Lembeh’s Nudibranchs

This week in Bunaken… We have had a nudilicious time here in Bunaken this week! With nice and calm conditions and not much current to speak of it was easy for the guides and guests to take their time and find plenty of amazing, colourful and rare nudibranchs hiding in the cracks and crevices on the reef. (Photo: Dom Jeanes)

The shallows seem to have been the place to be this week even for the bigger stuff. A small school of massive (the largest one easy over 1,5 m long) giant trevallies was seen hanging on top of the reef flat in less than 5 m of water getting a good clean from different types of cleaner fish. Several schools of dogtooth tunas has also been spotted whipping around in the shallows hunting smaller reef fish and on Lekuan III three large yellowfin tunas (one either very pregnant or had just eaten a puffed up pufferfish!) cruised past during the safety stop.

Other nice sightings this week has been boxer crab (sticking his little pom-poms up as soon as the divers got close), pink squat lobster, ornate ghost pipefish, inquisitive napolean wrasses, pontohi pygmy seahorses and, you guessed it; one or two (or a couple of hundreds, I mean who’s counting??) super chilled turtles.

The guides have noticed an increased amount of crown of thorn starfish on a dive site and set out to remove as many as they could. Crown of thorns starfish can in a very short time destroy a large area of reef. Napoleon wrasse and triton snails are natural enemies, but unfortunately heavily fished all over the world and can therefore in most areas not control the crown of thorns starfish population. Even though they are not fished here anymore they are both slow growing species who take a long time to recover. Unfortunately rough surface conditions forced them to change the dive site, but they still collected some at Muka Kampung. New clean up dive planned for next week!