Night diving in Lembeh Straits gives NEW meaning to things that go BUMP in the night! You've all seen conch shells in the stores..well here, we watch the animals that live in them inch their way across the sand! Also found an interesting shell animal that I didn't recognize...shell is kinda flat & wavy and the animal moves on it's "foot" which looks like a paddle coming out of the front of the shell below one of its eyes!

We went out for the house mandaranfish dish. You swim out just before dusk to catch them in their "courting". Males & females run through the coral trying to find the right partner for the evening! We saw lots and lots of courting but little mating...guess their signals just weren't meshing last night. When they mate, they choose their partner and come together and move up 6-8 inches into the water column to mate. Their sperm/eggs mix and drift off in the currents, hoping eluding the ever-present cardinal fish who are waiting for an egg dinner.

Yopie led us to a small coral head and pointed out four "strings". Apparently these strings are pygmy pipehorses! Good thing the camera lens has better eyes than I! Any diver would just swim right by and think they were dust or algae hanging on the reefs!

Anyway, it was a great dive ended by a baby hairy octopus right in the shallows off the steps leading up to the dive shop. Don't pass up a night dive in Lembeh...you never know what critters await you!

Off to Bangka today....an hour or so north for some "blue water and soft coral dives".....see you tomorrow with more pictures.