East Lapan, Lapan Island, Alor, Indonesia « Dive Sites

It was a reasonably nice site, plenty of wild ride with the current, although it pales in comparison with our earlier dives today. We saw a large Napolean wrasse, and plenty of smaller fishes. At the end of the dive, just before I deployed my safety sausage, I heard our guide Peter's loud whoop of joy. He was excitedly pointing to something on a pile of staghorn coral rubble. I swam closer, and realized it was a brown-and-white clown frogfish, looking supremely pissed off because Peter scared off his dinner. Peter couldn't care less, he finally found what we asked him to find for us! The pretty (weird) looking fish sulkingly turned round and round when I was taking pictures of it, and I decided I had enough.

I surfaced directly next to the dinghy, and saw Hengky and Thea already back on the boat - obviously missing out on the frogfish. David told them we saw a clown frogfish, and jokingly told the couple to head back down. Hengky being Hengky, he dived back in with less than 40 bar in his tank. With the current sweeping, he quickly finished his air, and got to zero just as he got to the frogfish. He insisted on taking a few pictures, breathing from Thea's back up regulator and then Lala's. Lucky for him the pictures turned out great - if they hadn't then all the effort would have been for nothing.

Written by: Irene Pramudito