Most of us have a wish list of places that we want to visit in our lifetime. I have one too and it’s really long. But to be honest, I’m not too sure whether I would have visited all of them in my lifetime. I hope I will!

As for diving, I have my wish list for dive destinations too. They’re all within the South East Asia region because here we have one of the best dive sites in the whole world. I feel really lucky for this. Cheaper flights, cheaper accommodation, cheaper food and all the additional budget can be channeled to diving expenses.

As of writing (April 2010), I’ve only been to Lembeh Straits. I’ll be diving in Anilao in a few weeks time, so that makes it two. I’ve dove many other places, but if I have an unlimited budget for diving, these would be my only places to dive. I’m planning to dive at these places at least once in the next 2-3 years.

1. Lembeh Straits (North Sulawesi, Indonesia)

Bernard & Wife at Lembeh Straits - © Bernard Loke

Top of the list would be Lembeh Straits, better known as the macro heaven or the heaven for underwater photographers. There are just so many wonderful, unique, rare, tiny, ugly, you-name-it creatures in the waters of Lembeh Straits.

Some of my friends even came up with a list of creatures they want to see (and it runs to hundreds) during their trips. And they won’t give up going to Lembeh Straits again and again just to see everything on the list.

I was there back in December 2009 but I only managed to dive there for 2 days. My other 5 days was spread between diving in Manado and Bunaken National Park.  That’s obviously too little and not enough. The next time (very soon) I’m going back there, I’ll be diving exclusively in Lembeh Straits. There are a whole bunch of creatures on my list which I’ve not seen yet!

2. Anilao (Batangas, Philippines)

Corals at Anilao, Philippines - courtneyplatt@flickr

Anilao is another macro heaven for underwater photographers. It’s one of the favorite dive destinations for many of my diver friends especially those who are into underwater photography like me. One of them even dove there more than 10 times and he is still not bored of it yet. So how can I not dive there for at least once?

I’ll be there in a few weeks time, so I’m really looking forward for it.

3. Raja Ampat (West Papua, Indonesia)

Raja Ampat Islands in Indonesia

I’ve heard of Raja Ampat even before I started diving back in 2008! Some of my friends were saying, You’ve to go to Raja Ampat when you have the chance!, and I was like, where the hell is this place?

For most divers in the South East Asia region, Raja Ampat is among the top 3 destinations for them besides Lembeh Straits. Some would call it the excotic dive destination. The good (and bad) thing about Raja Ampat is that it’s mostly accessible via Live-on-Boards (LOB) which are usually 6-8 days. And that would mean I’ll be disconnected from the hectic world and it’s just diving all the way!

4. Komodo Island (Indonesia)

Komodo Island - thejerk@flickr

Komodo Island made it to the headlines in 2008 when 5 divers got lost from their group during their dive. It became even scarier when they came face to face with the Komodo dragon, the world’s largest lizards.

Diving in Komodo Island is usually via Live-on-Boards (LOB) which would bring divers to some of the most secluded and exotic dive sites.

5. Pulau Sipadan (Sabah, Malaysia)

A School of Barracudas at Sipadan

Ask any Malaysian diver whether they’ve been to Pulau Sipadan and you’ll probably get yes for an answer. Rightly so. Pulau Sipadan has always been the forefront of scuba diving in Malaysia since it was mentioned as one of the top 10 dive destinations in the world quite some time ago. And since then, divers have been flooding the island until a point that they need to close down the resorts in Pulau Sipadan and moved them over to the nearby Pulau Mabul to preserve it’s ecosystem.

Wait. Why have I not been there? I’ve actually planned to go there. I’ve my air tickets booked and almost booked my accommodations. But I decided to give it a miss so that I can go to Lembeh Straits.

The reason?

There are only two things that you won’t see in your Lembeh Straits trip (including Manado and Bunaken) compared to Pulau Sipadan – school of barracudas doing the famous tornado and jacks. Other than that, Lembeh Straits has a lot more – Rhinopias, Mimic Octopus, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Electric Clam just to name a few.

There are other destinations on my list as well, like Maldives, Tubbataha Reef in southern Philippines, Malapascua for sharks, Bali for manta rays and moola moola, Palau in Micronesia..and the list goes on and on.

I finally took the plunge yesterday and bought the final piece of my own scuba diving gear, the regulator set. Got it from my usual local dive shop, Scuba Dynamics in Desa Sri Hartamas.

I’ve actually been looking for a regulator set for sometime now and finally they arrived to our Malaysian shores last week. Previously, most of the dive shops that I went to survey the price ran out of stock for this brand and everyone was telling me, “Come back mid January…”.

So I got myself a Mares Prestige 12S regulator, Mares Rover octopus and Mares Mission 1 gauge (I’ve got a D4 dive computer, so the pressure gauge is sufficient).

Why Mares and not others like Atomic, Sherwood, Apex, etc..?

The main reason is because of it’s Vortex Assisted Design or VAD. I’m not going to dwell into how VAD works as it’s going to take some explanation to do. Simply put, it makes breathing easier. Less work is needed to breathe in the same amount of air on other regulators. As the tagline says, As Regular & Natural As You Breathe.

I actually made up my mind on the Mares Prestige 12S regulator one month ago when I haven’t even seen it. But when I was at the dive shop, there was also the Mares Abyss 22 and Mares Proton Metal 42 on display. And this didn’t help in my decision making.

Which one should I take? I thought I’ve made up my mind, but now what happened?

The Proton Metal 42 certainly looks good. Too good in fact. The weight and size of the MR42T first stage is half  of the MR12T for Prestige. That itself is very tempting. And to make things even worse, the Proton Metal 42 second stage looks real good with it’s metal finishing and smaller size.

And it costs around 80%  more than the Prestige. That’s a big No-No.

Took my time and toyed around with all 3. Went home. Thought about it for the whole night and finally went for the Prestige 12S as decided earlier. It’s good enough for my style of diving and most importantly within my budget. The price difference between the Prestige 12S and Proton Metal 42 could buy me another dive computer for my wife in the future, which in my opinion is a wiser idea.

Now, I can’t wait to try out these regulators and see how natural they breathe underwater!

It’s been a few weeks now since I came back from diving in Manado. I did wrote something about the trip but most of them are only photos I took with a few lines.

So I thought I’d write more about the trip.

It was actually planned mid of 2009. We planned to be there from Christmas right up to New Year’s day. At that time, I didn’t know whether I could make it or not looking at the nature of my job. Since I’m writing about it now, that means I made it to Manado.

There were 10 of us in the group. A group big enough for us to have a boat and 3 dive guides to ourselves. We stayed and dove with Laras Casse Resort in Manado. But why Laras Casse and not others?

One of the reasons is that the diving prices in Manado are almost 50% cheaper than those in Lembeh Straits. We did made it to Lembeh though on 2 days. It would take about 1.5 hours drive from Manado to the port in Bitung town. Another 1.5 hours drive back to Manado, with everyone in the van sticky and stinking like a fish.

But that’s not the main reason they chose Laras Casse Resort. It was because everyone wanted to dive with the best dive guide in that area, Noldy Rumengan. His ability to spot the tiniest critter in second to none. In 2007, he discovered a new species of seahorse while doing his safety stop in Lembeh Straits. Today, the seahorse is named after him, Kyonemichthys Rumengani.

We weren’t so lucky though. Out of 6 diving days, we only got to dive with Noldy on one day in Lembeh Straits. It was because the famous underwater photographer, William Tan was around at that time too. Noldy is his personal dive guide, so everyone has to give way.

Personally, that didn’t matter so much to me because my dive guide, Melky was good enough to spot all the critters for my camera too.

Bernard & Melky - © Bernard Loke

Laras Casse Resort's Restaurant Overlooking Bunaken Island - © Bernard Loke

Laras Casse Boats' Parking Bay - © Bernard Loke

Dive Sites in Manado & Bunaken - © Bernard Loke

Ever wondered why this pretty and unique crab is called a boxer crab, or sometimes pom-pom crab instead of other names?

Let me give you a hint – look at it’s pincers. Does it look like a boxer’s gloves or it’s holding a pom-pom? That’s where it’s name come from.

It’s not a gloves nor it’s a pom-pom. The crab is actually holding a stinging anemone corals on it’s pincers to protect itself from it’s preys.

The crab in the first photo is very small; about 1cm from it’s left to right leg. The crab in the second and third photo is slightly bigger, about 2.5cm from it’s left to right leg.

View On Top of A Boxer Crab - © Bernard Loke

Boxer Crab - © Bernard Loke

Boxer Crab - © Bernard Loke

Ever wonder what would it be like if someone is watching you getting intimate with your partner?

We did exactly that; with the mandarin fishes.

One of the highlights of the trip to Manado was to see the mandarin fish mating. I never seen mandarin fishes mate since I started diving, so you can see that I’m overly excited over this.

Before the dive, the group of us were joking that we were intruding the privacy of the fishes by watching them mate. And worse still, most of us went with our cameras; some were taking photos, some were shooting videos!

Those who did not have a camera, went with torch lights!

Initially we were supposed to do the mandarin fish mating dive (the only purpose of the dive was to see them mate) in Lembeh Straits. We planned for 3 day dives and 1 sunset dive for the mandarin fish. But when we surfaced at the end of our third dive, we were already running out of time. We didn’t have enough surface interval time for the mandarin fish dive. Almost everyone was doing 70 minutes per dive on average.

Our dive guide, Melky told us that we can also do the mandarin fish dive back in the house reef in Manado the next day. But, it wouldn’t be that fun.

There are only about 5-6 mandarin fishes in Manado compared to those in Lembeh Straits. Apparently, there’s a whole big bunch of them in Lembeh and it would be like watching a mass mandarin fish orgy.

But, at least that’s better than nothing. We have 1 diving day left, so we have to do our mandarin fish dive in Manado. Otherwise, I’ll need to wait for the next trip there.

So, Manado it is; the Laras Casse House Reef.

To see the mandarin fishes mate, we needed to be on time. Otherwise we’ll miss the spectacle and wait for the next day, or worse still the next trip. The sun sets at about 5.15pm and everyone needs to be in the water by then.

5 minutes to swim to the dead coral rubble where the mandarin fishes stay. Another 5 minutes for the dive guide to position us at our best position around the dead corals so that we can have the best view of the fishes mating. The depth was around 9.8m.

The surroundings were getting very dark once we were all in our position. We waited…and waited.

After a few minutes passed, we still did not spot any mandarin fish getting out of the dead corals. No torch were lit up, otherwise they will shy away.

And suddenly there was this big male swimming out of the corals followed by a few smaller females. I think they were just flirting around and waiting for the right partner to mate. The bigger males will always try to fend off the smaller males and it seems like the females too, prefer the bigger males.

Each time the torch was shined towards them, they immediately went back into the corals.

So we waited. All torch were switched off. We could still see but it’s quite dim. We waited for them to mate before shining the light at them. Slowly, they emerged from the corals, side by side with female resting on the male’s pectoral fin. This time, even with our torch shined directly at them, they still mate as though no one was watching. I guess it’s getting late already and they need to get today’s job done!

After a while…it went BOOOMMM!

Everyone was screaming. But with the regulator in the mouth, all I heard was Hmmm..Ummmm…Hhhuummm!

The mating was successful and the eggs were release. It was be seen in the video towards the end.

This video was shot by one of the divers in our group, Ah Boon. I was positioned at the worst position possible and all I saw was the backside of the fishes. And to make things worse, my mask fogged!

All thanks to the excitement to watch them mate that I forgot to wash the mask earlier.

Orang Utan Crab On A Soft Coral - © Bernard Loke

This little crab is about 3cm in size and very active. It kept jumping around and often fell off the soft coral making is a quite hard to photograph. With every 2-3 shots, I need to pick it up from the sand and place it back onto the coral again.

Nevertheless, it was really good photographing this little crab as it’s really unique; because it looks like a orangutan!

I saw it during my first dive in Manado  but I did not manage to have a good photograph of it because there were too many divers with the camera. Luckily enough, it appeared again on my last dive of the trip. Otherwise, it’ll need to wait until my next trip.

A Pair of Young Harlequin Shrimps - © Bernard Loke

We found these two harlequin shrimps while diving at the Laras Casse House Reef in Manado. They were so active moving around that the dive guide spent several minutes arranging them side by side for the camera.

Halimeda Ghost Pipefish - © Bernard Loke

Look properly and see whether you can spot it’s eyes.

I came across this unique species of ghost pipefish on 3 dives throughout my entire trip to Manado.

At first, I was pretty clueless the when the dive guide pointed this leaf to me. It was right beside the green Halimeda algae and I thought to myself,

Why are you pointing a leaf to me?

Then, he moved one particular leaf away from the rest and only then did I know it was a fish. It was about 5cm in length and the head pointing downwards. I didn’t know it was called a Halimeda Ghose Pipefish until we did our creature identification after the dive.

Hippocampus Severnsi - © Bernard Loke

Say hello to my new tiny little friend, Hippocampus Severnsi, or commonly called Severn’s Pygmy Seahorse.

I first met him while diving at 16m depth in Tanjung Mandolang in Manado.

It was hiding at one of the sea fans and my dive guide was pointing it to me with his fingers but I can’t see it. So I went nearer and nearer and I thought, where the heck is this little pygmy?

And there it was, less than 1cm in size.