Dive Review of Kungkungan Bay Resort in
Indonesia/Lembeh Strait, N Sulawesi

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Kungkungan Bay Resort, May, 2005, by Fred Turoff, PA, USA ( Top Contributor 35 reports with 15 Helpful votes). Report 1778.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity	N/A
Dive Operation		Shore Diving
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$	N/A
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	This excellent resort and dive operation will fulfill the critter dreams of most divers. The rooms are spacious and well-kept. The grounds are cared for daily, the staff friendly and helpful. A short walk is all one needs to get to the restaurant, main building or dive center. A beautiful pool beckoned, but diving and photography occupied so much of my time that I didn’t get to use it during my eight-night, nine-day visit. The food was wonderful, with buffet service for both breakfast and lunch, while dinner was an order-your-meal service with an ample menu. If you did a night dive, someone met the boat to take your order so that the food would be ready once you had taken care of all post-dive activities. The only problem that occurred was due to our proximity to the jungle and something the resort may not be able to avoid – for three days there was a small termite swarm that invaded my room and left 2-foot-diameter rings of droppings and wings in an area of my room, several times around my washroom sink. They resembled circles of pepper grounds, and were only a nuisance. The water temperature varied between 76-80 degrees, with visibility varying between 20-60 feet. Since there was lots of stuff in the water, wide-angle photography was limited, but macro photography opportunities were available on each dive. In fact, Lembeh Strait is a macro heaven. If you want to see something, it is probably there. The dive masters often ask what you want to see and make a list that gets checked off as your visit progresses. I did 24 dives and shot 105mm Macro on 22 of them. I saw at least one frogfish and seahorse on most, if not each, dive. There were no sharks, angelfish, large schools of fish or bigger creatures. However, I did see the following: squid, cuttlefish, flamboyant cuttlefish and octopus; numerous shrimp species, including several colorful peacock mantis shrimp, many crinoid and anemone shrimp; tiny crinoid and pink fairy lobsters ; ornate ghost pipefish and Halimeda ghost pipefish; over 30 nudibranch species; numerous moray species; blue ribbon eels (with juveniles which are black); mandarinfish (a dusk dive to watch them mate); pink and yellow pygmy seahorses; numerous crab species including large decorator crabs that look like a pile of detritus moving across the seafloor, zebra, xeno, porcelain, orangutan and spider; hairy, warty and other frogfish; thorny, smooth, estuary and common seahorses, seaspider, seamoths, juvenile batfish; scorpionfish and lionfish; waspfish; various flatworms. The dive guides know where many creatures live, so they were quite helpful finding most everything we saw. Some creatures I wanted to see but didn’t are: mimic octopus, wonderpus and stonefish. Of course, the afternoon dive I sat out on my last full day there (as I would fly within 24 hours) yielded a mimic octopus. One funny situation occurred when a crinoid lobster decided it would rather live in a divemasters BC, so it swam from the crinoid into his jacket. The DM opened his BC and it took me a short while to locate the crinoid lobster and return it to the crinoid. We probably looked quite comical. Diving so far from my home in Philadelphia allowed me to meet people from England, Scotland, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan (plus other US folks). The dive center featured a room dedicated to photographers/videographers. It had tables along opposite walls with one side 220-volt and the other 110-volt outlets. Outside of this room, cameras were kept in plastic bins in several large fresh-water baths. The cameras were transported to and from the boats in these bins. Dive groups numbered 3-6 per boat, with 1-2 divemasters each. The longest boat ride was no more than 15 minutes, with most shorter. Dive depths maxed, for me, at 88 feet, with most shallower to start and finished often in 10-15 feet. Most dives lasted an hour or more. Being thin, my two layers of wetsuits – a fleecy 3mm vest with hood and a fleecy full-body 3mm kept me warm enough for much of the dives but I did get chilled by the end of each, so next time I’ll bring thicker suits and a thicker hood. Topside weather was quite pleasant, and rain was minimal, although the week previous had rain each day, I was told.
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	BVI, Cayman Brac, Little Cayman, Sea of Cortez, Costa Rica, Red Sea, Coco Island, Yap, Belau, Sipadan, Papua New Guinea, Komodo
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, windy	Seas	calm
Water Temp	76-80°F / 24-27°C	Wetsuit Thickness	6
Water Visibility	20-60 Ft/ 6-18 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	no
Enforced diving restrictions	Watch for divemasters as they find lots of stuff; keep dives to around 60 minutes (liberal with this)
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	N/A
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	None	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	Camera room near dive center was well set-up for still & video photographers. Cameras were transported in plastic bins and well-cared for.

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Dive Review of Kungkungan Bay Resort in Indonesia/Lembeh Strait, N Sulawesi

Kungkungan Bay Resort, May, 2005,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Kungkungan Bay Resort in
Indonesia/Lembeh Strait, N Sulawesi