| Site Type: | Scenic natural reef with lots of nooks and crannies |
| Depth: | Top: 5M Bottom: 18M |
Ribbon Valley Mabul is a gently shelving natural reef with an amazing biodiversity: all kinds of reef fish, bubble coral shrimps and hairy squat lobsters, plus worms (Christmas Tree Worms) and nudis, – though probably named for the Ribbon eels – we did see a male, and a couple of juveniles.
We also saw a Leopard wrasse – not exactly your everyday wrasse – well not where I’m from!
The Hairy squat lobster is referred to locally as the orang-utan lobster. If you look top right you’ll also see a bubble coral shrimp.
“Make mine a double” – my first ever whiptail and a Double whiptail toboot!
Sixth species so far: the six fingered seastar.
And seventh: Christmas tree worms
The diversity of this site is amazing. Most blennies sit quietly on the sand, this one- the Striped Fangblenny – is an ambusher – strikes from nowhere and takes a bite out of its prey. Doesn’t kill the host through, so …
Kubaryana’s Nembrotha: as pretty slugs go … quite a catch. Why aren’t land slugs this pretty? Maybe because there are no birds in the ocean.
Ocellated Phyllidia on steroids.
