418 Dive Log Australasia JUNE 2026.pdf

A Marine Naturalist goes to Lembeh Text and photos by Mike Scotland C harles Darwin and Alfred Wallace were two of great minds of the nineteenth century. Together, they refined the Theory of Evolution. But...As a diver, I feel for them! They missed the best of the Galapagos and South East Asia. The cornucopia of life beneath the waves. For us divers, who know have seen fabulous living treasures beneath the sea, we would be saying “Charles and Alfred, look under the boat, please!” Of course, scuba had not been invented then and snorkeling was rare in 1855. Imagine what they would have written about if they were scuba divers.

This Porcelain Crab, Lissoporcellana nakasonei is commensal on a soft coral.

Life, of course, originated in the sea! I can imagine if Charles and Alfred Wallace were alive today and enrolled in my Open Water scuba class. I could visualize them after completing the first ocean dive, chattering away in excited voices. ‘What about the rays and sharks?’ ‘I wonder if they had a common ancestor?’ Those eight species of Wrasse are a perfect example of adaptive radiation. Mike, have you got any reference books on Nudibranchs?

Darwin’s HMS Beagle would be full of fish tanks. Wallace’s famous collection of eighty thousand beetles would be thirty thousand Gobies and wrasse, in jars. The British Museum would be full of Asia’s best marine critters. Wallace would have lived at Lembeh for years instead of trekking for fourteen years in the remote jungles of S.E. Asia. Both legends of science had enormous enthusiasm, great powers of observation and

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Dive Log Australasia #418 June ’26

www.divelog.net.au