Today begins our daily dive reports from North Sulawesi. Quinn and I arrived at Murex Resort in Manado yesterday and went out for three excellent dives today.

The Manado / Bunaken area has a reputation for great diving and we got a small taste with two wall dives in Bunaken and a macro dive in Manado. The sun was out, the water was warm and we had some great wildlife sightings. Here’s the breakdown:

 

Lekuan I Dive Site

This was a fantastic wall dive inside Bunaken National Park, with tall gorgonians, a wide variety of sponges, corals and fish, but above all… Turtles! We saw green sea turtles everywhere on this dive and even had one swim by us several times in the shallows during our surface intervals, resulting in the photo with Quinn below. And even though it is Sunday, we didn’t see any other divers.

 

Lekuan II Dive Site

I switched to wide-angle video for this dive after seeing all the fish at Lekuan I. This dive is just down the wall and just as fishy and “turtle-y.” We had some current on this dive but it carried us at a nice relaxing pace. We even saw an eagle ray cruise by.

 

City Extra Dive Site

Our macro dive close to Manado. The highlight here was finding a blue-ringed octopus at the end of our dive! This cooperative cephalopod posed for photos and then started hunting just as we started to head up for our safety stop; I saw it reaching under a rock and investigated as a flurry of action erupted with the octo grabbing something and wrestling it on top of the rock as a nice meal. The photo is below but the action was too quick to see what was on the menu. Other highlights included ornate ghost pipefish, cuttlefish, red-banded pipefish with eggs, shrimp and many other critters.

 Check back tomorrow as we post another dive report and our Murex Manado resort video & photos!