Our Diveguides just love diving … specially since the new Bastianos Wetsuits arrived. And they’ll not only keep our staff warmer, but they will also make it easier for you to recognize your guide underwater.

Some days ago Bastianos Guides found a pair of fairly big sized Harlequin Shrimp pulling a Seastar to their “Coral Home”. After some days of monitoring, we are happy to tell, that they like the spot and stay around … here one shot of the smaller one.

This morning our Captain Markus found a Sargassum Frogfish while cleaning his boat. The little bugger was hanging under the hull in shallow water holding on to some floatsome. Because he probably would not survive very long in the boat loading zone, we cought it and tranferred it to a abandoned fishfarm, where he can now hang out in old fishing nets and debris floating on the surface until he hopefully finds some Sargassum Seaweed. This picture shows him swimming to his new home …

This Week we spotted a 2 cm Pigmy Squid on Makawide. We saw underwater already, that there was some kind of prey in its mouth, but it was too small to determine what it was. Only when downloading from the camera, it came out that it was holding a small shrimp and was about to eat it. But that’s not enough: The tiny shrimp in the mouth of the tiny squid was carrying eggs – that’s really small!

This week, some of our guest got very lucky on “Aer Bajo”. This dive spot is very known for good muckdiving and besides Frogfish, Ambon Scorpionfish, Flamboyant Cuttlefish also Coconut Octopusses and Mimic Octopusses can be seen regularly. But on that day, one of our Dive Groups observed a fight between a Coconut Octopus and a Mimic Octopus … unfortunately no pictures of that event. And just for your information: They both survived

Lembeh Strait has a new attraction: A Weedy Rhinopias has been spottet. It is yellow coloured with brown-red-purple pattern and very nice growings on its body. Despite its poppy colour it blends in perfectly into the reef … a special, but very elusive and very hard to find critter.

Diving Lembeh is great these days: Just this week two top notch critters have been discovered by our guides. Juvenile Harlequin Shrimps at “Aer Prang” and “Angels Window” and a white Rhinopias at “Panti Parigi” … that makes a total of two Rhinopias including the purple-pink one, that hangs out in “Aer Prang” since some months. Besides that there is also some Hairy Frogfish at the moment: A big dark brown coloured one, and some smaller ones – black, orange and yellow. Come and check it out!

As from September 2009 Serge Abourjeily is the new Instructor and Dive Center Supervisor at Bastianos Lembeh. He has previous working experience in various locations like Sumatra, Maldives and Thailand and is fluent in English, German and French.
Besides his job as Dive Center Supervisor, Serge is also a passionate Underwater Photographer and is more than happy to help you with your photography and camera problems – either in a little chat or in a dedicated UW Photo Course.

From now on all the guests that staying at Bastianos Lembeh can have free wi-fi around resort area. If you need to use this facility, please ask the password at the reception and you can start to use the connection.

Soon Manado will have an international event what we call WOC (World Ocean Conference).  It’s a high level global meeting of head of the countryies that have coastal and marine areas.

The World Ocean Conference (WOC) 2009 is forum for the world community to discuss current issues in the marine field which are related to climate change, and how the world can wisely utilize the ocean to weather crisis. Furthermore, WOC 2009 is expected to create a more aligned global vision and commitments from participating governments and institutions to work together to improve marine resource management.

Manado people hope that this event can make Manado is more popular in worldwide and more more visitors will come and visit our region Manado, North Sulawesi.

Bastianos also will be fully support this event…