Diving The Lambeh Straight, Indonesia

Lambeh Straight is located on the island of Sulawesi in the north of Indonesia, right in the centre of the coral triangle and is world renown for its Macro photography, Muck Diving and Critters! We travelled from the Uk via Singapore and didn't really know what to expect as we were up until this point traditional coral reef divers. What we didn't expect was the barren black lava sand environment that Lambeh had to offer. This was quite a shock at first, no coral, no shoals of "pretty" fish, no endless blue sea. However what we did find was the strangest and most diverse mixture of creatures that one local described as "All of God's ugly and weird creatures thrown into one place". I wont lie, it did take a bit of getting used to, you would spend the first few minutes of a dive searching the black sand and eventually happen across an isolated soft coral outpost inhabited by the customary family of clown fish, a little further on you would find a coconut shell walking along on its own (the tell tale tentacles of an octopus protruding from the base) or an old glass bottle that had now become a small fishes house. We were lucky enough to witness an extremely rare sight whilst we were there, on one dive we watched baby Flamboyant Cuttlefish hatching from their eggs, protected by a coconut husk, the videographer with us had waited several years to catch this on camera and was kind enough to give us a short video of what we saw (click on the link at the bottom). We also saw many other beautiful and ugly creatures, from the famous mimic octopus, flamboyant cuttlefish, octopus, seahorses and mantis shrimp and I could talk about these all day, but the best way to describe them is through the pictures we took, so take a look through the gallery below and the weird and wonderful creatures of the Lambeh Straight