Being on land isn’t easy for scuba diving coral lovers like me, and we find ourselves digging through our photo archives, reminiscing about the lush coral reefs of Indonesia. Jalan Masuk is the name of one of my favorite dive site in Bunaken National Park with lots of large plating corals clinging to the steep reef walls.
The word Jalan Masuk is Indonesian for entrance, and this dive site is at the entrance of the passage for Bunaken island. Because of this Jalan Masuk can often have strong currents. It is very interesting to see how corals in this high flow habitat have a flat, planting, even encrusting form.
Along the reef wall, we found quite a high diversity of corals species, honestly more than we could count! On the reef tops, you find hardy sps species in small colonies.
This picture really shows off the coral diversity of Jalan Masuk, and highlights just how special coral diving in Sulawesi can be. There are at least ten species of coral just in this one photo, and we can see how the corals are competing for space.
We were able to photograph one beautiful Acropora coral that has a perfect example of a strong solid base. The first row of pictures below shows a large Acropora colony firmly attached near the top of the reef wall and the third row is one of the larges Montipora colonies we’ve ever seen.
We also found several different species of Pachyseries and Platygyra, and some rather large colony of Montipora. In the second row of pictures below you can see a Pachyseris speciosa on the left and Platygyra contorta on the right.
Hopefully someday soon we can return to the reef. In the meantime, we will be sure to bring you more pictures from our photo archives! Check out more natural reef pictures and content from our Sulawesi scuba diving articles HERE.
