Dissapointed in RAJA(!?)

[scubajet]

Hello fellow divers,

Well... After a long trip I did four dives in Raja. And to be honest....

I am not blown away. Not at all tbh.
Blue Magic was a true disaster, horrible groups hanging on to corals, divemasters banging tanks constantly, people kneeling inbetween and on the corals and oh yes, some mantas.

Cap Kri was pretty tame, some baracudas, 1 tuna,1 napoleon and a lot of bleeched coral. Little critters and macro was nice.

Dont get me wrong: diving is diving, which i always enjoy, and there is way more to see and to find than in the dark lakes or the North Sea......

But i sort of figured there would be a bit challenging or exciting current dives and lots of fish. And that was not the case.
Soooooo is this me? Am i that spoiled?
Its like walking around in old Havana, you can imagine how beautiful it must have been in the old days.... These reefs are not doing all to well.....

Damn, am i happy i am not on an expensive LOB! (So thank you all for that advice)

So, i just wanted to vent a bit. Thank you for letting me.

Any tips about what to do? I am on Kri, Arborek on Sunday.

Wondering if i should make it to Misool, since i have the time...
. But i feel a bit hesitated since these dives were not really what i expected after cruising the globe......

Any advice welcome.

Might change to horseriding

 

[tarponchik]

Any tips about what to do?

Keep on diving

 

[also_anon_dc]

Raja Ampat is huge and it sounds like you've done 4 dives in one spot with a bad group. If you want to write off all of RA due to that that's fine by me, more space to dive for the rest of us.

 

[JohnN]

Hello fellow divers,

Well... After a long trip I did four dives in Raja. And to be honest....

I am not blown away. Not at all tbh.
Blue Magic was a true disaster, horrible groups hanging on to corals, divemasters banging tanks constantly, people kneeling inbetween and on the corals and oh yes, some mantas.

Cap Kri was pretty tame, some baracudas, 1 tuna,1 napoleon and a lot of bleeched coral. Little critters and macro was nice.

Dont get me wrong: diving is diving, which i always enjoy, and there is way more to see and to find than in the dark lakes or the North Sea......

But i sort of figured there would be a bit challenging or exciting current dives and lots of fish. And that was not the case.
Soooooo is this me? Am i that spoiled?
Its like walking around in old Havana, you can imagine how beautiful it must have been in the old days.... These reefs are not doing all to well.....

Damn, am i happy i am not on an expensive LOB! (So thank you all for that advice)

So, i just wanted to vent a bit. Thank you for letting me.

Any tips about what to do? I am on Kri, Arborek on Sunday.

Wondering if i should make it to Misool, since i have the time...
. But i feel a bit hesitated since these dives were not really what i expected after cruising the globe......

Any advice welcome.

Might change to horseriding

Absolutely agree (you can keep your horse). Too many people are loving Raja to death, IMHO it is becoming like Cozumel. I had a similar experience at Blue Magic and the surface interval was on an island with at least 300 of my closest friends

If you can spend a week, check out Triton Bay. Fly from Sorong to Kaimana, then a 60 minute boat ride. You will see no other divers. As a bonus, dive ( not snorkel) with whale sharks

 

[Luko]

I sort of figured there would be a bit challenging or exciting current dives and lots of fish. And that was not the case.

Not a necessary condition : on my last trips in the 2 past years I hardly dived in currenty spots in R4 actually but no current didn't mean no fish, on the contrary.

Cap Kri was pretty tame, some baracudas, 1 tuna,1 napoleon and a lot of bleeched coral. Little critters and macro was nice

Can you tell what max depth you were diving?
Cape Kri is usually outstanding in between 36-40m, I am wondering whether the coral was bleached at that depth, was it?

 

[PatW]

The vast majority of my diving is in the Caribbean and the adjacent Atlantic, I have dove Fiji and Sulawesi. And both of those were nice. But after the hype, I expected more.

The fish in the places I went tended to be small and rather shy.

I think the angels of the Caribbean: Queen, French, Grey and Rock Beauty, stack up favorably against anything I saw in the Pacific and Coral Triangle. The Nassau groupers stack up well against anything. And spotted eagle rays are way cool. The gorgonians of the Caribbean are great in variety and form and the Caribbean has many lovely sponges.

The odd thing was that most of the coral colonies I saw were pretty small, there were some big ones and some REALLY big ones. But the Caribbean has some really nice hard corals if you can find some healthy ones.

Now, Indonesia had some really cool flatworms that were big (well 1” +), and Pygmy seahorses, and a bunch of nudibranchs … all good fun.

In the Caribbean, I am used to taking photos of the butterfly fish. And when you use a strobe (I do 100% of the time) , the scales reflect the light and I have to be careful to not overexpose. But nail the strobe setting and the effect is great, I did not have that happen with Indopacific butterflies and that was a disappointment.

Was the diving good? Sure. Was it worth it? For me it was. I suppose anything can be overhyped.

 

[rmorgan]

I’ve read that Melissa’s Garden is unbleached. Mike’s Point might be good, too

 

[JustinJRL]

Blue magic, cape kri and Mioskon can get crowded. These dives are mostly about schooling fish against the reef (and trevali on the hunt) but you also never know what youll see in the blue. I was there a few months ago and had the dive of a lifetime around a new moon. Sharks, rays, schooling bluefin trevaIli,
and massive schools of fish in every direction. Unfortunate to hear about the bleaching

Definitely check out fam islands. Mind-blowing coral and reef fish.

 

[Centrals]

Too many divers? That is the problem.
Cape Kri? Nice site but some divers should never be allowed to dive there.
There is no solution for that.

 

[Wisnu]

one more thing, we're not diving in the aquarium; those fishes and critters can move anywhere they like. I recalled years back, had an amazing dive in chicken reef Kri, great viz, so many things, bumphead school, giant trevally, 1-2 sharks ect, it was real fish soup. So, we asked our guide to repeat this location while he proposed cape Kri not far away. We insisted, and what we got? practically nothing.