Indonesia pics-more added

[tang daddy]

I love the diversity and colours of inverts, fish and corals.... I just got back from Vietnam where I went diving and saw similiar Acropora forests, clams, fungia, anemones and leathers!!

I will have to put this on one of my next destinations, How deep were the dives?

I was suprised most of mine were between 3ft to 20ft quite shallow and the clarity was great.

[parkinsn]

Nice pic's Scott. That must have been a sweet trip!!

[Argentiner]

Chris88, the SPS weren't browned out at all. I just don't have a strobe light to bring out the colours, and you're never going to see a reef like Lobsterboy's tank. My closeups with the flash you can see colour, but some of the SPS are brown, it's just that you won't see them brought into an aquarium store, just like a boring coloured fish. A lot of the corals you see are soft corals too, which are usually a brown colour. I never saw any dead coral anywhere which was amazing, especially considering there was garbage floating everywhere on the surface.

All of the dives around Bunaken were cliff dives and we would go down to about 100ft. I actually liked it when we were first decending or re-surfacing and on top of the reef as the colours were brighter and the coral usually thicker. If I had more time, I would have done a dive and just stayed on top of the reef instead of going along the cliff. The muck diving at Lembeh was always about 22m max. Really poor visibility and not a real "reef", although you would see a lot of goniopora, some elegence coral and all different anenomes and the odd brain, hammer/frogspawn or soft coral. It was mainly just for the critters.

[Delphinus]

I've always felt that that the stuff that interests us coral geeks the most is generally in the top 20' of reef anyhow, the most colourful stuff is up there. I've never really wanted to go much deeper myself. The stuff that scares me the most is structure dives like wrecks or whatever - Yikes! I couldn't do it. Happy to stay near the surface but I like having a tank on my back so I don't have to go up every 30 seconds.

Neat shot of the carpet. Love the shot of the Banggai's too. Think I've read that they stick around anemones while juvenile but I think as they get older they move on. They don't really go "in" to the anemones like an anemonefish would but they still reap the benefit of protection.

My dad is from Indonesia (well, more technically "was born there and lived there for the first part of his life") and it's on my bucket list of places to visit ... although I can't realistically foresee a time in my life it will happen at this point. Might have to say "screw it all", sell the house and buy a sailboat. Been working on my wife to accept this plan ever since we started dating some .. er .. never mind how many years ago that was. Another 20 years or so I'm sure I'll get her to buy into the idea!!!

Fantastic shots. Thanks for sharing. Seeing the real reefs brings it all home to me. I have to admit that I have a hard time reconciling keeping an aquarium at home, when I am somewhere warm and that has reefs, that the reason I am not there more often is probably BECAUSE of that aquarium. It's an odd dichotomy: I love the reefs but because I keep a small one at home I can't go see the real ones more often.

[Argentiner]

Yes, I agree having an aquarium makes it more difficult to travel. And if you do go, it's always in the back of your mind that the tank might be crashing back at home.

The bangaii's didn't rub up against the anenome but were right inside all the tentacles. I did see one huge bangaii and it wasn't around an anenome so you might be right that they only like them when they are smaller. Wow, I never knew they could get as big as the one adult I saw.

North Sulawesi is definetely the best diving I've seen and from chatting with other travellers, it was great in a lot of places around the country. A few said the "best" they saw was North East Borneo close to Malaysia. I would think Raja Ampat would be amazing as well.

[andestang]

Some really great shots Scott ! That carpet sure is a big fella and looks like it was ready to pinch off a young one just left from its mouth/center. Thanks for sharing.