The story I wrote last month about The Cave Where Turtles Die, at Pulau Sipadan, has turned out to be the most popular story ever published on The Right Blue. I guess it just captured people's imagination.
Now a reader has alerted us to a video of the Sipadan Turtle Cave, produced and posted to YouTube by Dutch diver Paul Vermeulen. It looks to us as though the diver only visited the first chamber of the cave -- or at least that is all he filmed. Watch for shots of the entrance to the cave, shot from inside. Spooky!
(If the video does not play or display properly above, click here to view it on YouTube.)
Showing posts with label Celebes Sea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celebes Sea. Show all posts
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Sipadan Turtle Cave: The Video
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Sipadan Island - Being there, Part 3
This is the third in a multi-article series about Pulau Sipadan, a magical dive destination off the coast of Borneo. If you have read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, you know that the accommodations at the 'resorts' on Pulau Sipadan in 1993 were rather spartan. One thing that was not lacking, however, was excellent food.
There are trade-offs inherent in traveling to remote locations such as Pulau Sipadan to dive. The more remote the destination, the more likely it is that the underwater environment will be relatively unspoiled. At the same time, less developed destinations are likely to entail certain privations. In the previous articles, for example, I described the lodging and bathing facilities at Sipadan Island, which were rather spare.
Facilities for traveling divers usually offer all-inclusive packages -- lodging, diving, and meals. In fact, at more remote spots like Pulau Sipadan, there is no other option. There are no off-site restaurants or snack bars. It's a case of eat whatever they provide, or don't eat at all.
Traveling divers tend to be a hungry lot. During stays at dedicated dive resorts, and on live-aboard dive boats, it is not unusual to make five dives every day. All that physical activity can really work up an appetite! God forbid you are stuck at a place that has lousy or insufficient food when there is no alternative place to eat.
Like many other traveling divers, we learned to take along some food items on these trips -- peanut butter, canned tuna, packets of dried soups, etc. It's impossible to haul enough food to live on for ten days, but there were times when we dipped into those supplies to supplement for sparse meals, or when the food offered was, erm, unappetizing. (Don't get me started on some of the weird things we have eaten while ensconced at some of these places!)
Fortunately food was not a problem at Sipadan. In fact, the daily mealtime offerings at Pulau Sipadan Resort (PSR) were nothing short of amazing, especially in light of the fact that every tidbit had to be imported, and the kitchen facilities were as basic as the rest of the accommodations.
A highlight of each day was the dinner buffet, although I should note that it helped if you liked fish and other seafood. Each day, local fishermen paddling open canoes would arrive at the beach to sell their catch. (See photo at the top of this page.) The cooks would go down to the water's edge to bargain with the fishermen, and soon we would see them carrying fresh fish -- often still flapping -- back to the kitchen to prepare for what we all called The Catch of the Day Buffet.
Depending on which kind of fish the cooks bought from the fishermen, we had baked fish, poached fish, fried fish, fish with sauce, fish curry -- you get the idea -- and it was all very good. Along with the fish dish, the buffet always had homemade soup, big bowls of rice and steamed vegetables, and lots of fresh fruit. We never, ever went to bed hungry.
One day in particular, we all felt like we had hit the jackpot. The fishermen arrived with a very large billfish lashed to the side of their (nearly swamped) canoe. Considering that these fishermen had no tackle except hand lines, it seemed inconceivable that they could have caught such a fish, but they had. That's Jerry posing with the fish in the photo at left. To give you an idea of just how big that fish was, I should mention that Jerry is six feet tall.
I'm sure that such a prize fish must have fetched quite a sum for the fishermen, but the guests and staff at PSR were the real winners. With limited refrigeration (run on a portable generator), it was necessary to eat as much of the fish as we could, as soon as we could. What a feast we all had that evening and the next.
As a main course, we had grilled steaks from that big fish. There was so much of it that everyone was encouraged to have second and third helpings: better to eat it than to let it spoil for lack of refrigerated storage. Some of the choicest flesh of the big fish was sliced up for sashimi.
About two thirds of the divers staying at PSR at the time were Westerners -- mostly Europeans, plus the two of us Americans. The rest were Asian nationalities, as were most of the staff. When one of the cooks brought out a huge, heaping platter of sashimi, Jerry's eyes lit up. One of the British divers, a new arrival on the island, asked, "What the &$%@ is that??"
"Sashimi," Jerry told him. "You know, raw fish." The Brit made an awful face, shuddered, and walked away muttering something about cat food.
None of the other Europeans seemed interested in the sashimi either, but we lined up with all of the Asians to take our turn at the sashimi platter. When we got to the table and held out our plates, the server asked us, "Aren't you guys Americans?" We nodded yes. "Americans like sashimi??" he asked with raised eyebrows -- and then added, "I don't think so."
"We're from Hawaii," Jerry told him, as if that explained everything. Turned out it did.
"Oh, I see," said the server with a knowing grin. "So you're used to Asian food then." He heaped big slabs of the glistening sashimi onto our plates, while another server handed each of us a small bowl of shoyu and wasabi. It was a heavenly treat. We went back for seconds and thirds of that!
It turned out that the poor Brit who apparently found the thought of sashimi so distasteful didn't much like fish to begin with, much less raw fish. The servers noticed that he took none of the fish -- only rice and vegetables and fruit. One of them sprinted back to the kitchen, and returned about 15 minutes later with a plate. On the plate sat a grilled pork chop. He set it down in front of the Englishman, announcing, "Special for you."
For the rest of his stay at Sipadan, the non-fish eating diver was served a pork chop or a sausage every day. How can you quibble with hospitality like that?
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
BNSullivan.jpg "Blue Spotted Stingray (Taeniura lymma) at Pulau Sipadan")
Monday, June 30, 2008
Sipadan Island - Being there, Part 2
Yesterday, I began to tell about what it was like to stay at Sipadan Island in 1993. These days, staying on Sipadan Island is not allowed. Following a 2004 decision by the Malaysian government, lodging facilities on the island were closed down in an effort to preserve Sipadan's fragile ecosystem. Divers can still visit the dramatic walls and lush reefs of Sipadan on day trips, but they must stay elsewhere. In 1993, however, there still were a few facilities on the little island where visiting divers and sport fishermen were accommodated. Those 'resorts' were only for the hardier breed of traveler, however.
We stayed at an establishment called the Pulau Sipadan Resort (PSR), which could accommodate about 25 to 30 guests at a time. The place was well run -- clean and organized, with a friendly and competent staff who did an amazingly good job, given what they had to work with.
The accommodations on Sipadan were adequate, but spare. As I mentioned yesterday, the island was (and is still) without electricity and other utilities. Each of the lodging facilities had its own generator to produce electricity for its own use.
All supplies used on the island -- fuel for the boats and generators, foods, beverages, cleaning supplies, and so on -- had to be imported by boat from mainland Borneo. Potable water was regularly delivered to the island this way as well, arriving in large plastic bladders. Potable water was a precious commodity on the island, and it was carefully rationed.
Lodging consisted of small thatch-roofed huts, with virtually no amenities, save for beds and some plain wooden shelves. The huts had no running water -- much less bathrooms.
Aside from the resorts, there have been no permanent human settlements on the island, in part because there is no reliable source of fresh water on Pulau Sipadan. When the resorts were established a system was devised to tap into a brackish water source in the island's interior. That water was unsuitable for drinking or cooking, but good enough for bathing and cleaning.
Bathing on Sipadan entailed a ritual that became a part of the adventure of the place. PSR had a single bath house for everyone to use. It was an oblong structure made of concrete blocks. Inside, a row of stalls lined each side, and at the end of the corridor between the rows of stalls were a few sinks. The toilet stalls were on one side of the building, and on the opposite side were the shower stalls. As best we can recall, there were six toilet stalls, and six shower stalls. Nothing too unusual so far.
The bathing ritual began outside the bath house where prospective bathers lined up at designated hours, carrying their towels, robes, soap, and shampoo. Alongside the path leading to the bath house was a stack of plastic pails. Each bather was instructed to pick up a pail.
Near the door to the bath house, a few PSR staff manned a charcoal fire over which a very large cast iron kettle was suspended. In the kettle, fresh water simmered, warmed by the charcoal fire. Just before entering the bath house, each bather held out his or her pail, and the staff used a large metal dipper to fill the pail with warm, fresh water.
Each of the shower stalls had a pipe -- no shower head -- that emitted lukewarm brackish water. We soaped up and washed with the brackish water, and then poured the fresh water from the plastic pails over ourselves to rinse.
By the way, we were never alone in the shower stalls: several pairs of eyes always watched us as we bathed. The eyes belonged to creatures from the island's dense jungle behind the bath house. The creatures -- mostly large Monitor Lizards, and the occasional Coconut Crab -- liked to hang out in the bath house.
The lizards, which were between one and two feet long with a hefty girth, liked to walk along the tops of the partitions between the stalls, and from that vantage point, they 'monitored' the bathers. This was a bit unsettling at first, but it soon became apparent that they only wanted to watch, and by day three, we just ignored them.
The big crabs were more difficult to ignore. If they felt challenged, they would rear up, holding out their rather large pincers in a threat display. Those pincers are capable of cracking open coconuts -- hence the name 'Coconut Crab' -- so when one appeared in a shower stall where we were standing naked, we were inclined to behave in a way we hoped the crab would not perceive as unfriendly.
Of all the aspects of the Sipadan bathing ritual, though, the thing that became legend among the guests was that big iron kettle of water simmering over the fire outside the bath house door. The daily allotment of warm, fresh rinse water was welcome, of course, but that big pot also evoked cartoon-inspired images of cannibal tribes. After all, this was Borneo. We all joked that, should we see sliced carrots and onions floating in that kettle one day, we would know we were about to become soup!
Next, for Wordless Wednesday, we will post a photo of one of Sipadan's reef creatures. After that, we have a few more stories to tell about Pulau Sipadan.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Sipadan Island - Being there, Part 1
In the previous two posts, we told the story of our first trip to Sipadan Island, also known as Pulau Sipadan, a remote oceanic island off the coast of Borneo. It was a long and complicated journey, and we arrived on the little island in a dazed and disheveled state.
Because of its physical remoteness, one had to exert considerable effort just to get there: Pulau Sipadan is not on the way to or from anywhere else. As someone we know described it, "Sipadan is not exactly at the end of the Earth, but you can see it from there."
The island is a nature preserve, and a nesting ground for sea turtles. At the time we first went there (1993), the island had three resorts (I use the term loosely) catering primarily to divers and sport fishermen. Then, in 2004, the Malaysian government ordered the operators of tourist facilities on Pulau Sipadan to vacate the island. As a result, it is no longer possible to stay on Pulau Sipadan, although several companies still run boat trips to the island so that divers can still visit Sipadan's underwater wonders.
Pulau Sipadan is remote by its physical location, and it also is figuratively remote from the mainstream of human civilization by several orders of magnitude. Although we concluded that it definitely was a worthwhile thing to do, staying there entailed quite a few improvisations.
Those improvisations began with the accommodations on Pulau Sipadan. The operators of the visitor facilities on the island called them 'resorts' but they really were more like semi-permanent camps. Guests were lodged in 'chalets' that actually were little huts on stilts, with thatched roofs. The one in the second photo on this page was where we slept during our ten days on Pulau Sipadan.
The huts each had two beds -- mattresses on metal frames. The beds did have linens, and each hut had one wooden shelf, but there were no other furnishings. The huts were wired for electricity, sort of. Each had one electric light in the form of a bare light bulb suspended from the center of the roof on a wire. That was it. There was no running water in the huts, so there were no bathrooms -- not even a sink or a tap. (More on this a bit later.)
Pulau Sipadan is quite distant from mainland Borneo, and there are no underwater cables between the two. When we stayed there, the island had no regular telephone or electric service. Each facility on the island generated its own electricity, and a radio telephone -- also run on a portable generator -- was the primary means of communication with the rest of the world.
Electricity from the generators ran everything on the island during the day. Fuel for the generators had to be imported by sea, so it was expensive. Shortly after sunset, the generators were switched off as a conservation measure. As a result, life on the island matched the rising and setting of the sun. We rose with the first rays of light, and, since there was no light source after sunset, save for our flashlights, everyone retired early.
Next - more details about daily life for visitors to Pulau Sipadan, including the most 'interesting' bathing facilities we have ever encountered.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Sipadan Island - Getting there, Part 2
This is Part 2 of a story I began to tell yesterday -- the story of our first journey to Pulau Sipadan, a tiny island off the coast of Borneo. The story so far: we flew first to Kuala Lumpur, then to Kota Kinabalu, and then to Tawau. From Tawau we traveled by car up the coast to Semporna. This episode picks up at Semporna, where we began the final leg of our very long journey.
By prearrangement with the folks who managed the place where we would stay on Sipadan, a smallish motorboat was dispatched to ferry us to the little island. Since our flight to Tawau had arrived late, we had missed the mini-bus to Semporna. We traveled to Semporna by taxi instead, and we were running a bit late, so we were relieved to find the boat waiting for us at the fishing pier in Semporna when we arrived there.
Our friends who had preceded us on this journey had warned us about this final stage. They told us that the trip would be made in an open boat that went very fast and created a lot of spray. They said we should be prepared to get wet during the boat ride, and advised us to dress accordingly. They were not kidding!
Our boatman loaded all of our things into the stern of the little vessel, and indicated that we should sit on some bench seats beneath a tarpaulin sunshade. We cast off from the pier, and gently motored through the harbor. Near the outer edge of the harbor, we passed by numerous clusters of houses built on stilts over the water, and then by a few tiny islets. As soon as we got to the open water, the boatman increased speed. A lot!
Once we left Semporna and the islets behind, there were no more landmarks at all -- nothing but the glistening surface of the Celebes Sea in every direction. Later we discussed how we both felt a bit leery at that point, heading straight out to sea at a high rate of speed in a small open boat, hoping against hope that the boat driver actually knew how to find Sipadan. At the time, though, it was impossible to discuss this or anything else. The noise from the boat's motors was very loud, and we were traveling so fast across the water that we couldn't even turn toward each other for fear of having our sunglasses blown right off our faces. All we could do was hold on tightly to the edge of our seats, and, squinting against the bright sunlight reflected from the sea surface, pray that we would eventually make it to Sipadan.
About an hour after we left Semporna, the boat driver slowed a smidgen, and pointed toward the horizon. A tiny tropical island appeared before us. From a distance, it looked just like Gilligan's Island. As we glided up to a sandy beach, the boat's engines were cut and a few men ran down to the shoreline to catch the mooring line. We were instructed to hop out -- which we did, into thigh-deep water -- and several staff from Pulau Sipadan Resort, where we were staying, waded out to fetch our belongings.
Once ashore we glanced around quickly and noticed a number of people sitting on a sort of deck, chuckling and grinning at us. It turned out that the arrival of new guests was one of the most amusing events of the day at Sipadan.
On each of the following ten days that we spent on the little island, we would join the group on the deck to watch the latest arrivals to Sipadan. They all looked like we did when we arrived: disoriented, wilted from the heat, totally drenched, wearing sunglasses nearly opaque with sea spray, hair frozen by salt in whatever way the wind had blown it during the boat ride. Everyone, it seemed, arrived at Sipadan somewhat dazed and looking a wreck.
Here's a link to a map of Sabah state on Borneo. If you like, you can use it to retrace our journey from Kota Kinabalu, to Tawau, to Semporna, to Pulau Sipadan.
Next (after Wordless Wednesday) - what it was like to stay on Sipadan Island in 1993.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sipadan Island - Getting there, Part 1
Often we are asked which is our favorite place to dive. While it is difficult to choose even one general area, let alone just one dive site, Sipadan Island certainly would be a top contender for "diver heaven."
We first learned about Pulau Sipadan, as it is called there, by asking that very question of someone else. In 1992, while we were on a Caribbean dive trip, we met and befriended a married couple who both were marine biologists and underwater photographers. They had traveled all over the world to dive, for recreation as well as for their work. Naturally, we asked them which place was their favorite. One of the places at the top of their list was Sipadan.
Listening to our new friends' vivid descriptions of Sipadan's underwater world, we decided we had to see this place for ourselves. They had mentioned that Sipadan was in a remote location, and told us that just getting there was an adventure. Once we set about to plan our first trip there, we realized that they were not kidding about the remoteness -- nor about the adventure of the journey.
Pulau Sipadan (pictured above) is an oceanic island in the Celebes Sea. It is located off the coast of Sabah State, on the Malaysian side of Borneo. Getting there took several days.
First, we flew to Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur -- a major trip in itself. We stayed there overnight, and then flew to Borneo, landing at Kota Kinabalu, a coastal city in Sabah state, situated on the South China Sea. We changed planes in Kota Kinabalu for our connecting flight to the port city of Tawau, on the opposite coast of Borneo.
The flight to Tawau was the final air leg of the journey to Sipadan, but Tawau was just a waypoint in the journey, not our destination. We still had an overland leg and a boat ride ahead of us.
We were supposed to travel next by mini-bus from Tawau to Semporna, a smaller fishing port up the coast. That was the plan, but as luck would have it, our flight arrived late in Tawau, and by the time we cleared through the airport, the mini-bus had left without us. We took a taxi into the center of town to find some lunch while we figured out what to do.
Our taxi driver spoke no English, but he understood our hand signals indicating that we wanted to find a place to eat. He dropped us at a small hotel that appeared to cater to local business travelers. They had a curry buffet for lunch, and that was welcome, since it excused us from having to choose items from a menu we couldn't understand.
Bellies full of fish curry, fresh fruit, and tea, we set off for a nearby square where we had seen a rank of parked taxis. The taxi drivers eyed us warily as we approached. We must have looked a sight -- travel-weary Westerners hauling what must have seemed an inordinate amount of luggage. In truth, we took very few clothes with us on that trip, but we had several cases full of dive gear and camera equipment.
While I parked myself at the curb with all of the luggage, Jerry sought out a driver who would be willing to ferry us up the coast to Semporna. After much sign language and pointing at maps, Jerry struck a deal with the driver of a reasonably intact Toyota, and off we went. After about an hour's drive on a road that passed through vast palm oil plantations, we arrived at Semporna. (That's Semporna in the second photo.)
Now we were about to embark on the final leg of the journey, which I'll tell about in the next post. Meanwhile, here's a link to a map of Sabah state on Borneo. If you are interested, you can use it to trace our journey from Kota Kinabalu, to Tawau, to Semporna, to Pulau Sipadan.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Cave Where Turtles Die
Back in the early 1980s, the famous ocean explorer Captain Jacques Yves Cousteau and his team made their first visit to Sipadan Island, off the coast of Borneo. They made a film about Sipadan, and one of the highlights in that film was an eerie cave in which they found many bones and skeletons of sea turtles. They had never before seen such a sight, and they were puzzled by it. At the time, they theorized that perhaps old sea turtles just went there to die.
About a decade after Cousteau's first visit to Sipadan, we went there to dive. We had heard about the legendary turtle cave, and it was one of the things at Sipadan that we wanted to see for ourselves. Since it's a potentially dangerous dive, the Sipadan Turtle Cave is restricted to experienced divers who have had appropriate training, and it is essential to go with a guide who knows the terrain inside the cave. Fortunately, we were able to make arrangements to dive the Sipadan Turtle Cave with a veteran guide who knew the cave well.
As underwater caves go, this one is not particularly deep. The entrance to the cave is in the side of a limestone wall that begins a few meters below the surface and plunges straight down to a depth of about 600 meters (about 2,000 ft.). The mouth of the cave, found at a depth of only 20 meters or so (about 65 ft.), is small and partly disguised by large soft corals.
Just inside the cave's narrow mouth is a fairly roomy chamber, where we paused to let our eyes begin to adjust to the darkness. Once we passed beyond this first chamber there was no ambient light at all, so of course the three of us -- the guide, Jerry, and I -- carried multiple lights with us on this dive.
What makes the dive tricky is the cave's interior terrain - an intricate maze of chambers connected by narrow tunnels. The tunnels are not straight: they curve this way and that -- not just left and right, but also up and down, as if the whole works had been built as a bed for a roller coaster.
The bottom of the entire cave system was covered in fine, silty sand, so we had to be extremely careful to stir it up as little as possible as we went along. Once fine sand gets stirred in small spaces like that, visibility is quickly reduced to zero.
We saw and photographed the famous turtle skeletons, which we came across in several of the cave's chambers. Some were no more than disorderly piles of bones, like the first photo on this page. Others were more complete skeletons, with half-disintegrated carapaces, and goofy looking turtle skulls, like the second photo. [Click on any of the photos to enlarge.]
While Cousteau and his group conjectured that old or sick turtles may have gone there intentionally to die, our guide told us that Cousteau's original notion had been replaced more recently by a more prosaic explanation: Turtles occasionally wander into the cave system, perhaps to rest, or to hide from a predator, or maybe just out of curiosity. Then they become lost in the dark, disorienting interior of the cave. When they need to surface for a breath of air, they can't find their way out, so they drown. This explanation, while not as romantic as Cousteau's, made sense to us.
Turtles are not the only air breathing animals to have drowned in that cave. In one of the cave's chambers our guide used his light to direct our attention to a rocky ledge. There was the complete skeleton of an unlucky dolphin, which had shared the fate of the hapless turtles.
Diving in the Sipadan Turtle Cave was one of the highlights of our time at that remarkable little island in the Celebes Sea. We recently unearthed a cache of photos from our first trip there -- not just underwater photos, but some taken on the journey there, and on the island. For the next several posts, we will share some of those photos, and the tales that go with them. Stay tuned.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Monday, June 2, 2008
Fusilier Fish: Speed Demons of the Reef
This is a Right Blue photo essay on Fusilier Fish (Caesionidae). These fish, which move about a tropical reef in large schools, always seem to appear suddenly and out of nowhere. In unison, they zoom first one way, and then another, at speeds that can make your jaw drop, doing precision turns that leave those watching in awe. For divers, encountering a school of Fusilier Fish always is exhilarating. I hope this series of photos, which I took in quick succession, will give our readers a sense of what it's like to encounter a school of Fusilier Fish.
Here they come.
Then they do an about face.
Then they circle back again.
And then they're gone!
[Click on any of the photos to enlarge.]
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Have you ever seen a pregnant shark?
Someone we know saw a TV program about sharks, and learned that while some shark species lay eggs, others give live birth. He asked us, "Have you ever seen a pregnant shark?"
Yes, we have seen pregnant sharks, and I even managed to photograph one. At right is a photo of a pregnant White Tip Reef Shark (Triaenodon obesus) that I took at Sipadan Island, off the coast of Borneo. She looks like she is about ready to pop! [Click on the photo to enlarge.]
This species is known to breed in the Autumn and Winter. The gestation period is thought to be about five months. Whitetip Reef Sharks give birth to litters of two or three pups.
As soon as the pups are born they are on their own. The mama shark does not look after the pups in any way.
As a comparison, here is another photo, taken on the same dive. This second photo shows a human observer with a White Tip Reef Shark that is not pregnant. As you can see, individuals of this species are rather slender and sleek -- torpedo-shaped. The poor pregnant female above looks ungainly in contrast.
By the way, this location at Sipadan was a shark-lovers' paradise. We had never before (nor have we since) seen so many sharks in such a small area.
There were big sharks, little sharks, and medium sized sharks of assorted species. There were sharks swimming, and sharks lying on the bottom resting, sometimes lined up in rows like parked cars.
And there was one pregnant shark!
Friday, May 9, 2008
Bubble Coral Plus
In the previous article, we introduced our readers to Bubble Coral (Plerogyra sinuosa), a type of stony coral recognizable by the inflated bubble-like vesicles that give rise to its common name. Sometimes other little creatures live in or on the Bubble Coral. We refer to that situation as Bubble Coral Plus.
For Wordless Wednesday, we posted a macro photo of Bubble Coral with a tiny shrimp (Vir phillipinensis) that makes its home among the Bubble Coral's vesicles. The first photo on this page shows another instance of Bubble Coral Plus. This time the Bubble Coral is host to an entirely different critter, the Waminoa flatworm.
The first time we saw Waminoa on Bubble Coral we thought it looked like some kind of algae growing on the surface of the vesicles. We found out only recently that the spots actually were tiny critters. Apparently not too much is known about these flatworms, except that they inhabit some soft corals, as well as the soft parts of the Bubble Coral, and once they are established, the reproduce rather quickly.
This second photo is a 1:1 macro shot. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll be able to see that the Waminoa flatworms look like little pancakes clinging to the surface of the Bubble Coral vesicles. Apparently not a whole lot is known about the Waminoa flatworms, but it is thought that they in turn are host to tiny dinoflagellates -- single cell life forms that produce nutrients through photosynthesis, some of which they share with their host.
I took both of the photos on this page in the Celebes Sea at Bunaken Island. The little island is part of an offshore marine reserve near Manado, on the northern finger of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia. Most of the Bubble Coral in this area has a golden or greenish tinge to it, whereas most of the Bubble Coral we saw in the Red Sea was white, sometimes with a pale bluish tinge. We are not certain if the Bubble Coral in the Celebes Sea is the same species as that in the Red Sea, but it belongs to the same genus, Plerogyra.
Someone who commented on the Wordless Wednesday photo of Bubble Coral mentioned that she had been snorkeling for a long time, and had visited many places, but had never seen Bubble Coral. That was not surprising to us, since it is not usually found at snorkeling depths. We have seen Bubble Coral at many dive sites in the Red Sea, and in various places in the waters around Indonesia and Malaysia, but never at depths of less than about 15 meters (50 feet). Thus, it is unlikely that snorkelers would get to see it.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
BNSullivan.jpg "Bubble coral with tiny shrimp")
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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