Your experience varies widely from the Banda Sea trip I did in November 7 years ago, I enjoyed the trip immensely. It's unfortunate that you thought it was a waste of time and money. Nobody likes to travel all that way and spend all those $$ to be dissatisfied.
On my trip we started with 2 dives in Ambon since the departure was in the afternoon and I was there early and those 2 dives held out some great macro subjects. Of course I'm a fiend for macro, I showed up 2 days early to do some diving in Ambon specifically.
We did have good luck with the Hammerheads, and if we got skunked that would have been a bummer and would weigh my thoughts on the trip down.
I did enjoy seeing lots of whale activity while cruising from island to island, and we saw a super-pod of dolphins with tons of jumping and twists which was really cool. And if the boat times its arrival to Manuk in the early morning watching the many seabid species heading out to sea in the morning is pretty spectacular, there is to many to even begin counting.
Even though I'm terrified of snakes I really enjoyed seeing them in high numbers at Manuk. I also saw barrel sponges spawning there which looks like a volcano spewing soap lava or mist depending on the type. And I was also treated to a Hammer giving itself a bit of sand bath untill it saw us and swam off.
We also ended the trip in the Misool area and again my experience was much different than yours. My first dive at Boo Windows was incredible, I loved seeing the topography and the sea fans of every color, transitioning to the kaleidoscope of soft corals, and hard corals with the changes of depth, when I was there the fish life was epic, with big schools of snapper sized fish of various species and the small fish had high populations also. A litteral fish soup. Upon surfacing the divers in my group remarked "amazing, ready to die now that I've seen this." We had great manta action at Magic Mountain with both reef and huge oceanics. Our other dives in the area were also really good, it was some of the most interesting and increadible dives I've done.
To follow up the 11 day Banda Sea trip I did another 10 day LOB thru thu the South-Central-North of Raja Ampat, this allowed me not only to repeat dive sites in Misool but see the rest of the area. The South was definitely my favorite, when I was there it had better visibility than Cental and North. There were lots of medium size fish schools in Central but certainly not as many little fish. I did notice a big difference in the amounts of soft corals comparing South to the other parts of R4.
My trip was incredible one of the best I've been blessed to have done, I will remember it for the rest of my life. Would I go thru the Banda Sea again? Probably not, been there done that, and I've had other incredible schooling hammerhead experiences elsewhere. ( one caveat, I hear there are Banda Sea trips that snorkel with the big whales, and that sounds tempting,
@Dan care to enlighten us with a report?) Peoples experiences with the hammers in the Banda Sea vary widely, some luck out and are happy others don't and are disappointed, those trips ain't cheap and it takes alot of travel to get there, no one likes a sub-par trip.
I would certainly do another LOB thru Raja Ampat for sure, and I would definatly want to dive the Misool area for sure.
