LABUAN BAJO, FLORES, INDONESIA

Before coming to Indonesia, I hadn't realized that the area around Komodo Island is considered to be one of the top diving locations in this part of the world. But now that we're here, we've decided to take advantage of that fact by basically spending the next two days underwater. Henrik and Smeeta are joining us for our scuba adventures as well, which is great.

We've booked our dives through Reefseekers, a local dive shop recommended to us by the guys at Trawangan Dive. It's owned by a Scottish expat named Ernest who lives on an island a few minutes offshore from Labuan Bajo, where he and his wife are in the process of building a dive resort. He's a really interesting and personable guy--"a real character," as mom would say. And in addition to being knowledgeable about the dive sites in the area, he also has a background in marine biology (his area of specialty: crustaceans), which he puts to use by giving pre-dive "briefings" in various areas of marine biology and ecology. (Today's lesson was on the various types of symbiosis, with an emphasis on the relationship between certain gobies and shrimp. No, really!) I also talked for quite awhile with our other dive guide, an enthusiastic Indonesian guy named Nourdin, about Indonesian tourism, terrorism, education, religion, and conservation. Oh, and diving, too.

Thankfully, the Reefseekers dive boat is about twice as fast as The Slowest Boat in Maritime History, so it didn't take us too long to get to today's dive site, Sebayur Kecil. Our first dive was at an area called "The Horseshoe," where for the first time I got to see a forest of garden eels swaying above the sand. Very cool. Ernest also pointed out (surprise!) some symbiotic gobies and shrimp, and he even opened his mouth for a couple of yellow and red cleaner shrimp, which actually hopped inside and started picking his teeth! We also saw some bright little nudibranchs, a giant bumphead parrotfish, and some lobsters, and I also spotted a little yellow striped pipefish and a juvenile pinnate batfish--a strikingly beautiful fish, and pretty uncommon, too.

After a lunch on the boat of fried chicken and rice (which must be the national dish of Indonesia), we did our second dive at "The Wall," which not surprisingly featured a nearly-vertical wall of coral, sponges, and gorgonians. Highlights included more nudibranchs, a juvenile sweetlips, and a couple of extremely rare robust ghost pipefish, which were so cleverly camouflaged I thought they were two bits of seaweed!

All in all a good diving day--the water was clear, and we saw lots of creatures. As Ernest later explained, this rather "tame" location was sort of a test in preparation for tomorrow's dive, which is in a site with some potentially dangerous currents that we need to be aware of.

Indonesia Fun Fact:

• You might remember the island of Flores from news reports in late 2004, when it was the site of one of the most spectacular recent finds in paleoanthopology: Scientists discovered the remains of an entirely new species of human that grew to a height of only 3 feet tall. Immediately referred to by the media as "hobbits," it was also discovered that even more incredibly, these little people lived on Flores as recently as 18,000 years ago.