In late October, our dive guides began finding lots of Blue Ring Octopus on many dive sites in Lembeh Strait. You may have seen our earlier postings about the Blue Ring Mania we were all experiencing!

For the months of November and December, we were even lucky enough to see many of the blue rings mating! We’ve all been anxious to find a blue ring with eggs, and that finally happened on Saturday, when our dive guide Opo found the coveted critter at a near-by dive site. We are all very excited, including Opo who said it was his first time ever seeing this!

During mating, a male will grab the female’s mantle, which distracts the female's vision, while he transfers sperm packets by inserting his hectocotylus into her mantle cavity. This can take only seconds, but sometimes lasts longer and can even result in the female removing the male from her if she’s gotten too tired.

Because Opo found this awesome animal, Paulus headed back the next day with guests to the same site, whereupon he found the mother and eggs within about two minutes of beginning the dive! We are lucky to have some close-up shots of the baby octopuses inside the eggs that were looking ready to hatch. The female lays approximately 50 eggs and she carries her eggs around under her arms. She will have the eggs for about 3 - 6 months and then the female will die. During the time that she keeps the eggs, she doesn’t eat at all. Once the eggs have hatched, the young octopus develop rapidly, growing to about the size of a golf ball. The octopus will have a life span of approximately two years. Blue Rings carry enough poison to kill their prey within minutes. Blue Rings are not aggressive animals, and when disturbed they can flatten out their bodies to hide and change their body color to blend into its surroundings.

Thanks to our awesome dive guides! The photos are courtesy of Hergen Spalink and Kerri Bingham, our dive center managers.

Gayus has made another great find!!! Two Pontohi Pygmy Sea Horses, one was the yellow one with white belly and the other one was the brown one. Gayus also found an orange Bargibanti Pygmy Sea Horse on a red Muricella sp. sea fan. Continuing his second dive with our guest Reider Opem, Gayus found a blue ring octopus, which was Reidar’s second time seeing this octopus in just a couple of days! Way to go Gayus!!!

Have you ever seen a red Robust Ghost Pipefish before? Commonly you can see Brown, Yellowish and even Green ones. But red, not very often! And the one in this photo is also carrying eggs! But not just that, have you ever seen this Nudibranch before? Well it’s is a Noumea sp. Nudibranch, and it’s not often found. The body is about 20 mm long and has bright yellow coloring, almost like the yellow sea cucumber that we often seen in Lembeh Strait at famous dive sites like California Dreaming and Angel’s Window. This nudibranch also has red rhinophores and red coloring on the tip of its gills. “It was my first time seeing this nudi!” said Paulus. Completing his awesome finds on his dive of the day with Reidar Opem, Paulus also spotted a Blue ring octopus. “Is this awesome or what!”

We congratulate Sue Gueldner; she made her 100th dive with critters@lembeh at Lembeh Resort. We had the chance to take her photo together with her 100 dive card, she was so happy and excited. Her husband Doug Gueldner (from Ocean Enterprises) and the entire dive group also had a great time on this trip, “This was a great place and we really enjoyed it, we hope to be back again soon.”

7 Frogfish on a Dive!!!! Can you believe this?
Our critters@lembeh team are SUPER Spotters!!!

Kerri found a Hairy frogfish, Andy found 2 Orange Painted Frogfish at the rubble and sandy slope area. Jerry also found 3 Orange Painted Frogfish and a very colorful Painted Frogfish that is so camouflaged on the rubble area, you can hardly see it!

Have you ever seen this critter? Well maybe you do, but don’t realize it is a Jelly Fish. Yup it’s a Jelly Fish which comes from the family Ctenophores, commonly called Comb Jellies, Sea Gooseberries or Crawling Comb Jelly, because it appears like a jelly fish and it also has nematocysts. Comb Jelly’s are pelagic animals, which have two large spherical tentacles, and cilia that appear vertically like a comb, hence the name "Comb Jelly". The 'jelly' is a reference to Jelly Fish. The cilia of Comb Jellies are sticky and are used for catching and stinging their prey. Comb Jellies can be found at sandy areas or sometimes they can be found sitting on sea cucumbers; this jelly fish looks very weird and funny. We thank Colleen Boreham for sharing these pictures with us.

On the Mandarin dive last night, our dive guides gave our guests a bonus! Not only did they watch the mandarin fish mating, but our guides Abner and Oxin found a Blue ring octopus, Hairy octopus, Wonderpus octopus, Lembeh Sea Dragon, Tiger Shrimp and Bobtail Squid, all on our house reef!!!!

Come dive with citters@lembeh, a Critter Divers Paradise!

www.crittersatlembeh.com or info@lembehresort.com

Finding a Blue Ring Octopus is very cool, but seeing Blue Ring mating is unforgettable and a dream to many photographers and divers. And lucky for us, we have a couple of photographers who shared their images of this special moment with us. And fortunately we had some collections of The Blue Ring Octopus Mating from two of our guest; Von Rolf Orteig & Patrick Vuilleme.

Enjoy this awesome sequence from them!
(On top film strip presented by: Von Rolf Orteig & at bottom film strip presented by: Patrick Vuilleme).

Abner went to Makawide 3; he was searching for Hairy Octopus at the rubble area but fortunately he saw a different octopus that was well camouflage. The octopus felt harmed when Abner went closer; it swam away and change it color. That time Abner realized it was a Mototi Octopus (Octopus Mototi) it has white base color mixed with yellowish small spots along the body that started to appear and followed with the brown stripes. And a single blue ring at both side near it head, makes this octopus more exciting to see. Steven Kovacs caught some cool shots of the octopus; it was his first time sawing this octopus after couple of trip to Lembeh and he was excited. Good job Abner!

Taeko Torima is our friend from Japan. She had visited us 5 times now, and she always had a great time especially when she dove with Andy (our Japanese specialist dive master & guest relation). This time Taeko shared some of her great shots, and we thank her for it. Enjoy her masterpiece!

On Saturday, December 12th 2009, the Lembeh Strait community lost one of it’s finest young dive guides, 28 year old Yopie Mamamoba. Born in Tondano, Yopie moved to Lembeh Strait in 2001 where he began working as a a Dive Guide, met his wife Forni, and had his first child, Vladimir. In September of 2008, he joined the critters@lembeh team here at Lembeh Resort. Since then, he had become an integral part of the Lembeh Resort Family, impressing guests with his spotting abilities and sense of humor, working well with his fellow Dive Guides, and reaching the milestone of logging over 4,000 dives.

Most recently, Yopie had spent some time in Buyat Bay, participating in the exploration and establishment of a new dive destination. In September of this year, Yopie fell ill. Despite medical care, Yopie was unable to overcome his illness and passed away at home with his family and friends. Just after Yopie fell ill, he also found out his wife was expecting their second child. During the last year, many of you had the opportunity to dive with Yopie and we would like to give you the opportunity to contribute to a fund we have established for his children’s education and welfare. Please see the details below and enjoy the photos of Yopie and his family.


**Donation may be sent to: paypal account angelique@murexdive.com

Opo and Oxin again found two Blue Ring Octopus and apparently it was a pair that were ready to mate.
It was awesome moment and very cool; first Opo only found one small Blue Ring Octopus at the deep area about 20m, after spotting it, he went slowly up to 18 m and found a Painted Frogfish. Near the frogfish he found another Blue Ring but it was bigger size then the other one and here the excitement begins; the one tiny Blue ring from the deep was swimming to the shallow and swam close to the second octopus. At that time, Kerri were joining the dive and she realized the two octopus were a pair and ready to mate. Just then, the smaller blue ring (male) jumped onto the back of the larger one (female) and after couple minutes of being attached, the male released himself. The small male started to try again but this time it’s at front of the females head and all that resulted was a long struggle. “Very awesome moment!!!!” said Kerri.

Not to be outdone, Opo and Paulus found 4 Hairy Frogfish very close together at Hairball. Really, really, really Fantastic! 2009 is going out with a bang! as we’ve had super critters all over the place.
“Good job critters@lembeh team, keep up on the good work!”

Our critters@lembeh 2010 calendar is already in stock!

While you’re in Lembeh, make sure to pick one up!

Once a year we celebrate Clean Up Day with PADI AWARE, usually in September. This year we formed two groups—one to clean up underwater and one to clean up on land.

Our underwater group tackled the clean up at our House Reef. We didn’t find a lot off trash there because we are in the habit of cleaning up continuously.

Our land team cleaned up Waturiri beach at one of the villages near Lembeh Resort. At Waturiri beach, we were in for a real surprise. In August, the wind begins to blow from the south, with heavy impacts for Waturiri. All of the beach area was covered by trash. This saddened our land team, but they did their part, collecting 475 kg of trash. Un-organic trash that we collected was divided into plastic and hard material. We spent the whole day clearing half of the beach.

We hope we will be able to organize clean up activities more frequently and raise awareness about the problems of trash collecting on the beach. We want to thank our friend Stella Chung Freund from WWF for joining us to document Clean Up Day 2009. Thanks for all the pictures!

It was a fantastic trip for Fred Dion and his group! They really enjoyed their stay with us at Lembeh Resort and, of course, the excellent diving with Lembeh Divers. At the end of their stay, the resort put on a special barbeque party. The kids from Pintu Kota Kecil sang and entertained us as everyone enjoyed a romantic, relaxing dinner around the swimming pool.

In appreciation of their fantastic stay here at Lembeh, Fred’s group has collected some of their images to share. We will proudly present them on our News & Event section at (www.lembehresort.com/news) and Website Gallery. Thanks for the images and for the memories!