Come Lembeh
The Lembeh Strait has long been established as one of the best macro diving spots on the planet. Although famous for its “muck diving “ on black volcanic slopes the area also boasts some wonderful coral dive sites ( including our housereef ).
We schedule 3 day dives per day on our twin engine fiberglass dive boats to a choice of more than 60 dive spots in the Lembeh Strait. After every dive the boats return back to the resort so you can enjoy your surface interval by the swimming pool or make any adjustments to your camera before your next dive.
A night dive by boat is available daily, providing we have a minimum of two people.
If you have booked a diving package (starting from four nights with three days diving), then we offer free access to our two world famous house reef dive sites (“Hairball” and “Aw Shucks”) from 07:30 AM – 18.00 PM.
Our fully equipped dive center has a spacious camera room and dedicated camera rinse tanks. There is also a guest dive gear locker room, with gear rinse tanks and showers for after the dive. Our dive guides are trained in camera handling and are specialised in working in Lembeh’s unique underwater environment.
All the videos below were taken in Lembeh. Unfortunately you cannot view the videos from within Indonesia, without a VPN, as Vimeo is blocked.
Muck Diving and Clear Water Diving
Ambon Bay, where the muck diving is, has an incredible array of rare critters, including Ambon Scorpionfish, Rhinopias, Mimic and Wonderpus Octopus, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, many many Nudibranchs, Frogfish, Harlequin Shrimp, Coleman Shrimp and much much more.
There is also always the chance to see perhaps the rarest underwater critter, the Psychedelic Frogfish, only ever found in Ambon.
We offer diving to both muck and coral sites, giving you an unique opportunity to dive macro and wide angle.
Muck Diving
Muck diving or Critter (Macro) Diving, as we prefer to call it, gives you the chance to see some of the rarest and most beautiful underwater creatures. There are two main factors that make a great muck diving locations.
- Nutrition. You need lots of nutrition in the water to feed the small crustacean and fish that will form the beginning of a plentiful food chain. While crystal clear blue water is wonderful, it is also lacking in the nutrients that allow great critter diving. In great muck locations the visibility is never good. The particles in the water are eaten by small crustaceans and juvenile fish. These in turn become a plentiful food supply to larger fish. And as these muck locations also contain a lot of sandy areas, as either a predator or prey, you need great camouflage to take advantage to the environment. This means very interesting critters. Frogfish, Seahorses, Scorpionfish, Octopus, Crabs, Shrimps, Eels, Nudibranchs, Puffers, Soles and so much more thrive is this environment.
- Dark (black) sand. With all these wonderful creatures it is natural that you want to photograph or video them. Though white clean sand looks wonderful, it is not so good when you want to take images of critters living on it. The light from your strobe or video bounces back into the lens, giving very bad contrast and over-exposed shots. Capturing images with a dark sand background makes a huge difference.
Clear Water Side
On the south side of Ambon and around Haruku Island we have wonderful coral walls, sea mounds, drop-offs, swim-thru’s, larger fish and wonderfully clear water. It’s not all about the muck and we love clear water diving too. The south side of Ambon and Haruku is largely virgin diving with deep walls, incredibly healthy corals, swim-thrus and caves, sea mounds in Baguala Bay. We have even found an incredible cave with stalactites and the home to a school of Flashlight Fish that mesmerize you when you turn your lights off. It’s the perfect twin for muck diving.
While we do, of course, find macro critters here too, you can break out your wide angle lens and enjoy crystal clear water. If you want to keep you macro lens on, then we can find creitters that we do not see in Ambon Bay
All our boats have toilets, hot food, soft drinks, charging stations, Wi-Fi and fresh water. Kaj and Barb have designed everything the way they wanted to, to make sure that your stay is a comfortable and easy as possible.
