish) along the way, and 2) for 1 week in Lembeh Straight with Divers Lodge Lembeh. All photos (except title pages) were taken with a Canon 1Ds Mark III camera in a Seacam housing with dual Inon strobes. The first few are to whet your appetite; the rest are arranged in sections preceded by introductory title pages.

Mating mandarinfish (1-2 inches long) with eggs. THIS IS THE MOST UNIQUE PHOTO OF THE TRIP! Mandarinfish mate approx. 6 inches above the coral rubble in which they live. They do so only during a brief period at dusk, and the entire "act" takes only a few seconds, with the pair rising out of the rubble, releasing their respective eggs and sperm into the water together, and then both dashing back into the rubble below. This photo was taken (by luck) at the exact moment the female released her eggs into the water, and they are clearly visible.

Hawkfish (2 inches) watches from a brilliantly intense colored soft coral

Pink anemonefish (2 inches long) swims along the upturned underside of its host anemone

Zebra crab (1/2 inch across) in fire urchin

A brilliantly colored nudibranch (1 inch long)

While aboard Ondina diving Raja Ampat to Lembeh, we saw some wonderful reefs teeming with life. Considering the fact that this area is the center of marine biodiversity for the entire planet (more species of fish and corals than anywhere else), that shouldn't have surprised me. Yet, having seen so many places with damaged or destroyed reefs and decimated fish populations, these scenes were welcome indeed!

Whip corals, green sponge, orange soft coral and red and other colored crinoids, along with hundreds of anthias (1 inch long) create a beautiful reef scene

An astounding variety of colorful soft corals, sponges, crinoids and fish on this coral bommie

Two emperor angelfish swim beneath corals and sponges

Red soft coral, orange coral fan, and tan sponge.

Unusual orange soft corals cover this section of reef

Vivid coral fans overlap one another on a wall

School of batfish with red soft coral in foreground

Juvenile batfish (1.5 ft high)

Karen's keen eyes have spotted a small grey nudibranch on the wall above these coral fans. The longing in her upturned eyes is undoubtedly due to the fact that she has a wide angle lens...

Colorful reef column: abundant corals, golden sweepers, glassfish and anthias envelope this freestanding coral column as a red 1-foot coral trout swims at its base

In conducive environments (strong current and no human damage), coral fans can grow to be 10 feet or more across!

Several dive sites we visited are far from human activity, and we saw schools of literally thousands of sugeonfish, jacks and barracuda. I captured few of these schools with my camera - in part because I seemed to have the wrong (macro) lens on my camera on some of those dives, and even wide angle lenses didn't do justice to schools that went from horizon to horizon...

Bumphead parrotfish (2-4 ft long) roam the reef like grazing buffalo, chomping hard corals with their beak-like mouths. Digesting the organic portion of the coral, they excrete the calcium "rock" portion as sand. Indeed, parrotfish are credited with creating most of the world's sand...

A school of hundreds - if not thousands - of catfish (6 inches long) create a rolling, roiling wall as the layers of fish at top swoop over the top of those below and down to the sand below to scoop up sand and algae off the seabed...only to be immediately overtaken by the next wave of hungry mouths. It was an amazing sight to behold, with layer after layer of the school seeming almost frantic to overtake the line of fish in front of them, yet staying in tight formation to maintain the safety of their companions.

Attack of the clones! Actually a school of hundreds of Banggai cardinalfish, an endangered species that schools in tight formation. The only place they are found is a few areas of Indonesia (although the good news is that they are bred in captivity for aquariums, which relieves some of the demand that pressures wild populations like this).

This dive site (on a submerged seamount in open ocean) is called "1000 Barracudas" due to the huge number of schooling barracuda (3-4 feet long) that live there. This small group of 100 or so is swimming slightly behind the main school, which is visible in the distance.