Indonesia: Sulawesi - July 2010
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation of an article originally written in French. I apologise for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have resulted. If you read French, click on the French flag below to access the original, correct text:
Français
Here they are at last! The little monsters of the Lembeh Strait... Open your eyes wide: these strange creatures are gifted in camouflage. A treasure of underwater biodiversity, which attracts here, in the north of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, divers from all over the world.
The Toadfish of Lembeh
To find these creatures, nothing is better than the eye of the local guide-divers. Specialists of the "muck-dive" (these observation dives at the bottom of the substrate where sand, sediments, coral debris and waste are mixed), they know perfectly the sites and the favorite hideouts of all the miniature monsters, which play hide and seek on the bottom.
I would never have found this little toadfish without Nofry-Ungke, guide at Other Lembeh Lodge. That's his finger, right there, next to the bug.
I love toad fish or frog fish (referred to as frog-fish in English, they are also called antennal in French). Fish that look like nothing and can barely swim.
Their fins are almost like legs and they move awkwardly, with a clumsy walk, on the bottom. They are often perched on sponges of the same color as themselves.
To feed, they wait for a prey to pass by and gobble it up. They have a lure on their forehead, a kind of mini fishing rod, which they shake to attract their future meal within reach of their mouth...
But the most sought after, the most appreciated, the most photographed of all the toadfish of Lembeh, is the hairy frog-fish. In other words, the "hairy" model.
An adorable mini-monster, met several times, who deigned to pose for me ...
????
The Lembeh Monsters Gallery
I let you discover below my small selection of beautiful monsters... I brought back more than a thousand underwater pictures from these five days of diving in the Lembeh Strait!
And I was particularly spoiled: among the rarities encountered, the blue-ringed octopus, the little blue ring octopuselusive and poisonous; a few small pegasus and others Rhinopias... connoisseurs will appreciate.
Nature has created and gathered here, under the surface, hallucinating creatures (the famous critters so much praised in the English brochures and sites about Lembeh)!
I stop here. Because I also have some nice nudibranchs and some cute seahorses to show you... That will be in a future post!
😉
For those who love underwater oddities... I went several times to Lembeh to dive, during my stays in Indonesia. To find all the posts of the blog, on this dive spot like no other, follow this link → All articles on Lembeh
