W
HEN READING AN ADDRESS,
I tend to cut corners. If I know
where a location is from the
first line or two, I don’t need to waste my
time reading the rest.
The first line tells me that Sali Bay is
on Sali Island. Indonesia has more than
17,000 islands, so it’s hardly surprising
that I have never heard of it.
The next part of the address is
Halmahera. I haven’t heard of that either,
but apparently it’s the biggest island in
North Maluca. Maluca sounds familiar,
but I can’t put my finger on it on the map.
Indonesia. Well, I know where that is.
Looks like my short-circuited reading of
addresses doesn’t work here.
Before Google Maps this would have
entailed an outing to my local library to
look through atlases. Nowadays, I start
entering text in a browser search bar and,
before I’ve finished typing, a suggestion
comes up for me to click on. Ping. Now
I know where Sali Bay is.
Even so, I know only because of the
resort location. Google Maps doesn’t have
its own label for the island.
For those with a bit of Indonesian
geography imprinted in their minds,
picture where Manado and Lembeh are at
the northern tip of Sulawesi. Then draw a
line just south of eastward to West Papua
and Raja Ampat. North Maluca is
the group of islands halfway between
the two.
Halmahera is the largest island in the
group. And Sali is a tiny blip between the
south-west edge of Halmahera and the55 divErCRITTER DIVER
A mighty army
of tiny critters,
that is, at a near-
virgin site in
up-and-coming Halmahera.
JOHN LIDDIARDreportsmoderately sized island of Bacan.
A new diving location brings
heightened anticipation. I have a pretty
good idea of what to expect, but it’s not
until the first dive that I confirm that for
myself. It’s all about tiny critters.
We head along Besar island to a
crooked inlet at Kubur. The top few metres
are reef and from there downwards silty
sand. Muck-diving without the muck.
My second photograph of the trip is a
Halameda ghost pipefish, a ghost pipefish
variation camouflaged to hide in the
clumpy green halameda algae, so we’re off
to a good start. If you’re wondering, I took
a warm-up photo of a warty nudibranch.
There are four dive-guides in the water,
with only two or three divers each.
Rather than disperse, the guides work as
a loose team, staying at the limit of visual
contact and communicating critter finds
to each other. More than half of us are
photographers, and as we trade subjects
I barely have a free minute.
The weirder and harder to find a critter
is, the better. The guides are all from
Manado and know their stuff. A well-
disguised solar-powered nudibranch fits
the bill. Nudibranchs are fussy about their
food, and those in this group enjoy soft
corals, which contain symbiotic
zooxanthellae algae. When nudibranchs ☛SALI
ARMY
divErNEt.comAbove, from top: Looking
for critters in Sali Bay;
Halameda ghost pipefish;
solar-powered nudibranch.