pygmyghostpipeturtle
Registered
Cruising Muluku Province.
Our first three trips as the new Cruise Directors aboard the Archipelago Adventurer II couldnt have gone better! Great guests, fantastic diving and the boat and its crew are really top notch!
We flew into Ambon on the 6th of April to meet the crew and the boat and were very taken by both immediately. Everyone was very helpful in showing us the finer details of how the systems worked on board, so we could get stuck right in.
Our first two cruises were from Ambon to Ambon, touring the famous Spice Islands of Banda, and the third crossing from Ambon to Maumere, in Flores.
To anyone who has been to Banda will know that its a special place, and we were very glad to be able to share the experience with the rest of the guests. As well as the amazing diving, with deep walls and steep slopes, some muck diving, perhaps the best Mandarin fish dive weve ever done, amazing reefs and lots of fish, the topside beauty of the islands and the cultural attractions make this a truly special place.
The guests flew into Ambon and were either collected by us at the airport, or at our sister resort, Maluku Divers, and after a quick orientation and welcome drink, into the water for a couple of critter dives in Ambon bay. A 12 hour overnight steam brought us to the Spice Islands, starting with Pulau Run, which was traded by the English to the Dutch for Manhattan, back when it was still called New Amsterdam. The diving is fantastic with steep slopes and walls, full of very healthy corals, some big Napoleon Wrasse and the most Fire Dartfish we have ever seen on one dive! The dive site Breda Corner (named after the Breda Agreement, the contract used in the exchange of Run and Manhattan), turned up some goodies on the second trip with some very close Eagle Ray encounters, first three at once, in formation, swimming just below us, off of the wall and then circling back twice. Then later in the dive, one more came up from the depths and to within just 3 meters of us before slowly turning away, going past us and on her own way again! Magic!
One of our anchorages in the area was Banda Naira Harbor, in the shadow of Gunung Api (translated to Fire Mountain), a large cone shaped volcano that last erupted in 1989. This is an interesting fact to keep in mind when diving one of the sites on Gunung Api, the Lava Flow. The dive is right off of the end of the lava flow, still black and menacing above water, leading right to the waters edge, and beautifully carpeted with an amazing hard coral garden underwater with 100% coral cover as far as the eye can see. The reason why this is so interesting is because we know when the volcano last erupted, hence we know how old the lava flow is. As the flow continues into the water, we can safely assume all of the coral was destroyed that day. On most dive sites it is impossible to really know how old the coral is, whereas here, we know that it cant be older than 21 years old, and when you bare this in mind when looking at the reef, it is truly astonishing to think that that much and that size of coral can grow in this time, implying perfect conditions for healthy coral growth. We have heard tell (and we know, its a bold statement), that it is the fastest known growing coral on earth!
There are other fantastic dives in and around the harbor, like the Lighthouse Reef, with walls, sandy slopes and plateaus, the aforementioned fantastic Mandarin fish dive and a black sand slope with some great critters, perfect for night dives. What made the Mandarin fish dive so good? Its shallow, so you can easily spend a long time there, the Mandarin fish are big (+/-10 cm) active and plentiful. Its not uncommon to see the males fighting before the usual show of paring and mating, which adds an extra element to the dive. The variation in the sizes and colour of the individual fish, and of course the behavior, made it very interesting indeed.
There are plenty of world class sites to explore, more than we could do on our 7 night cruises, so we had to be picky. Some of the diving we did choose was in the southern Banda Island of Pulau Hatta, with its deep walls with really stunning coral growth and some interesting things to find in amongst all the pretty corals, notably a Hippocampus Denise Pygmy Seahorse living on the (traditionally) wrong fan, giving it a mustard colour and a lot of nobly bumps to help it blend in! Amazing! The site of Hatta Wall has a fantastic natural arch at the top of the reef leading onto the wall, which looks great in photos and is very fun to swim through.
On the north tip of Banda Besar (Great Banda Island) we dived Pohon Mering and Batu Kapal, both world class sites with swim-throughs, huge seafans and black corals and loads of very interesting fish life.
To round the Banda section of the trip off, we also offered a tour of Banda Naira town with its old colonial buildings, the big Dutch fort, a tour of a Nutmeg plantation and the local market. Everyone that went on these tours felt incredibly fortunate to see such a historically interesting place and to meet the friendly local people.
A the end of both of the Ambon - Ambon cruises and at the start of our crossing, we stopped for a day of diving in Nusa Laut, with blue, blue water, amazingly healthy corals, great coral formations, critters like Pygmy Seahorses (both H. Denise and H. Bargibanti), some Nudis, Leaf Scorpionfish, a couple of tiny frogfish, big, big Bumphead Parrotfish, more big groupers than you can shake a stick at and a big school of resident Jacks.
The crossing was a two week cruise with amazing diving every step of the way, starting with muck diving in Ambon, the incredible reefs of Nusa Laut, two days in Banda then a crossing to Manuk. From the surface, you would probably dub this the bird island, with thousands and thousands of sea birds circling around the island and over the water non stop, this obviously being a nesting area for a few different species, but underwater you can see why it has the reputation as being the sea snake island! We did one day here and saw loads and loads of snakes. What a special place! Other highlights of the diving were a reef shark, a huge school of Jacks and swarms and swarms of Fusiliers. In the shallows, one of our dive guides, Made, led us to an area where the sand bubbles and if you put your hand in it, can feel some incredible heat, a little exciting if you think about what must be going on just below the surface!
From there we crossed to Karang Dusborg with richly adorned walls and loads of very large tunas, snappers and a few sharks, as well as some very pretty small fish like a pair of tiger blennies.
That night we kept south for the Terbang islands with their colourful walls, where Made kindly posed for some of my photos..
Next stops were Romong and Wetar with some good reef critter dives and an amazing site called Larrys Pinnacle, named after the late Indonesian diving legend from Texas, Larry Smith. Starting at 12 meters and going down to around 30 meters, I have never seen such a pretty bunch of black corals in all kinds of colours, and we had a nice big Solar Powered nudibranch sitting atop the pinnacle on a leather coral, just to top off the dive!
Next was Pulau Pura, just off of Alor where we first hit the cooler water of the Sawu Sea. We found 2 giant frogfish in amongst an almost endless carpet of anemones and loads and loads of awesome nudis. We also had fun with the kids as they paddled out in their dugouts after our dives and posed for photos.
From there it was a short trip to Pantar where we spent 2 days critter hunting in Beangabang bay, turning up loads of cool stuff like Mimic and Coconut octopus, pipefish, seahorses and pipehorses, cuttlefish and squid, shrimps and crabs and the beautiful sand divers, to name a just few of the highlights.
The next day we went to Pulau Suanagi, on south Lembata island for an incredible reef dive with whitetip reef sharks, very healthy corals, the densest gathering of Anthias that we have ever seen, a hole filled with 10 lobsters(!), a couple of strange nudis and a pretty egg cowrie, right in the shallows. From there we headed north and into the bay to check out a new site (now named by Made Beep - Beep!) for what was voted as possibly the best dives of the trip with loads of very interesting critters, like the Rhinopias (4 on one dive, 3 weedy and one paddle flap), frogfish (2 on one dive, one giant and one painted), 4 species of ghost pipefish, including robust, ornate, thin and halimeda, just to name a few of the great things we saw.
From there we moved to the north coast of Flores for our last dives, the first of which had a very swift current making a fun drift, then a cool critter dive in the bay where we were anchored, turning up more leaf fish and ornate ghost pipefish.
Now we are in Labuan Bajo, about to start our Komodo season, and things are looking good! We have truly amazing memories from this last month and cant wait for the next crossing, but first things first, Komodo, here we come!
We'd love to post photos, but the internet connection we have is kind of slow. We'll try to do so when we can... Watch this space..
Written by Erwin Filius & Nora Lohmann, Cruise Directors, Archipelago Adventurer II. 11th April 2010.
Our first three trips as the new Cruise Directors aboard the Archipelago Adventurer II couldnt have gone better! Great guests, fantastic diving and the boat and its crew are really top notch!
We flew into Ambon on the 6th of April to meet the crew and the boat and were very taken by both immediately. Everyone was very helpful in showing us the finer details of how the systems worked on board, so we could get stuck right in.
Our first two cruises were from Ambon to Ambon, touring the famous Spice Islands of Banda, and the third crossing from Ambon to Maumere, in Flores.
To anyone who has been to Banda will know that its a special place, and we were very glad to be able to share the experience with the rest of the guests. As well as the amazing diving, with deep walls and steep slopes, some muck diving, perhaps the best Mandarin fish dive weve ever done, amazing reefs and lots of fish, the topside beauty of the islands and the cultural attractions make this a truly special place.
The guests flew into Ambon and were either collected by us at the airport, or at our sister resort, Maluku Divers, and after a quick orientation and welcome drink, into the water for a couple of critter dives in Ambon bay. A 12 hour overnight steam brought us to the Spice Islands, starting with Pulau Run, which was traded by the English to the Dutch for Manhattan, back when it was still called New Amsterdam. The diving is fantastic with steep slopes and walls, full of very healthy corals, some big Napoleon Wrasse and the most Fire Dartfish we have ever seen on one dive! The dive site Breda Corner (named after the Breda Agreement, the contract used in the exchange of Run and Manhattan), turned up some goodies on the second trip with some very close Eagle Ray encounters, first three at once, in formation, swimming just below us, off of the wall and then circling back twice. Then later in the dive, one more came up from the depths and to within just 3 meters of us before slowly turning away, going past us and on her own way again! Magic!
One of our anchorages in the area was Banda Naira Harbor, in the shadow of Gunung Api (translated to Fire Mountain), a large cone shaped volcano that last erupted in 1989. This is an interesting fact to keep in mind when diving one of the sites on Gunung Api, the Lava Flow. The dive is right off of the end of the lava flow, still black and menacing above water, leading right to the waters edge, and beautifully carpeted with an amazing hard coral garden underwater with 100% coral cover as far as the eye can see. The reason why this is so interesting is because we know when the volcano last erupted, hence we know how old the lava flow is. As the flow continues into the water, we can safely assume all of the coral was destroyed that day. On most dive sites it is impossible to really know how old the coral is, whereas here, we know that it cant be older than 21 years old, and when you bare this in mind when looking at the reef, it is truly astonishing to think that that much and that size of coral can grow in this time, implying perfect conditions for healthy coral growth. We have heard tell (and we know, its a bold statement), that it is the fastest known growing coral on earth!
There are other fantastic dives in and around the harbor, like the Lighthouse Reef, with walls, sandy slopes and plateaus, the aforementioned fantastic Mandarin fish dive and a black sand slope with some great critters, perfect for night dives. What made the Mandarin fish dive so good? Its shallow, so you can easily spend a long time there, the Mandarin fish are big (+/-10 cm) active and plentiful. Its not uncommon to see the males fighting before the usual show of paring and mating, which adds an extra element to the dive. The variation in the sizes and colour of the individual fish, and of course the behavior, made it very interesting indeed.
There are plenty of world class sites to explore, more than we could do on our 7 night cruises, so we had to be picky. Some of the diving we did choose was in the southern Banda Island of Pulau Hatta, with its deep walls with really stunning coral growth and some interesting things to find in amongst all the pretty corals, notably a Hippocampus Denise Pygmy Seahorse living on the (traditionally) wrong fan, giving it a mustard colour and a lot of nobly bumps to help it blend in! Amazing! The site of Hatta Wall has a fantastic natural arch at the top of the reef leading onto the wall, which looks great in photos and is very fun to swim through.
On the north tip of Banda Besar (Great Banda Island) we dived Pohon Mering and Batu Kapal, both world class sites with swim-throughs, huge seafans and black corals and loads of very interesting fish life.
To round the Banda section of the trip off, we also offered a tour of Banda Naira town with its old colonial buildings, the big Dutch fort, a tour of a Nutmeg plantation and the local market. Everyone that went on these tours felt incredibly fortunate to see such a historically interesting place and to meet the friendly local people.
A the end of both of the Ambon - Ambon cruises and at the start of our crossing, we stopped for a day of diving in Nusa Laut, with blue, blue water, amazingly healthy corals, great coral formations, critters like Pygmy Seahorses (both H. Denise and H. Bargibanti), some Nudis, Leaf Scorpionfish, a couple of tiny frogfish, big, big Bumphead Parrotfish, more big groupers than you can shake a stick at and a big school of resident Jacks.
The crossing was a two week cruise with amazing diving every step of the way, starting with muck diving in Ambon, the incredible reefs of Nusa Laut, two days in Banda then a crossing to Manuk. From the surface, you would probably dub this the bird island, with thousands and thousands of sea birds circling around the island and over the water non stop, this obviously being a nesting area for a few different species, but underwater you can see why it has the reputation as being the sea snake island! We did one day here and saw loads and loads of snakes. What a special place! Other highlights of the diving were a reef shark, a huge school of Jacks and swarms and swarms of Fusiliers. In the shallows, one of our dive guides, Made, led us to an area where the sand bubbles and if you put your hand in it, can feel some incredible heat, a little exciting if you think about what must be going on just below the surface!
From there we crossed to Karang Dusborg with richly adorned walls and loads of very large tunas, snappers and a few sharks, as well as some very pretty small fish like a pair of tiger blennies.
That night we kept south for the Terbang islands with their colourful walls, where Made kindly posed for some of my photos..
Next stops were Romong and Wetar with some good reef critter dives and an amazing site called Larrys Pinnacle, named after the late Indonesian diving legend from Texas, Larry Smith. Starting at 12 meters and going down to around 30 meters, I have never seen such a pretty bunch of black corals in all kinds of colours, and we had a nice big Solar Powered nudibranch sitting atop the pinnacle on a leather coral, just to top off the dive!
Next was Pulau Pura, just off of Alor where we first hit the cooler water of the Sawu Sea. We found 2 giant frogfish in amongst an almost endless carpet of anemones and loads and loads of awesome nudis. We also had fun with the kids as they paddled out in their dugouts after our dives and posed for photos.
From there it was a short trip to Pantar where we spent 2 days critter hunting in Beangabang bay, turning up loads of cool stuff like Mimic and Coconut octopus, pipefish, seahorses and pipehorses, cuttlefish and squid, shrimps and crabs and the beautiful sand divers, to name a just few of the highlights.
The next day we went to Pulau Suanagi, on south Lembata island for an incredible reef dive with whitetip reef sharks, very healthy corals, the densest gathering of Anthias that we have ever seen, a hole filled with 10 lobsters(!), a couple of strange nudis and a pretty egg cowrie, right in the shallows. From there we headed north and into the bay to check out a new site (now named by Made Beep - Beep!) for what was voted as possibly the best dives of the trip with loads of very interesting critters, like the Rhinopias (4 on one dive, 3 weedy and one paddle flap), frogfish (2 on one dive, one giant and one painted), 4 species of ghost pipefish, including robust, ornate, thin and halimeda, just to name a few of the great things we saw.
From there we moved to the north coast of Flores for our last dives, the first of which had a very swift current making a fun drift, then a cool critter dive in the bay where we were anchored, turning up more leaf fish and ornate ghost pipefish.
Now we are in Labuan Bajo, about to start our Komodo season, and things are looking good! We have truly amazing memories from this last month and cant wait for the next crossing, but first things first, Komodo, here we come!
We'd love to post photos, but the internet connection we have is kind of slow. We'll try to do so when we can... Watch this space..
Written by Erwin Filius & Nora Lohmann, Cruise Directors, Archipelago Adventurer II. 11th April 2010.
