California Dreaming is the northern most dive site of the Lembeh Strait on the Lembeh Island side.
It is less of a muck dive than some of the other Lembeh Strait dive sites. It tends to be less murky with better visibility, often as good as 25 metres. However on other occasions visibility can be as low as 5 metres. The maximum depth is 25 metres and there is a plateau at around 15 metres. Currents are mild.
The coral is more colourful here with coral gardens of large orange tree corals and pink gorgonian sea fans. Christmas tree worms, feather stars, sea whips and sea squirts add even more colour. There are plenty of reef fish including butterflyfish and parrotfish. Moray eels can be seen. So too can shy ribbon eels, poking out from their rubble burrows. Mantis shrimps, both spearer and smasher varieties can be found inside and outside their holes. Flatfish can be found in the sand along with any number of shrimps and partner gobies.
Nudibranchs are numerous, as on all Lembeh Strait dive sites. Other crustaceans to look for include pretty pink squat lobsters, decorator crabs, emperor shrimps and Coleman's shrimps. It's worth looking in every sea fan and along every sea whip, there is normally something small living there, often it's no bigger than your fingernail. This is another Lembeh dive site where you may well be underwater saying to yourself, "what on earth is that!" as your dive guide points out another weird critter that you've never seen before. Head straight to the fish id book after the dive and try to find it. |
