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And they are all underwater in Lembeh Strait. Lembeh Strait is known for muck diving which means not great visibility and usually just a black sandy bottom to look at. However, it is also known for the very rare, special and unusual critters that live there. We had so much fun diving in Lembeh and were once again spoiled by what we got to see.
We finally saw seahorses!

Ok, we “saw” a pygmy seahorse under the oil rig in Semporna, but you could have told me it was a grain of rice–I can’t honestly say that I saw a seahorse shape. In Lembeh Steve found a common seahorse that was the sweetest little guy. He was red in color but disguised by all kinds of stuff growing on him. His body was about 3 inches long and you could definitely tell he was a seahorse. He seemed so shy, just moving slowly from one little pile of coral to another, wrapping his tail around the stems and tucking his head down into his chest. The nice thing about the sandy bottom in Lembeh is that you can just lay down and hang out with the critters. You just have to be careful of dangerous stinging fish hiding in the sand.
We saw lots of frog fish–tiny little painted frog fish not more than an inch tall, black hairy frog fish that wave a pink lure around (that looks like a bow given all the hair) to attract their prey, and many others. We also saw a coconut octopus in the middle of the day that kind of walked around on his legs carrying his special rock and a shell with him. Very fun.

We hung out with both a baby squid that turned color and sprayed a tiny spot of ink and a baby cuttlefish that was the cutest thing I’ve seen underwater.

Leaf scorpion fish were all around, but you have to look closely because they really do look and move like leaves in the water. Even their eyes look like holes in a leaf. There were tons of lion fish and puffer fish; there were nudibranches of every size and color and even a pair mating.

We even saw the very rare and beautiful harlequin shrimp.

To top it all off we saw two flamboyant cuttlefish that some people dive their whole lives and never see. These guys are so cool because they kind of walk along the ground instead of swim and they blend in very well to the black bottom, but when they are startled they flash bright yellow, purple and white! Fabulous! We are so spoiled.