Diving at Wakatobi, in the Banda Sea (part two): Let’s go diving!
While this is happening on the water….
This is happening under the water:
Feather stars are delicately ruffled by the water as if in a summer’s breeze.
A spotted blue ribbon-tail ray is zooming around up and down the wall before resettling in his hole from which only his tail is visible.
A white-tipped reef shark mooches by, out in the blue.
An orangutan crab is a luminous orange piece of string, I can only discern his legs because they are more orange than the pale coral he is living on. But his limbs, though not much larger than those of a stick inset, do remind me of an orangutan’s arms and legs.
The spiny white antennae of lobster float out from its hiding place under a rock.
Tiny shrimp hide in the bubble coral.
Ribbon eels look like they should wrap around a girl’s ponytail rather than performing their gaping wave from holes in the rock. One baby ventures out of its hole for a moment then reverses back as if reeled in by a scolding parent.
A great variety of Moray eels from the thickness of dive-guide’s Andhy’s generous thigh to dainty juvenile ones. They always look hungry with their snapping mouths.
I turn around and a turtle less than a metre to my right startles me then another diver gets my attention and points to a marble ray that’s making a tour of the wall.
Cuttlefish demonstrate their chameleon capabilities.
Like swimming in the movie Nemo: we see Clarke’s anemone fish, clownfish and false clownfish, and a great many more .
Small seahorses and pipefish float just above the sand in the shallows.
Stonefish and scorpionfish are both hard to spot because they look just like rocks.
A daily sunset ritual: Mandarin fish court, then mate (which does not involve physical joining): the larger male approaches the female and, side by side, as if holding hands, they rise in the water and then…poof! A puff of what looks like smoke appears but is actually eggs and at the same time the male’s puff of sperm fertilises them at the same time, and in the blink of an eye, they part and dart off to hide once again.
A juvenile Yellow Boxfish is not much bigger than my thumbnail and looks like a tiny box gift-wrapped in yellow with black spots. Sensibly, it is hiding away in a crevice too small for most predators to enter.
And then there’s coral: giant ears that remind me on His Master’s Voice record labels. Fungi-like growths, nobbly and round. Trees and fans and tables of red, pink, purple coral and ‘black coral’ that looks green. And mushroom, and mazes and carpets of stars.
The life is pervasive and encompassing, here under the surface. Here are some of my dive mates’ photos:
Spotted Garden Worms (below)
Pudgy star fish (above) that looked like it would be better placed in a kid’s playroom
Thanks a heap to Judith, Andhy, Ady, Mali and the other amazing crew of the Pelagian. It was a week I will never forget.