The Lembeh Cheat Code

In this article from The Underwater Photography Show, we'll be diving into an extraordinary "cold-water" workshop in the Lembeh Strait, how we track down the best photo subjects, the creative trade-offs of carrying every wet lens on every dive, and a first look at Retra's new Pure II strobe.

People often find that critter destinations get richer when conditions turn colder, and this trip proved it. And El Niño was probably behind it. Deeper water in tropical oceans carries more nutrients, and when it's upwelled toward the surface, that extra fertilizer supercharges the whole food chain. More plants grow, more little bugs grow, and so on up to the creatures we are interested in. There's also a feeling that many muck diving animals prefer cooler water, so they tend to hang out a little deeper — and when cold water pushes shallower, they follow it up into the shallows.

I (Alex) hadn't felt Lembeh this cold in a long time. On some of my trips in the 2000s and 2010s, a 5mm wetsuit was essential. But every trip I've done in the 2020s has been 3mm diving all day without ever getting chilly. My temperature tolerance is very much average — on every trip there are people happy in thinner suits than me and people who need thicker ones — yet this time I wanted more than a 5mm. It was properly cold for a trip that's almost right on the equator.

The current El Niño is still developing, so we don't have the full picture yet, but I suspect it's behind the cold. El Niño usually brings warmer surface water to the East Pacific, while the West Pacific tends to run a little cooler than normal. Probably related to El Niño was an unusual local weather pattern. North Sulawesi hadn't seen rain for about three months, there were wildfires, and the green jungle had turned brown in places. There were also persistent strong winds pushing coastal water offshore, and as a result sucking the nutrient-rich deep water up from below. The result was a Lembeh Strait full of cold, fertile water.

You could see it everywhere. Some of the muck sites weren't black mud at all but a carpet of seaweed — a bizarre environment, and one we really enjoyed photographically. And the blackwater diving was off the scale. I've never thought of Lembeh as being as good as Anilao or the other hot blackwater destinations — it is basically just a shallow strait — but on this trip it absolutely was. I think the deep water upwelling along the coast and being pumped through the Strait by the tides delivered a real richness of pelagic subjects, with much-sought-after argonauts (paper nautilus) and blanket octopus unusually abundant.

Although Lembeh is very much a year-round destination, I've always loved it in the Northern Hemisphere autumn — September, October and November — and I try to arrange nearly all my workshops in that season. Combine that with the luck of having cold, rich water and the result was a ridiculous abundance of quality critters.

Normally, a big part of running the workshop for me is identifying which sites are hot with the subjects we want and making sure the boats are working them. This time, every site was packed with critters. We dived 41 different sites during the trip — most visitors to Lembeh might dive around 15 — and they all produced. I always try to visit a large number of sites because the different microhabitats all yield different species and different photos.

Ghost pipefish, which are typically abundant at this time of year, were everywhere. You'd finish with one pair and turn around to find another. On one dive, I saw seven together on one crinoid and then pairs of robust and rough-snout ghost pipefish on the slope nearby. There were loads of seahorses, loads of frogfish, and cephalopods in general were super abundant.

Across the workshop, we identified and photographed 110 nudibranch species. This wasn't a nudi trip, and we had no nudi lovers hunting them down — this is just what we saw and photographed. We identified and photographed over 500 species of critters in total — which doesn't count all the common subjects or the blackwater subjects! But it does say something about the incredible biodiversity in this region.

On the octopus front, mimics and wonderpus were really common, as were coconut and long-arm octopus. We had the rarely seen hairy octopus on four different dive sites. People often get excited when there is one known hairy octopus in the whole of Lembeh, and all the boats are trying to get onto that site. We had groups returning from two different sites at the same time saying they'd photographed one, and we could send boats back to find them again too. We also had mating blue-ringed octopus on five different sites, and many pairs were seen mating over more than one dive, so different groups saw the same pairs, or the same female mating with different males. It was full-on Lembeh magic.

Yes, we stay at a good resort and work with superbly experienced dive guides. But I don't believe the guides at Lembeh Resort, where we run the workshop, have sharper eyes than those at other resorts — there are so many fantastically experienced guides across the Strait. Where I feel we make a difference is in how we manage and use their skills.

People often tell me their dream is to go to Lembeh alone with a private guide and a private boat. I disagree. On our workshops, you have your guide, but on the same boat there are three other guides sharing what they see with yours during the dive. On top of that, we'll have another boat with three or four guides that has just dived the site you're heading to next, and they share what they've found. So you are two or three steps ahead of an average visitor. And we do this day after day.

We do this across five boats. This workshop had 29 photographers, 20 dive guides, and Nick More and me running it. Alongside the teaching, I take responsibility for managing the diving of all those boats. Five boats doing four dives a day gives me 20 observation windows every day. If we want to survey the Strait, we can send every boat to a different site for two days and get a snapshot of up to 40 sites, each checked by multiple guides. I think this is the main reason we see so much.

We write the hot sites on a board with the key critters seen there listed underneath, so photographers can use it as a crib sheet. On this trip, though, the lists became ridiculous: every site had a couple of frogfish, three or four octopus, cool nudibranchs, seahorses and ghost pipefish. Using that data to drive the diving means the average workshop dive is far better than diving on your own, even with a private boat. The guides have worked with us for years now, and they share this knowledge in a way they normally wouldn't. On a normal holiday, the boat schedule is usually decided by avoiding sites that someone on the boat has already done. We deliberately repeat sites and exchange notes so everyone sees more. As the guides say in Lembeh, "More eyes, more better!"

I (Matthew) tell people the same thing on every workshop I run, especially here at Blue Heron Bridge: just because something is rare doesn't mean it will make a good picture. When I was in Lembeh in April, the guides — many of them young and very enthusiastic — would get super excited about some rare nudibranch wedged into a crack. I kept encouraging them to find people cool things they could actually photograph. It's worth having that conversation with your guides, whether you're on a workshop or not. Tell them you're looking for good photo opportunities with high-value subjects, not the rarest thing out there, which is often in a terrible position.

I (Alex) think guides do it partly because some customers genuinely want those super-rare subjects. But if you're interested in the more artistic side of underwater photography, you'll get more from extended opportunities with classic creatures in the right place.

Gathering 29 photographers together always produces an impressive pile of gear, so we counted it up with help from Lawrence, the dive pro at Lembeh Resort. On the camera front there were 13 Sony, nine Nikon, seven Olympus and two Canon bodies. The vast majority were mirrorless, with just a couple of Nikon D850s and Canon 5Ds.

The housings were unusually Nauticam-heavy: 27 Nauticam (including my two), plus one each from Ikelite, Sea & Sea, Subal and Aquatica. I'd normally expect more of a mix. The strobes were dominated by Retra, with 40 on the trip. Next were eight Inons and seven Backscatter strobes. I was surprised there were only five Mini Flashes, when I'd normally expect around 20 on a macro workshop. Rounding things out were four Ikelites, four Sea & Seas, four Krakens and a single AOI, run as an odd pair on a smaller rig.

My Sony 50mm macro lens died on arrival. It appeared to be a communication error with the camera body — the lens would rack through the focus range endlessly — and cleaning the contacts didn't fix it in the field, so it's gone back to Sony for repair. Frustratingly, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone — and I really missed it.

The obvious question is why I'd miss the 50mm when I have Nauticam's MFO-3. Partly it's the discipline. When you choose a prime lens with a particular angle of view, you have to shoot everything with it. With the MFO-3, if a subject is too small, you just flip it out of the way and switch to the MFO-1 or the bare lens. The 50mm forces you to think in that style for the whole dive, and I really like that. The 50mm behind a curved port also gives a really special field of view, and because the subject sits so close to the lens and your strobe arms, it's much easier to wrap light around it for backlighting. I took really long strobe arms for backlighting with the MFO-3, and they're cumbersome by comparison.

I (Matthew) recently went back to my Nikon Z9 with the 60mm in a curved port, which I hadn't shot in a while. I love the versatility of the MFO-3, but the compact size and simplicity of the 60mm with a curved port is hard to beat. The image quality is phenomenal, and being physically so close opens up lighting opportunities that are harder with the MFO-3. It's probably what I'll take on my next dive.

I (Alex) feel the same about that discipline — it's the same reason I enjoy shooting the Nikonos 15mm.

Once people have an MFO-3, they tend to use it on every single dive. I (Alex) used mine on every dive of the trip except when I was shooting the EMWL. The most convenient way to carry it is on a flip adapter, perhaps with an MFO-1 on the other side, but that bulks up the front of your housing a lot. On my previous Lembeh trip, I skipped the flip and screwed the lens on and off; this time I found that too annoying and went back to the flip.

The trouble is that with all that bulk, you can't really front light subjects. You end up using what I call "out and in" lighting, with the strobes slightly wide and aimed back in at the subject. It puts lots of light on the subject and creates some shadow around it, and it's a great go-to style for macro — often my own go-to. But it isn't the only way to light things, and I miss having the option of front lighting because of the bulky lenses. Once the MFO-3 is pushed forward, you do have room to bring the strobes in, but the unintended consequence of people having the MFO-3 on a flip is that it nudges everyone toward the same lighting style, which homogenizes the photography a little.

Secondly, because the option is always there, people tend to shoot everything with the "correct" lens. It seems a strange criticism, but some of the most interesting pictures come from being forced to use the wrong lens — too tight for a big subject, or too wide for a small one — and still making something interesting. I'm a little sad that's drifted away.

I (Matthew) often suggest that workshop participants go in with a single lens or a single lighting technique for the whole dive. Sure, you'll miss things. But if you take the 105mm and find a bigger subject without the MFO-3, you're forced to work out how to make an interesting picture anyway. Take the 60mm and find something tiny, and you have to shoot it small in the frame or use selective lighting. It makes you think about how to approach each subject rather than simply flipping the MFO on and off. I love the MFO-3, but its convenience can take some of the creativity out.

I (Alex) completely agree. I'm lucky enough to have all the toys, but I don't take them on every dive. On the workshop we discussed whether it's better to use neutral density filters you can remove underwater or an ND filter on the sensor. There are arguments both ways, and I tend to favor the sensor version — but importantly, I take it on and off constantly through the trip. If I'm using it to shoot open apertures without ambient light, I'll commit to it for a dive or a morning, then it comes out. What frustrates me is people who put it in and leave it for the whole week, then make their blackwater dive three stops harder, or try a balanced-light shot and find they've got no light. No gadget is the cure for everything. Focusing on one tool, finding subjects that suit it, then switching to another is far better than having every option all of the time.

Retra sent me their new Pure II strobe just before the trip to give it a run in Lembeh. It's designed to be Retra's least expensive strobe, and it looks very much like a Pro Max II until you get into the details.

The first thing you'll notice is that it uses the flash tube from the Maxi. It doesn't deliver quite as much power as the Maxi, but if you like the Maxi's lighting look, this strobe will give you the same look with a little less max power. It's still powered by AA batteries, and while some people prefer the lithium-powered models, the advantage here is convenience and size. It's the same casing size as the Pro Max, but it's Retra's lightest-ever strobe and noticeably light to pick up, making it that bit more travel friendly.

Compared to the Pro Max II, it lacks the LCD screen on the back, using a simple colored LED instead. It also has a particularly strong aiming light, which makes it well suited to snooting — I tried it for that and found it relatively easy to use.

It's not really aimed at someone like me. I used it happily for a day at the start of the trip, then went back to my Pro Maxes. When you try strobes on a macro trip, they generally work fine, but you don't really get to know them without shooting some wide angle. Still, it's a nice product, and if it's priced well, it could prove very popular.

I (Matthew) came away from my conversations with Oskar at Retra thinking it will be a compelling macro strobe. If you mostly shoot macro, or dive in darker, murkier conditions, it could be a really nice tool. As I understand it, the center of the beam is as bright as the Pro Max II, without the same spread — that's still a lot of power, and combined with the strong aiming light, it should be great for snooting. It also keeps the same front as previous Retras, so all your accessories carry over. For cold-water divers, hardcore macro shooters, or anyone upgrading from an older flash of any brand, it should be on your radar.

I (Alex) sent Retra some pictures from just my first day with the strobe, and one reaction was: how could you see all that in one day? It was simply one of those lucky trips where Lembeh was absolutely rocking. After years of visiting, it hasn't always felt quite so magical. We still see loads, and the guides are better than ever at finding species, but this trip was ridiculousness dive after dive, and site after site. If you're heading to Lembeh soon, you're a very lucky person. I hope it lasts.

I (Matthew) was struck by that as soon as I heard every site was popping off. My experience, and I think the typical one, is that four or five sites are going crazy, others have some life, and a few are fairly dead — so the job is identifying those hot sites and getting boats there. This time, every site was firing. A wonderful reminder that Lembeh is a wonderland.

You can watch the full conversation below.