Dive site – House Reef
Unfortunately, I woke feeling a tad ordinary, so I transferred today’s two boat trips to tomorrow. With the house reef beckoning I was happy.
It turned out to be a rewarding decision. I enjoyed a house reef snorkel in the afternoon but earlier in the day we met Claire, Wakatobi’s manager, in the Longhouse (while sneaking another donut) and I introduced myself to Pam Osborn over lunch!
Our conversation with Claire came about while watching the carpentry team reinforcing the timber floor of the Longhouse, which is the original Wakatobi building. Neville was particularly interested in their traditional technique of inserting wooden pegs with glue in to the floorboard holes, rather than screws! Claire explained that everything at Wakatobi is made on site and in the traditional way. That means all timber work like floors, ceilings, furniture and even their dive boats are all made in the traditional way, here on the island and all by the Wakatobi carpentry team.
Everything you see in these two buildings – the Longhouse and the Restaurant …
My conversation with Pam confirmed this was her 13th visit (I hope I’ve got that right) and that she’d be returning in August yet again. She loves it here. We chatted about the house reef marine life and also about how we both hadn’t seen any Nudibranchs on the house reef. The water temperature here is 29 degrees, perhaps that has something to do with it? Nudibranchs certainly feature in Pam’s Wakatobi House Reef book. I had a few follow-up conversations with Pam both at the resort and at the Wakatobi airport when we were departing. We learnt far more about the Wakatobi early days and the efforts the owners went to, to achieve their dream of creating their little piece of paradise.
I found this rather stunning creature in the sandy shallows of the house reef. I’d never seen one before. Ketut identified it for me. It’s a Tube Anemone. In these photos you can see it open and then closed. Me shading the light sent it inside! Ketut told me they can almost glow at night with light shone on them.
How’s this for camouflage … a Pufferfish …
These Pink Anemonefish were particularly shy so it was tricky getting them in the photograph, but the Anemone itself is rather spectacular I think and you can just see a sneaky look from one Pink Anemonefish in each photo.
And the daily towel animal is …
… a dinosaur!
It sounds like the tube anemone is a bit like the Christmas Tree worm! Beautiful nearly fluorescent center.
And I like the daily animal towel!
Yes it is. They are related. However, the Tube Anemone is quite a deal larger. It was very pretty especially with the bright green centre.