Lembeh - are we doing it wrong?

[Wisnu]

hope they dont sell them like this one

Harlequin Shrimp

oops, sold out

 

[Darnold9999]

Have to say that the time I saw the psychedelic frog fish I was a bit suspicious as they seemed to appear about half way through the dive in an area that we had all been swimming through at the beginning of the dive. My suspicion at the time was that they were there but hidden under rocks that needed to be moved.

Glad it is working out and congrats on finding your own blue ring!

 

[reubencahn]

@diveUAE thank you for the update! I had a friend dive with them last year and said they were good, so hopefully it was just a one off mistake. Nice to see they respond to criticism quickly.



I hear rumors of this A LOT, not specific to Lembeh but in other muck diving areas. Harlequin shrimp are fairly rare and high on the request list that guides would be motivated to "spot" them consistently to keep high dollar customers happy.

One particular egregious example of this is a rumor that some guides in Ambon keep psychedelic frogfish in semi-captivity somewhere and feed them. Supposedly divers were never allowed to see the fish until the guide had a chance to go to "find" them well in advance of the groups arrival, and also stayed behind until everyone left. This is 2nd hand info from someone I met who went diving out there, but I wouldn't be shocked if this were true.

The last time we were in Ambon, we were told guides from one resort had moved a psychedelic frogfish and was keeping it hidden from other divers using other operations. I was skeptical but ran into a diver staying at the resort who more or less confirmed this.

 

[Wingy]

If I could choose only one person in this thread to take advice from it would be luko!

I concur. Although sometimes I may not agree with "best time" as I am not a photographer so our needs are slightly different but he does know a destination or two.

How many resorts are at Lembeh now...and Bangka ...I once had it all to myself!

We're going to see more guides and ops condoning this sort of behaviour because.....we demand it. We turn up there with a neat list and expect it filled...that's what we spent all that money and flew all that way for wasn't it?

I totally agree any guide having a camera is not on...but today's dive and no doubt a good talking to from the boss have made him lift his game because $ talk and just over 24 hours ago OP was prepared to decamp elsewhere. Guides are going to be pressured to deliver the wish list more than ever the more divers turn up. Word of mouth counts for a lot, net posts that are negative even more. I'm sure they are aware of this thread and have rectified the situation the best they can, OP sounds much happier so alls good for now.

Cheap domestic flights have given the critters of Lembeh a whole new threat. Guides will manipulate animals for photographers more. Everyone has a go pro and a selfie stick....sorry sarcasm. It's actually not so much a problem that can be headed off by dive operators, it's divers who have to drive this change and stop it.

 

[dirtfarmer]

I was told that some dm will hide the Harlequin shrimp in a secret place and fed them with the limb of a sea-star. No sure if it is BS.

It's done in Tulamben. I've never seen it done in Lembeh, my guides have always had to go try and find one. The ones in Lembeh I've seen are on the small and duller color, the ones in Tulamben tend to be bigger and brighter.

 

[bintang_shrimp]

This is just sad. I'm sure when there's enough pressure from pushy photo-obsessed clients the guides feel pressured into this. Fortunately Lembeh is critter-rich enough that there's enough good stuff to see.

 

[Indah]

1- dive with reputable dive resorts such as NAD, TwoFish or Black Sand DR, forget the new opening centers, forget the ones that have become too big or too expensive only caring for specific customers (thinking about Lembeh resort).
2- As said no camera for the dive guide : report to the dive centre manager, especially if he decided to assign this guide for you. More importantly ask for a LOCAL dive guide, not a gringo.
3- Do your homework : write down a bucketlist and hand it to your guide.
4- Some of the critters you were expecting to be shown are maybe too common to be looked for by many customers (thinking about GPF) , hence your guide won't even care, some are also seasonal. Most people come to Lembeh for rare nudis, mimic octopii or wunderpus, not so much for froggies or GPF (I've seen better places for that like Dauin for instance, a dozen frogfish per dive, lumps of 4 or 5 GPF around a coral). I don't rate Lembeh high on seahorses, Bangka is a better bet.
5- I dived Tanzania and northern Mozambique, North Sulawesi smokes any of those spots, really... hands down.

Luko, what did we ever do to upset you? I think we should absolutely be in the list of reputable dive resorts.

 

[Luko]

It's done in Tulamben. I've never seen it done in Lembeh, my guides have always had to go try and find one. The ones in Lembeh I've seen are on the small and duller color, the ones in Tulamben tend to be bigger and brighter.

In my 10+ times in Tulamben I've never seen that , should be really low end guides doing this : like Wetpup mentions, Harlequins are really easy to find. Except for juveniles I tend to overlook them for more interesting or rarer species. Melasti/Amed although a bit further than Tulamben sites, you can get as much as 6 couples of Harleys within one dive in august season.
On the other hand I've had first hand reports concerning some guides in Anilao, although not with the same shrimp species.

On the contrary of what some other mytho "nitwit" (sic) might think, serious photographers try to discourage this kind of bad habits that are mostly encouraged by newbies or "people carrying cameras" (not what I call "photographers" the ones doing images, but more the profile of divers clicking their way on anything). After the nature concerned photographers complained about some obviously scened images a few years ago (mostly asian photogs were targeted), the important UWphotography contests have rules that prohibit moving/herding animals or taking them out of their natural evironment, so this is counter productive.
The guides I'm using are as much concerned as well, knowing that they should not be messing with their bread and butter, whenever I stumble over a "manipulator", I make things clear asking to stop it during the dive and explaining after the dive that i don't want animals to be touched.

Luko, what did we ever do to upset you? I think we should absolutely be in the list of reputable dive resorts.

Not pretending you are not. "...such as..." doesn't mean the list is closed. You neither belong to too big/too expensive nor to the new kids in the block, don't you.

 

[matador]

It's done in Tulamben. I've never seen it done in Lembeh, my guides have always had to go try and find one. The ones in Lembeh I've seen are on the small and duller color, the ones in Tulamben tend to be bigger and brighter.

I confirm I have seen a DM "hiding" a harlequin shrimp and feeding it with a sea star limp ...
here is the evidence:

As an aside, I have dived with 2Fish in the past and the guide (not DM) was awful; he even forgot to replace his tank for the second dive once and had to resurface ... and that wasn't the worst part. Next time I will pay more to go to NAD or anywhere else for that matter.

 

[cetacean]

Interesting thread (both the original post and the tangent).

With over 150 dives in Lembeh I find it hard to believe anyone would actually claim they can spot the hard to find critters as well as some of the better (or even average) guides in the area. The first time I dove Lembeh was back when KBR was the only dive resort there. The guides they employed back then were amazing - both in their spotting and knowledge. Since then the number of resorts have ballooned as has the variability of the quality of the guides. Personally, the best guides at Lembeh Resort are some of the best I've experienced. Several of you have commented on the price - I've made a number of trips to Indonesia (from the west coast of the US) just to dive Lembeh - having a little bit of comfort (and some better food) is a small incremental price given the distance traveled, cost of travel, etc. The quality of their guides is also consistently high.

When I first read the post I was going to comment that Lembeh has changed over the years. Anyone that has been there in the last 5-6 years and thinks it's "critter rich" should have been there 17-18 years ago. Nudi Falls really did have a huge number of nudis - a few of which you could see falling through the water column off the rock wall. It's still really good - just not the same as it once was (which is true for many unique diving locations around the world).

Side note: for any of you that have seen the National Geographic issue that focused on nudibranchs (shot by David Doubilet leveraging a white surface/background to highlight these amazing creatures) - a number of the nudis shot were from his dives at Nudi Falls, and several others around Lembeh. We were both staying at KBR at the time - fascinating to talk to the Nat Geo team about how they were getting these images.

Fully agree on the issue of a guide bringing a camera on a dive - that's a huge sign that they have the wrong priorities going into the dive.

Last - to the comment that Anilao is more expensive - I'm assuming most people know this, however Anilao is only expensive for small numbers of divers (singles, pairs, etc.) because you end up renting the whole boat. If you are willing to dive the same sites as 2 other pairs of divers you can split the cost and the diving gets much cheaper. I actually prefer this to Lembeh's set up because for a few more $ I can guarantee be on a site with just our guide and my buddy (depending on the site).