divEr 56
cockatoo waspfish looks like a snap of
dead neptune grass, so much so that after
the dive I find that other photographers
have overlooked it while concentrating on
the pair of dwarf pipehorses hanging onto
the hydroid beside it.
To visualise a dwarf pipehorse, imagine
a pygmy seahorse that has been stretched
out and painted a dirty brown. Rather
than hanging onto gorgonians with their
tails, they hang onto scraps of weed and
hydroid with an equally shy expression.
Our guides find pygmy seahorses on at
least every other dive, and three species.
Most common is the classic Bargibant's
variety, covered in large textured
tubercules and coloured from deep pink
to an off-yellow to closely match their
gorgonian habitat.
Gorgonians don’t always have their
polyps out, and Denise’s pygmy seahorse
has cleverly evolved to match a gorgonian
with polyps retracted.
It has an embarrassed expression, like
that of a shaved cat.
Pontoh’s usually lurk a little shallower,
so we find them towards the end of a dive,
hanging onto hydroids among sponges,
tunicates and other growth.
These little beauties, a weedy orange-
yellow with white bellies, are much more
difficult to photograph.A
NOTHER DIVERSIONto an
alternative site comes about for
a different reason. The plan was for
a traditional muck-dive on a black-sand
slope in front of a local village, so our
guides go ashore to get the village chief ’s
permission.
Trouble is, he is still sound asleep and
must not be woken. Perhaps he had a late
night. We head for another site. A day later
we start at a different village for some
black sand and a chief who is awake.
It isn’t all about critters. As our guides
say in their briefings, they will find us the
macro subjects and we can look out for the
big stuff such as sharks, rays and turtles
for ourselves. We just need to keep an eye
out into the blue. But at 20m, do I reallyeat the coral, rather than digesting all the
zooxanthellaethey keep them functioning
to provide solar energy in their new host.
Kubur is a dive-site that is always well
out of the current; other sites are a bit
more fussy. Sali and nearby small islands
half-block the narrowest point of the
channel between Bacan and Halmahera,
creating a choke-point through which
2m of tide funnels.
Manager Stefano tells me that’s why he
and his two business partners selected
the location: well-fed marine life and
no-one else dives there. No resorts.
No liveaboards. No-one.
Well, I suppose at least one of them
must have gone past in a boat and given
it a go at some point before they leased the
land and started building the resort, but
for a diving tourist this is near-virgin
territory, open only since 2017.
Again on Google Maps, the satellite
picture shows nothing but trees. The
nearest town of any size is an hour away
by speedboat.T
HE CURRENT BETWEENthe islands
can really boil. I feel the dive-boat kick
as it crosses the whirlpools. Not that we
dive in that sort of current – if we arrive
at a site to find that the flow is not quite as
predicted, we move to another site nearby.
If it’s a previously undived site, you
might even get to name it.
The strongest current we experience
under water is easily manageable. We have
a little shadow from a headland that sets
up a gentle counter-current inshore from
the main flow. Many places wouldn’t even
call it a current. We dive there because the
original choice of site on the other side of
the headland looked a bit hairy.
The dive-briefing provides a choice.
Down the reef to 15m, then right shoulder
for more reef, or straight out onto the
sand. Every diver on the boat opts for the
sand, and our guides work their critter-
finding magic.
I’m called away from a seafan-
munching nudibranch to a trio of subjects
within inches of each other. A 15mmAbove left: Flamboyant
cuttlefish.Above, clockwise from
top: Cockatoo waspfish;
dwarf pipehorse;
Bargibant’s; Pontoh’s; and
Denise’s pygmy seahorses.Right: Juvenile sponge
filefish.Below: Returning to the
boat.Below right: Schultz's
pipefish.