Lembeh Resort has a house reef with mandarin fish living on it but they found a new dive site just two minutes out into the Straits so they are currently giving their "own" mandarin site a rest. We hopped onto the boat and quickly arrived at the dive site. The corals there are rubbly, which is what the mandarin fish prefer for a habitat, but there were some very pretty encrusting pink sponges as well so there was some contrast. We departed the dock at 4:45 so it was still very light and as soon as we dropped into the water and swam down to the corals, we could see the mandarins already starting to roam the reef to do their courting ritual. For over an hour in 16' maximum depth we watched them court....it was amazing! These are large males, a lot of them were 5" long! I had lots of opportunities to capture close-up images which was lots of fun! There was only one actual mating that I observed and this pair only rose a couple of inches into the water column, rather than the 15-18" we've observed before, so catching them "in the act" was difficult. I managed two shots but they were out of focus, darn it!
As well as the beautiful mandarin fish, the reef there is covered in various varieties of cardinal fish, including the colorful pajama cardinals! We also saw lined pipefish and a very, very cool orange Tiger mantis shrimp peeping out of his hole watching all the action...I'm sure he managed to snare a few cardinal fish for dinner!
Today is our last day of diving in the Straits..we're going a bit north to California Dreaming and Angel's Window for some soft coral and wide angle diving...more later!
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