bintang_shrimp
Registered
Not even sure how to respond here. The guide makes ALL the difference in Lembeh. They are not all the same. If my guide was carrying a camera in Lembeh on a dive that would be the last dive with that guide and probably that resort. The difference between even a good guide and an excellent one in Lembeh is significant. An excellent one will find a hairy octo, or a hairy shrimp or some other rare and difficult to spot creature. A good one won’t even see them. There are lots of good guides in Lembeh but only a few excellent ones. I have had both, as well as a poor one. Is it worth paying extra to get one of the excellent ones? For me absolutely - saving a few dollars (or euros) after spending a small fortune and a couple of days to travel there seems crazy. NAD has become my first choice after trying a couple other resorts (where the guides were very good). Would not even think about doing it with a non local guide. Did that for a couple of days at the end of a liveaboard trip and then stayed at Black Sands for 4 days. The difference was more than significant. Along the lines that the OP described- pointing out banded cleaner shrimp. With the liveaboard guides I couldn’t understand what all the fuss re Lembeh was. After a few days at Black Sands it became obvious.
The idea that you could have a guide point you to an area and you could find the more interesting creatures on your own is .... well I can’t find the right words.
I think you mis-read my original reply, it definitely sounds like a lapse in professionalism. Not necessarily the guide is good or bad at spotting, but the issue needs to be addressed.
I've never had a non-local guide in Lembeh, unless one of the dive managers was leading it on very rare occasions. I can't imagine they would even want to pay some westerner, the locals work for a lot less ....sadly for them. What else do they have that's so much better assuming all else is equal and guides are local?
I guess only way to test this is a test of going out on same days with two different shops and comparing notes, otherwise your success rate could have been a factor of weather, animals not being there, one bad day for whatever guide, etc..
I may go there next year and do 50/50 trial myself for a week and hop from one shop to another to see how it compares. In the end, I'm not a pro photographer and don't sell photos, nor am I a rich kid. UW photo community can become a pissing contest of bagging the most critters and I'm not into that. As long as I see 90% of what is possible to see and get some interesting animal behavior shots, I'll be happy. I can spend the difference on extra dives.
Btw, I don't spend anything getting there, I have a ton of airline miles from work travel and it's basically free tickets. Just need time off, so I'm very cost conscious and wouldn't want to spend extra unless NAD guides consistently outperform others in same conditions/dive sites.