Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Coastal vessels have used the strait as a shortcut for centuries, and their
sailors have tossed empty bottles and other trash over the side. The trash
settles to the sandy bottom, where it is soon partially buried.
When I fi rst entered the water at Lembeh, the thought of all that junk wait-
ing for me on the bottom was less than thrilling. Lembeh's underwater world
is far from glamorous. Fabulous coral gardens adorn other parts of Sulawesi's
coast, but there are no extensive coral reefs here. Reefs cannot become estab-
lished because the strait is repeatedly scoured by strong oceanic and tidal
currents of nutrient-rich water. As a result corals grow only in small patches,
wherever there is something solid that they can use as an anchor.
Instead of a maze of colorful corals I was greeted by a level plain of dark
sand and mud that stretched of in all directions, broken only by islands of eel
grass and a few coral-covered outcrops. By stretching out horizontally and
using minimal fi n movement to avoid stirring up the mud, I was able to swim
smoothly from one clump of coral- and weed-covered detritus to the next.
Most marine animals live, not in the open water, but in what is called the
benthic zone. The benthic zone is defi ned as the ocean bottom and the space
immediately above it, along with a maze of burrows and secret places that
lie just below the surface. Although the word benthic comes from the Greek
benthos
, meaning the deep sea, even shallow waters have benthic zones.
Organisms that inhabit benthic zones battle endlessly for space to live,
with an intensity that would put Southern California real estate developers to
shame. In Lembeh these battles ensure that each clump of overgrown debris
on the bottom is covered with a riot of intensely competing creatures.
The fi sh of Lembeh provide a logical place to start to explore our immense
family tree. Unlike most of the creatures that live on the bottom of the strait,
fi sh are vertebrate animals that are quite close to us in evolutionary terms,
such that we can all feel an immediate kinship with them. And yet even these
close relatives of ours have evolved in unexpected directions.
Among the shyest of these diverse fi sh are the pygmy seahorses, a mere
centimeter long or less, that make themselves seem even smaller by curling
their tails around the branches of pink and orange sea fans. The sea fans dine
on tiny free-swimming arthropod plankton that they snare using their sting-
ing cells. Because the seahorses are unable to trap the plankton themselves,
