Manado: The way things were, and are right now

A former dive junkie revisits the time before Manado paved paradise and put up a parking lot – and restaurants, shopping centers and malls.

Diving among the multitude of corals and shoals of fish in the clear azure waters of Manado during the last Independence Day weekend was all that a break from Jakarta should have been. But something was conspicuously missing from the backdrop: tourists.

The nation’s notorious party town was unusually empty for the duration of the August long weekend, and ours was the only boat seen carrying divers to the popular dive sites around nearby Bunaken, Manado Tua and Siladen islands.

This was quite unlike the scene in previous years, when numerous vessels littered the cove in front of Bunaken and divers jostled with each other below for coveted views of lazy turtles and dainty nudibranchs.

Back at our bungalows, a friend from Jakarta and I rounded out a less than diverse guest list that consisted of a quiet party of four underwater photographers from Taiwan and eight members of a Singapore sports club who were here because they couldn’t get reservations for Sipadan in Malaysia. Both groups sat quietly at tables at opposite ends of the dining area – in stark contrast to previous visits years ago, when large boisterous gatherings of divers, hailing from all parts of the globe, used to meet daily at the bar of one of the most popular dive resorts of that time to share beers, trade underwater stories and then maybe take a turn at having the local tattoo artist inscribe them with one of the sea creatures spotted earlier on a dive.

Now, I found myself keeping my voice at a respectably low volume and wondering what might be on satellite TV later. It was nice having the place to myself, but at the same time it seemed odd. It was just too quiet.

Despite my comparisons with former holidays, Minahasa Divers’ owner and operator Katiman Herlambang assured me the number of divers had not dropped dramatically and he sees anywhere between 75 and 100 in a month; these days, however, they tend to be from Singapore, Malaysia and Jakarta, with hardly any Europeans making the trip. Katiman is not surprised at the change of faces: More Asian divers have been coming to Manado since 2004, especially on weekends and other short stretches, and he expects this trend to continue.

I can understand why – with Manado’s airport becoming international and all the resorts a relatively short distance from both airport and ocean, a diver can be in the water the morning after a late night flight – a nice convenience when you have a short holiday schedule. Obviously, that also appeals to our nearest neighbors: Silk Air has seen enough passengers to warrant doubling its service from two to four times a week and Air Asia started its service three times a week from Kuala Lumpur on Sept. 22, although this could all be in anticipation of the World Ocean Summit, set to take place in Manado later this year.

But when we passed the construction sites of seven major multistar hotels, including Swiss Belotel, the Peninsula, the Aston and Novotel, on the way to the airport, we were convinced developers were really pushing their luck. OK, maybe a fair number of delegates would be arriving for the summit, but the lack of tourists on what should have been one of the busiest weekends of the year made us wonder: Will there be enough business to fill these new hotels? And more importantly, would we want so many tourists flooding into our favorite natural wonder of Indonesia? Those of us who frequent Sulawesi’s northernmost city like to lay some sort of claim to this special holiday spot – and I for one really didn’t want to share my beloved getaway with just anyone and everyone.

Back in the day

Fifteen years ago, Manado topped the list of off-the-beaten-path destinations for adventurers from far-flung countries and researchers who flew in to study its unique biodiversity (more than 500 types of coral and some 3,000 types of fish) in the hope of being the next to discover a new species. For a diver, this was the next best thing to Eden.

When I had first ventured to this corner of the world after coming across a simulated coral display based on the area’s underwater flora and fauna at the Vancouver Aquarium, I was so impressed with the real thing that I canceled the rest of my planned stops on my Indonesian tour so I could stay and dive longer.

Not all of the delights were beneath the ocean’s surface either. Although it claimed to be one of the cleanest cities in the country, Manado looked better at twilight, when the downtown core was awash in an iridescent pastel glow from the then unobstructed view of the sunset along the seawall skirting the bay. This was long before the city’s overzealous construction of malls and shopping centers along its main street, when locals and food vendors with their carts leisurely lined the road hugging the beach and take in the colorful sunset over plates of tikus utang (local cuisine of cooked jungle rat).

The pioneer of diving in Bunaken, Loky Herlambang, was the first to recognize the urgent need to protect the amazing undersea bounty he brought to the world’s attention, and his conservation efforts netted him the nation’s Kalpataru environment award in 1985. His efforts culminated in the establishment of the 89,056- hectare Bunaken National Marine Park in October 1991, which implemented in 2000 an entrance fee system to funnel money back into other conservation and education initiatives.

This annual fee, mandatory for all divers, has not changed from its original Rp 150,000; my park tag now sits with the others I didn’t give away to friends going there for a holiday, in my bathroom soap dish along with some of the shells I pocketed when no one was looking.

Over Seas

Lembeh Straits is the other underwater venue for divers to retreat to if in need of a change of pace from Bunaken’s colorful wall-life. Popular since 2000, Lembeh has managed to grab a fair share of the spotlight from Bunaken with its 30 dive sites down a 12-kilometer canal.

Unlike me, Bogor resident Dudi Kurniawan does not think twice about enduring the colder temperatures or 90-minute journey from Manado to Bitung, the jumping-off point for Lembeh, just to catch a glimpse of some of the “small surprises” he can spot by stirring up the mix of volcanic sand in the place that he calls the finest in muck diving.

His prize find has been the wonderpuss, or the ornate octopus, an amazingly small-bodied octopus with long tentacles, which made it to the Asian Diver magazine’s top-10 list of must-sees in Lembeh. Dudi counts himself one of the privileged few to behold the rare creature, but the attractions at Lembeh have not wooed him away from his first love.

“You never get tired of that place,” he said of Bunaken. “Maybe you find one thing, like a pygmy seahorse, but it might not be around the next time you are there – instead you’ll suddenly find a different surprise in a different place.”

Like most veteran divers to Manado, Dudi laments the loss of two well-known Napoleon wrasse that would diligently circle below the visiting dive boats at Fukui Point in search of lunch leftovers thrown over the side by divers waiting to complete their surface interval. He said the friendly pair were celebrities, having been around for five years before they went missing two years ago. He guesses they were sold to a Hong Kong kitchen, where so many other exotic and not so exotic fishes end up these days. To me, this was another unwelcome invasion of my sacred space.

Wave Bye-Bye

There was a time when only four dive resorts accommodated all those who came in search of beautiful corals and astonishing sea life. But preservation had some pitfalls it would seem, and the fame brought on by Manado’s abundant marine life and successful reef management sparked a sharp rise in business eager for a slice of the tourist pie – today 37 dive operations conduct underwater tours in and around the surrounding area.

So with all the tourists coming to this marine resource-rich region, one would think the dollar potential of this little gold mine would encourage more ecotourism, with everyone doing whatever possible to preserve the underwater environment. Not so, apparently. A land reclamation project started up in 1998, aiming to fill in 56 hectares of the ocean and sea bed, or rather 56 hectares of marine life, for seemingly more important things, like shopping centers, malls, department stores, restaurants and hotels along the city’s waterfront. Shock and dismay hit the dive community hard at the time; it still angers many who are opposed to it.

One returning diver to Manado said he wished the government would get its priorities straight and realize that there were bigger assets to protect.

“Bunaken is a world heritage site, but less tourists would come to Manado and this would have a horrible negative impact on the social infrastructure and more importantly on the economy if more reclamation is done,” Dudi Kurniawan said.

All I could think of was the irony of Manado hosting the World Ocean Summit this year and the chance that one of the delegates might stay in a hotel room right above what used to be the spawning ground for some of the rare sea life that the summit was trying to save.

On the positive side of all this, the garbage generated by Mega Mall, the largest building so far constructed on the reclaimed land, gave rise to an unlikely dive site right behind it. Strangely enough, the residents of the Mega Mall/Manado Bay dive site, comprising crinoid shrimp, squat lobsters, ghost pipefish, stone fish, mimic octopi, seahorses and on good days, frogfish, adapted well to the discarded plastic debris, presenting new challenges for divers to spot them among the tossed sanitary pads and diapers.

This was also one of the few places to spot the shy Mandarin fish, which makes its appearance only at dusk, when it comes out to mate. “Not many divers came here when muck diving wasn’t as popular, but a surprising amount of the marine life survived even with all this development, making it a favorite dive site, especially because of the hundreds of Mandarin fish,” said dive guide Eron Wahani.

Sadly, no one will get the chance to discover this now. The Mega Mall/Manado Bay dive site and the plethora of interesting sea life it sheltered were destroyed last year by the land reclamation project. The next phase gets underway sometime soon with the dive site in front of Malalayang, home to other interesting sea creatures, slated to be filled in.

There could be no better time than right now to see the last of Manado’s unique underwater life, before it disappears in the wake of development sweeping the area.

With the way things are going, I think I’ll hang on to those old park tags in my soap dish: They could be collectors’ items one day.

+ Maria Kegel

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