Murex Dive Resort, Manado, Indonesia: Undercurrent 10/2026

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Dear Fellow Diver,

When you're an unattached person in your 50s who wants to dive overseas but not go it alone or take the time for travel research, joining a trip somebody else planned solves both problems.

A Murex Cottage After years of reading newsletters from Reef Seekers and enjoying the photos and reports from their dive travel, I decided to join them and was torn between Indonesia and the Philippines. I emailed Ken Kurtis, Reef Seekers' owner (it was a Beverley Hills dive shop before transitioning to dive travel only in 2006). I'd never been to Asia, and he recommended Indonesia for the greater variety of diving. "We'll get spectacular vertical walls at Bunaken Marine Park, interesting close-to-shore diving near the resort, fabulous soft corals, and incredible macro life in the Lembeh Straits." He was right.

After backrolling in on my first dive at Bunaken Timur, I saw a shallow reef top stocked with a full color spectrum of hard and soft corals. Descending to 65 feet, I checked out the colorful wall while a Napoleon wrasse checked me out. As the current moved me along, Basrah, the head divemaster, pointed out a porcelain crab perched on a pale anemone, a translucent bubble coral shrimp, and Spanish dancer nudibranch eggs resembling a red rosette. A cluster of yellowtail barracuda greeted me as I returned to the reef top, with not a bleached patch in sight. It was one of the more pristine sites I've ever seen, and that became the norm.

We then motored to the volcanic island of Manado, where Basrah sketched the site, noting depths and places of interest, and gave a good description of what to expect. As with many dives in Bunaken, we finned one way against the current, then turned to enjoy the ride back. Long wire corals jutted from the steep wall, and I found a blue spotted stingray resting in a crack. As three green turtles swam into the blue, streaks of metallic blue damselfish poured down the wall while bluefin trevally patrolled the drop-off. Indeed, great fish fireworks for the Fourth of July, my first diving day.

I first met Ken and the other 11 divers (all but one from California) in Singapore Airport at 8 a.m. for a 3-hour flight to Manado, the second-largest city in Sulawesi. When we landed, two Murex reps were at the plane's door with a "Welcome" sign for Ken, who was on his 12th trip to Murex, and his guest of honor, Marilyn, his former dive assistant, who was celebrating her 80th birthday. The staff brought us a cooler of chilled metal water bottles before we got in a passenger van for an hour's drive to the resort....

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