My four months in Bunaken

These mythical marine mammals graze regularly right here in the wide seagrass beds of Bunaken Marine Park. They are amazing creatures that will definitely surprise you if encountered on a dive or snorkeling trip. Any diver will get confused for a moment at the first sight and wonder what is that giant, somehow familiar but odd-looking, creature. The first time I saw a dugong during a safety stop at Fukui for a second I thought it was a tiger shark. And the moment it swam by us and looked at us, a big smile got on our faces and we realized it’s a dugong! A bit later I remembered that I was holding onto a camera and finally managed to push on the record button for some evidence.

Dugong has a dolphin-like tail, small eyes with limited vision, good hearing, paddle-like fore limbs, nostrils on top of the head and two teats behind each flipper. They grow up to 3 meters in length, weigh up to 400 kg and can live for 70 years. They swim mostly in shallow water feeding on seagrass beds and can hold their breath only for about 6 minutes at the time.

When you go snorkeling past the seagrass bed on the way to our amazing house reef, you can see white lines in the seagrass. These are dugong tracks, they dig up the whole plant with their large horseshoe-shaped mouth, shake the sand off and eat the grass. The best time to see dugongs here in Bunaken is around full moon or new moon in late afternoon when the tide is the highest. Many of our guests have seen them while diving or snorkeling on our house reef or at the seagrass bed.

Traditionally dugongs have had different meanings for different communities. For example in Malaysia and Philippines dugongs are called “lady of the sea”, in Kenya “queen of the sea” where they use them for food, medicine and decorations. In India they make dugong oil and in Japan they make carvings from their ribs. Southern Chinese call them ‘the miraculous fish”, but still regard it as bringing bad luck if you catch them, same as in the Philippines where they use parts of them to scare away bad spirits. Australian Aboriginals regard them as part of their aboriginality and in Papua New Guinea dugongs are a symbol of strength. In Thailand their tears are used as a love potion… and finally here in Indonesia they believe dugongs are reincarnations of women, so ladies, don’t get offended if someone calls you a dugong when you jump in for a swim from the boat!!

Even though in English dugongs are called ‘sea cows’ they are not related to cows but rather to elephants. Their closest relatives in the sea are manatees, the heart-shape tailed Atlantic cousins, and together they form the order ‘Sirenia’.

Dugongs are facing some problems too, their biggest threat being, unfortunately, humans. They are hunted for their meat and oil, and entanglement in fishing nets, vessel strikes and oil spills are very harmful for them. Disappearance of sea grass beds caused by reclamation, sewage, detergents, hyper saline water, waste products, mining etc. means a loss of their habitat.

Dugongs are slow in reproduction as they reach sexual maturity only at the age of 8-18 years and females give birth only few times during their lifespan to a single calf at the time. Parental care lasts for 2-7 years. Newborns start to feed on sea grass after birth, but nursing lasts up to 18 months. We have been extremely lucky to have spotted dugong mothers with their babies many times on our house reef right in front of Living Colours!

Text by Annika Hartell

Here in Bunaken, Indonesia, we have seen many unique and rare visitors on our reefs, such as whale sharks, mola molas, hammerhead sharks, leatherback turtles, thresher sharks, orcas, dugons, sperm whales and even a guitar shark. The more hours you spend in the water the more likely you are going to see something unusual.

However, this time the surprise visit was on land. One late evening this March our dive guide Harli called us over behind the dive center where there was lot of noise coming from the bush and the whole two meter high plants were shaking. Something he first thought was his friend getting lucky, turned out to be a hawksbill turtle checking out a place for nesting. Earlier in the evening there had been high tide and the turtle's tracks showed us that she had came to the beach some hours ago when the tide was still very high.

It is yet unknown, but believed that turtles come to nest on the same beach where they hatched from the egg. Before they decide where to lay their eggs they will come up on the beach few times just to check out a suitable place for digging their nest. It has to be on dry part, high enough where even the highest tide with waves can’t reach the nest.

This 80 cm long, 50 kg heavy hawksbill turtle behind our dive centre probably realized that the sand or soil was too hard for her to dig a half a meter deep hole. Luckily there is a more suitable big stretch of empty beach next to Living Colours, where we have already seen some hawksbill turtle hatchlings few years ago. Normally turtles lay from 80 to 120 eggs and they nest every 2-3 years after reaching sexual maturity at about 30 years age.

Because of new moon, we had big tidal change and by the time the turtle was heading back to the sea, the mangrove air roots were already showing. The turtle got stuck in the roots and we had to go and bring her back to the waterline and guide her about 40 meters along the beach to the nearest boat channel from where she could finally swim back to the drop off.

Turtles mate in water where the male turtle attaches to the females back with its flipper claws and bites the female’s neck or front flippers. You recognize a male turtle from its very long tail, which it uses for holding the female on place during copulation. Females mate with many different males to keep the genetic diversity high. After laying eggs on the beach, the incubation takes about two months. Only one out of hundred eggs will survive to reproduce again.

Turtle's life is very dangerous and difficult from the egg stage until adulthood. The eggs are delicacy for monitor lizards, ants, grabs, monkeys, dogs, raccoons and some humans too. When the eggs hatch and the hatchlings are trying to run to the sea they get eaten by crabs and birds. Once in the sea many hungry fish are waiting for them. During their first years they will drift with sea currents floating on the surface, where they will be an easy prey for birds. They will feed on small jellyfish, too many times mistaking plastic for their food. Once a hawksbill turtle reaches 30 cm in size they will settle to live on a coral reef and feed on sponges, anemones, squid and shrimp. Adult hawksbill turtles can grow up to 70-100 cm long and only large sharks can prey on them.

Text by Annika Hartell, Photos by Annika, Jaakko and Micky

After the Rescue Diver course it was time for me to start with the Divemaster course. Every morning I woke up early, had some breakfast and headed for the dive center. I packed the equipment and set it up on the boat, so that we were ready to go when the customers came down to the dive center after their breakfast. When all the divers were on the boat, we headed out to the sea and soon enough we were on the first dive site of the day!

During the Divemaster course I got to dive almost every day. I learned new skills, guided fun dives, assisted on courses, took care of the equipment on the boat and at the dive center. Thank you Heini and Ali for teaching me so much new about diving! I had in mind that I want to learn something new every day during the course. And I surely did!

I really enjoyed to assist on the Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses. The excitement of the students was almost touchable! While watching and assisting the courses I could also remember my excitement from when I did my OW and AOW courses. It's so much fun to learn new skills!

There were some funny incidents during my Divemaster course. For example one time when I was assisting on an Open Water course the instructor Ali found a rock with a long rope tied around it. He couldn't get rope off, so he gave the whole rock to Heini, whose group we met during the dive. Little bit after we met Heini, I felt that I kicked something with my fin. When I turned around, Heini was right behind me. I signaled sorry to her and she replied that she's okay. When I continued diving, I realized that all my buoyancy and trim was gone! Help! What happened? Is there something wrong with my equipment?! After I got my buoyancy back, I found out that Heini had tied the rock on my tank strap without me realizing anything. As I couldn't reach the stone behind my back, I finished the dive with a stone dangling on my tank and a really bad trim. 

In the end of my course we were diving on a dive site called Fukui. I was mapping the site for my course. Fukui is a nice dive site with many things to see. There is for example some really nice giant clams. There is also a place on the site called the Triggerfish alley. I've never seen any triggerfish there, so all the time I've been wondering where the alley got its name. We were just entering the alley when I found three big cone shells on the side of a stone, so I signaled Heini to come and take a look. Heini came and as she was watching the cone shells she felt something bump into her fin a couple of times. She turned around, and there was a Yellow margin triggerfish attacking her fins! After fleeing away from the angry triggerfish protecting its nest, I now know where the name of the alley comes from!

Diving here on Bunaken is beautiful! Beautiful corals, fishes, turtles, sharks, nudibranches, shrimps, crabs... We even saw a Mola-Mola one day jumping from the water when we were returning from the dives! It's so much fun with so many things to see! I couldn't have chosen a better place to do my Divemaster course!

During this time I've had the chance to dive with many kinds of divers. There were many divers with a lot of experience whom I could learn a lot from. I also got to dive with people who had just started diving or who had had a couple years break from diving. Some of them were a bit nervous before the first dive, but planning a nice dive to a nice and easy dive site, having a good briefing before the dive and making the the first dive in a really relaxed manner, all the nervousness was gone after the first dive. It really is a pleasure to see people enjoy their dives!

The Divemaster duties can be really variable. After I finished my Divemaster course we had a search and rescue out of the ordinary. In addition of the tame dogs, there is half-stray dogs living on the island and one of the dogs living in the area of Living Colours just had puppies. The mama-dog moved the small two week old puppies to a place she thought was safe for them. Unfortunately it was a place where the puppies would eventually drown when the tide is getting high. We didn't know where the puppies were exactly, but after a couple of days we could hear the mama-dog barking anxiously when the tide was rising. Me and Mia grabbed our booties and ran to take a look where the barking came from, in the mangroves next to the high cliffs. Luckily we found the small puppy hiding under a cliff just in time. The puppy had fallen down to the beach from the cave where the mama-dog had hidden the puppies and as the tide was rising, the puppy went under the surface every time a wave came in.

Finally we knew where she was hiding the puppies! The mama-dog was very protective and as she was feeding the other puppies, we had to wait for her to leave the puppies for a moment to get them out of the small cave. Later in the evening when it was already dark, I could hear the mama-dog barking somewhere. I grabbed a torch and a bucket and ran to the beach to take a look. The mama wasn't there, so I climbed up on the rocks up to the cave and put all the remaining puppies in the bucket and I got them safe just in time. Unluckily for me on the way back I fell and cut my legs on sharp rock when I was walking in water up to my chest with the puppies, but at least the puppies were safe for now. Couple hours after the rescue the mama-dog started moving the puppies again, but hopefully this time she found a better and safer place to hide the puppies and we'll get to have a nice addition to our pack on the resort!

The last two months has been really busy, but it has really been a lot of fun the whole time! Soon I'll be heading to Thailand for my next adventure. I'm certainly going to miss Bunaken, it's wonderful people and the amazing diving of course. But for sure I will return to beautiful Bunaken some day!

Text and photos Petra Laurinen PADI Divemaster / Living Colours Diving Resort 2015