405_April_24

After lunch we dived Ambon’s most famous muck site – Twilight Zone. This site could be called the scrap yard, as derelict boats line the shore and there is a huge pile of rubbish at the end of the bay. Even with all this debris it hosts an amazing array of critters. We started our dive under the stern of a derelict ship, in only 1m of water. Here Haris searched the soft corals, hydroids and sponges that grow on its hull searching for frogfish. This search proved very rewarding as he found four resident freckled frogfish, each a different colour. We then explored the sand and rubble, finding Napoleon snake eels, reptilian snake eels, morays, sea snakes, stonefish, cowfish, tobies and a pretty pair of

A rare algae octopus we found at Twilight Zone.

attached to their legs. We made sure these delicate little crabs were safely put back into hiding before a hungry fish made a meal out of them! Our afternoon dive at Rhino City was also excellent with more frogfish, ghostpipefish, jawfish, mantis shrimps, cowfish, cuttlefish and sea moths. A highlight of this site were two solar-powered nudibranchs crawling over the sand. We ended the day with another night dive at the Air Manus Jetty seeing pretty much the same species we had seen on the last night dive, and also found a rare nago snakemoray, a first for us. The next morning, we explored a different section of Kampung Baru. This site was overloaded with morays that squeeze into every available hole, sometimes five or more crammed in together. We noted white-eyed, bartailed, highfin, drab, snowflake and fimbriated. We also saw a yellow-lipped sea krait and its mimic, the banded snake

harlequin shrimps. A surprising highlight was a group of female bigfin reef squid laying their eggs on the bottom debris. The next morning, we did our first dive at Kampung Baru. The morning conditions were usually the best, with 15m visibility and calm seas. The dive got off to a great start with a banded snake eel out in the open just below the boat. We then explored the sand and rubble slope, seeing morays, painted frogfish, cowfish, leaf scorpionfish, ghostpipefish, seahorses, squid and cuttlefish. Under one ledge we found a group of three Morrison dragonets and were delighted by the number of boxfish, including black, spotted and a rare rhino boxfish. However, the stars of this site were two weedy scorpionfish, a purple one and an orange and pink paddle-flap variety.

With the great visibility we did a return to Twilight Zone after some morning tea. Considering we had only dived the site the day before, we didn’t expect to see much different. But day-to-day muck sites critters can completely change. Searching the slope, we found whitefaced waspfish, box crabs, elbow crabs, sea moths, seahorses, mantis shrimps, snake eels and hairy frogfish. Haris also found a very rare algae octopus. We had seen a number of these strange octopus in the Philippines seven years ago, but hadn’t seen one since. Haris then topped this by finding two boxer crabs with their sea anemone boxing gloves hiding under the rubble. A close inspection of both crabs revealed they were carrying eggs

A mimic octopus at Tirta Point.

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DIVE LOG Australasia #405 - April ‘24

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