405_April_24

A group of moon-faced sea slugs.

A freckled frogfish at Twilight Zone.

eel. Haris pointed out juvenile warty and painted frogfish, a cute common seahorse, nudibranchs, longarm octopus and cuttlefish. Our mid-morning dive saw us return to Laha 2 to explore more of the sand and seaweed at this site. Boxfish, cowfish, tobies, nudies, mantis shrimps were everywhere. We also found several juvenile black coloured ribbon eels and two very rare banded mud morays out on patrol. There was even a group of bluespotted maskrays in one sand patch. The highlight of

this dive were two spectacular Honshu pipefish under a ledge. These lovely blue and yellow striped fish were wonderful to watch as they slowly danced around each other. That afternoon we planned to do Air Manus Tower, but when we pulled up the water was brown, from what looked like runoff from the nearby river. We turned the boat around and instead redid Twilight Zone. That night we signed up for the blackwater dive. The deep water in Amboyna Bay is a good

site for blackwater dives, but with it also a very busy waterway, the crew have to be very careful where they do this. We headed several kilometres into the bay then dropped ropes and lights. Hanging under the boat we saw small fish, sea jellies and comb jellies, and plenty of plastic bags. Unfortunately, the unusual critters eluded us this night. The next morning we did our last dive at Kampung Baru. This was another great muck dive, we saw the purple weedy scorpionfish again and a school of feeding mouth mackerel. Other highlight from this dive included a wonderpus, an oriental flying gurnard and many cute black-patch triggerfish. We had a great time at Ambon with Spice Island Divers and only scratched the surface of the great muck dives in the area. We know we will be back as there are many more muck sites to explore and many more muck critters to be seen, including the very elusive psychedelic frogfish.

One of Spice Island Divers boats.

More information visit - www.spiceislanddivers.com

The seafront villas at Spice Island Divers.

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DIVE LOG Australasia #405 - April ‘24