The Whale Shark and the Bumble Bee Shrimp, Trip Report, Black Sand Divers - Lembeh

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AlMitch

Contributor
Messages
991
Reaction score
504
Location
Singapore
# of dives
200 - 499
Lembeh truly is a special place! This was our third time to visit this special strip of sea.
As we are traveling with a toddler we decided to spend a little more cash and stay at one of the slightly more upmarket resorts, Black Sand Divers Retreat. When you have a 15month old you really dont want to be "roughing" it.
We live in Singapore so it is a simple 3hr direct flight to Manado and then the resort is a 1.5hr drive. We unfortunately had to wait at the airport for some other guests who had lost their luggage (very unlike Singapore Airlines). This meant I did not get an evening dive in like I wanted to, but that is not the end of the world.

The resort is set up on the hill with all the bungalows over looking the beautiful Lembeh Straights. This is the view we had from the balcony of our bungalow.
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The bungalows are big and spacious! The bed was comfy, the bathroom is "out doors" and beautiful. It was interesting showering in the rain! A double shower. And there is a walk in closet. So all in all the bungalows are really comfortable living spaces. The only thing missing is a hammock!! There was also aircon and a ceiling fan, when the power was on. As you are in Indo power outages are just part of life. The resort does have a big genset that is supposed to kick in when the power goes down BUT as luck would have it the genset decided not to work for us. And without the aircon or fans it gets very very toasty warm. Fortunately the power came back on at 8pm so we could sleep well that night. It took them 2 or 3 days to fix the big genset but luckily during this time the power outages were for an hour or two at a time so no big problem.
The main reception / dining buidling is also up on the hill at roughly the same level as the bungalows. And they are building a pool right next to the main building which will be an interesting addition to the property. Although I personally would have built the pool somewhere else as it doesn't have a good view of the ocean... so time will see how well used it is. Here is a pic of where we had breakfast, lunch and dinner.
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The dining area has no aircon nor fans, so if there is no breeze (which there wasn't for much of our stay) it gets pretty warm and muggy. They said they were going to buy fans soon.
The food in general for lunch and dinner was really good. The menu changed each day and you had a choice of three starters, 3 mains and 2 desert. Everyone in the group thought the portions were good and the taste even better. For breakfast you had a choice of eggs and bacon or fruit or pancakes or french toast etc etc. I did not think the breakfast was as good as lunch and dinner. The only real problem we had was that the plates of food would come out to us at odd intervals. Regularly one of us would have finished his/her food before the last person got theirs. It seems like the kitchen just needs a better system.

Now on to what you all really care about, the diving!!
The dive center is down by the private black sand beach. And there are many stairs to get down and up so make sure you have everything with you before you leave your bungalow.
The view from the dive center! Stunning!
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The many many stairs.... not so stunning! ha ha
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The dive center is well equipped and there are lots of fresh water rinse tanks for dive gear and cameras. There is also a camera room so you can leave all your gear down where you need it, but it is not aircon'ed.
The diving day goes much like this: 8:30 - 1st dive; then come back for some cake and coffee at the dive center, 11:00 - 2nd dive then lunch, 14:30 - 3rd dive and if you are super keen 17:30 - night dive. You can also just head off the beach at any time you like to dive TK2 which is the house "reef".
All boat dives are done from small fiberglass "speed" boats. They can only fit 4 divers + guide. It is a tad cramped (especially gearing up) but you usually only spend 5-10 min in the boat so it is not a big issue.
We had Captain Jack Sparrow as our super eagle eyed guide. And he was brilliant! EVERY dive he found things that were on our wish list. We saw something new on EVERY dive! And he was just as stoked to see/ find things as we were. We always knew he found something cool when we heard him shout excitedly and give himself a victory fist pump! It is great to see that he is still so excited about what he does.

So onto the story of the trip.... We were diving Air Bajo which is pretty much opposite the straight from BSDR and Jack had spotted Bumblebee and Tiger Shrimps and many other interesting critters. We were heading back up the slope to end our dive in the shallows when all of a sudden my wife banged her tank frantically and signaled SHARK!!! BIG SHARK!!! I thought she had finally lost her mind! ha ha But she was adamant so we peered into the blue and then it appeared, like a submarine out of the murky blue, a WHALE SHARK!!! My mind literally exploded!! I could hardly comprehend what I was seeing. It was about 8m above us and slowly swam right towards us. It passed right over our heads not more than 6-7m away. Just amazing. All this time I was frantically fumbling with my camera but the brain was not working! It took me a few minutes to realise my macro wet lens was still on!!! So I only got two ghostly shots as proof that we actually saw this amazing creature. _DSC3315.jpg_DSC3316.jpg
We all came up with the biggest smiles EVER!!! Our first whale shark... and we saw it in Lembeh of all places!
So that was the BIG, but we were obviously in Lembeh for the small. Here are a few pics of the super specials we saw.

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In the end our list of critters for the week was:
Octos: Blue ringed, Wonderpus, Long-armed
Shrimps: Bumblebee, Donald Duck, Tiger, Sarin, Harlequin, and many many others
Frogfish: Randal's/ Scarlet (both adult and a juvenile), Hairy, Painted, and the teeny tiny Sargassum Froggy (which the boat captain actually spotted!).
Nudi's & Flatforms: Persian Carpet Flatworm (so so so pretty), and many many other types yet to be identified.
Others: Stargazer, Bobbit worm (Both of these creatures are extras in horror movies!!), Pygmy Seahorses, Robust Ghostpipefish and on and on and on.

We also did one "wide angle" dive at Angels Window which is a pretty dive.

In conclusion BSDR is a small intimate resort and deserves the many good reviews. It does need to tighten up a few service related issues but we would definitely recommend the resort.
Lembeh really is a special place and we will be heading back for a 4th and 5th and ..... time in the near future.

For the rest of my pics click on the following link to my set in Flikr (feel free to drop comments in Flikr): https://www.flickr.com/photos/68937960@N08/sets/72157643830426855/
 
nice stuff. i also spotted a whale shark in Lembeh back in 2012
 
Wahhh, I wanna be in Lembeh. (Gotta love those encounters that jolt you enough to create camera equipment narcosis!) Nice write-up & pics of what sounds like a sweet trip. Thanks! // ww
 
Great report and great photos! Loved the tiny frog fish pic!!!
 
Thanks Jack. It was a very productive trip indeed. I didn't even have the Sargassum Froggy on my wish list. That was just another lucky one. He was really small though. Smaller than the nail on your baby finger. And because he is sitting in the seaweed which is bobbing up and down near the surface it was nearly impossible to get a focused shot.
 
Good stuff and in lembeh, so Lucy! Still never seen one!
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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