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 three nights with two days of diving), then we offer complimentary access to our two-world famous house reef dive sites (“Hairball” and “Aw Shucks”) between the hours of 8AM and 6PM.
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 In the Lembeh Strait
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 location.
- 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 fantastic. 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.
- Volcanic (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.
- Lembeh was the first real muck diving destination in the world. Whilst we have critter infested black sandy slopes, Lembeh does also have some beautiful coral dive sites. Our House Reef is the biggest coral reef inside of the Lembeh Strait and great coral dive sites such as Angels Window and California Dreaming are a short boat ride away from the resort.
