In Oct 2011 my wife and I and a good friend spent four nights at NAD Resort on Lembeh Island.
None of us had ever been muck diving before and my expectation levels were not very high going in,
BUT we were all BLOWN AWAY!! We loved it. Muck diving in Lembeh is like this super chilled super relaxing treasure hunt.
The critters you spot are mind boggling.
To keep this report quick let me break things down.
Travel:
We live in Singapore so it was a quick 3hr flight to Manado. We were picked up at the airport by a
resort driver and driven to Bitung harbour The drive is scenic and it took us just over an hour.
After a little wait at Bitung harbour we were whisked to the resort on one of the spacious dive boats.
NAD Resort:
Simon (the owner) runs a really friendly, cozy, well run resort. You get great bang for you buck here.
The food is good, the beer is cold. We stayed in one of the bungalows and I would recommend staying
in one if you go to NAD. They are more private and have a cozier feeling to them. The cheaper rooms
(our friend stayed in one) are clean and practical but you right next to your neighbour. All rooms have AC, which is helpful.
The camera room has sufficent room for a number of big rigs.
Diving:
We arrived at about 4pm and were dead keen to get wet ASAP. SO Simon arranged a night dive for us at Nudi Falls.
What an amazing first dive at Lembeh, swimming eels, crabs of every kind and colour, tiny juv. boxies, tiny squid,
cuttlefish, octopus... etc etc. It was a great big WELCOME TO LEMBEH! We were hooked!
Over the next two days we dived an number of the usual muck spots, TK 1 & TK 3, Hairball, etc....
The majority of the dives are on black sand slopes. Depth was max 20m but most of the time was spent at 12m or less.
Dive times average 70min, with one lasting 80. Viz wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, it averaged about 7-10m which is perfectly do-able.
Right here's the list of critters that got me really smiling: Hairy Frogfish (man what an amazing creature), painted frogfish,
ornate and robut ghost pipefish, Ambon Scorpionfish and a ton of other types of scorpionfish, a 2m long banded seasnake
(that got quite interested with my focus light), coconut & longarmed & mimic & motototi (excuse spelling, a small octo with two blue rings) octopus,
star gazer snake eel (during the day), juv cow fish, 3 different coloured pygmy seahorses, two other kinds of sea horses, tons of bright and
colourful nudi's, electric clams etc etc
On the last day we decided to take a break from the black sand and took a trip out to the northern point of Lembeh Island and dove a
very pretty pinacle with a big school of unicornfish and my mate saw a blacktip shark. We then dove a really colourful wall, with big fans
and two caves to explore, my highlight was a small family of long-nosed hawkfish.
Dive boat and crew:
The boats are all comfortable and spacious.
The dive crew... simply brilliant. You told them once what you wanted to drink after a dive and after that it was waiting for you once you
were towled down and ready for it. They were always helpful and always cheerful.
We had Marcel (AKA Princess Leia) as our dive guide the whole trip and he did a great job finding all the super camoflaged critters.
In all I would highly recommend NAD and Lembeh in general.
You can find a few of my pics (and one or two are my wife's, it was her first trip with a camera in hand and she did brilliantly for her first time)
from the trip at the following flickr page:
Lembeh Dive Trip - Oct 2011 - a set on Flickr
(If that didn't work then search in Flickr "Lembeh Dive Trip - Oct 2011"
None of us had ever been muck diving before and my expectation levels were not very high going in,
BUT we were all BLOWN AWAY!! We loved it. Muck diving in Lembeh is like this super chilled super relaxing treasure hunt.
The critters you spot are mind boggling.
To keep this report quick let me break things down.
Travel:
We live in Singapore so it was a quick 3hr flight to Manado. We were picked up at the airport by a
resort driver and driven to Bitung harbour The drive is scenic and it took us just over an hour.
After a little wait at Bitung harbour we were whisked to the resort on one of the spacious dive boats.
NAD Resort:
Simon (the owner) runs a really friendly, cozy, well run resort. You get great bang for you buck here.
The food is good, the beer is cold. We stayed in one of the bungalows and I would recommend staying
in one if you go to NAD. They are more private and have a cozier feeling to them. The cheaper rooms
(our friend stayed in one) are clean and practical but you right next to your neighbour. All rooms have AC, which is helpful.
The camera room has sufficent room for a number of big rigs.
Diving:
We arrived at about 4pm and were dead keen to get wet ASAP. SO Simon arranged a night dive for us at Nudi Falls.
What an amazing first dive at Lembeh, swimming eels, crabs of every kind and colour, tiny juv. boxies, tiny squid,
cuttlefish, octopus... etc etc. It was a great big WELCOME TO LEMBEH! We were hooked!
Over the next two days we dived an number of the usual muck spots, TK 1 & TK 3, Hairball, etc....
The majority of the dives are on black sand slopes. Depth was max 20m but most of the time was spent at 12m or less.
Dive times average 70min, with one lasting 80. Viz wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, it averaged about 7-10m which is perfectly do-able.
Right here's the list of critters that got me really smiling: Hairy Frogfish (man what an amazing creature), painted frogfish,
ornate and robut ghost pipefish, Ambon Scorpionfish and a ton of other types of scorpionfish, a 2m long banded seasnake
(that got quite interested with my focus light), coconut & longarmed & mimic & motototi (excuse spelling, a small octo with two blue rings) octopus,
star gazer snake eel (during the day), juv cow fish, 3 different coloured pygmy seahorses, two other kinds of sea horses, tons of bright and
colourful nudi's, electric clams etc etc
On the last day we decided to take a break from the black sand and took a trip out to the northern point of Lembeh Island and dove a
very pretty pinacle with a big school of unicornfish and my mate saw a blacktip shark. We then dove a really colourful wall, with big fans
and two caves to explore, my highlight was a small family of long-nosed hawkfish.
Dive boat and crew:
The boats are all comfortable and spacious.
The dive crew... simply brilliant. You told them once what you wanted to drink after a dive and after that it was waiting for you once you
were towled down and ready for it. They were always helpful and always cheerful.
We had Marcel (AKA Princess Leia) as our dive guide the whole trip and he did a great job finding all the super camoflaged critters.
In all I would highly recommend NAD and Lembeh in general.
You can find a few of my pics (and one or two are my wife's, it was her first trip with a camera in hand and she did brilliantly for her first time)
from the trip at the following flickr page:
Lembeh Dive Trip - Oct 2011 - a set on Flickr
(If that didn't work then search in Flickr "Lembeh Dive Trip - Oct 2011"