Plutonist
Registered
We recently dove Komodo with two operators, one of them Scuba Junkie Komodo, which is often recommended here. Overall, I found the operation good, but sadly there were practices that make me NOT recommend them until these issues are addressed and fixed.
I'm posting this, because in contrast to all other dive resorts I've been to, there wasn't any sort of guest response form and we were never asked about feedback. The whole organisation was intransparent. We were never introduced to a manager or owner. That wasn't a problem, since any problem/question was addressed by a person sitting at the reception desk, but it felt strange. I'm fine with the operation being run as a commune, but I'd just like to know who is responsible for what.
This post is a bit on the longer side, as I also want to point out the positives. For the problematic issues, skip to the The ugly section at the end.
The resort
The resort is exactly as it is advertised: It caters more to a back-packer / thrill-seeker crowd and is not of the luxury kind, which means that some amenities (e.g. afternoon snacks) are missing and the place is somewhat cramped. That's fine - you get what you pay for. Overall, the rooms are clean and the resort currently being refurbished: garden bales are replaced by bungalows. Not recommended for light sleepers though - the morning Muezzin competition is quite loud, monkeys go wild on roofs and sometimes there is a dog concert.
The food was a good compromise of westernized Indonesian cuisine. There were always vegetarian/vegan and meat options. Food on the boats was vegetarian only (except for the crew who fried fish). There is a rotation of Sambals for those who want to spice it up. Obviously, don't expect fancy food as you find it in the big cities - this is a remote location after all.
We went with two boats, one of which was better organized / laid out than the other. Both were fine.
The (mostly female) resort staff was lovely, as one can expect in Indonesia. They went out of their way organizing land excursions managing financial affairs, etc.
Now to the important part, the diving.
The good: guiding on manta and drift dives
This was manta season and Komodo did deliver even on non-manta dives. Diver to guide ratio was excellent. In general, every dive group got their own guide, only solo-travelers were added to other groups. Sometimes, we dove in strong currents, upwellings, downwellings, split currents, all the fun. The other operator we dove with would not have performed these dives as they had more of a "safety first" attitude. That said, these drift dives were great fun and we always felt very safe. Out of two guides we dove with, one stood out with his very clear communication under water: Acoustic signal, wait for eye-contact and then give clear hand-signals. We always knew what would happen next. I feel that I've become a better diver owing to these dives and enjoyed them a lot.
The bad: three dives a day on air
They guide three dives a day, but do not provide Nitrox. There is no excuse for that: the deepest we went was 26 m. I've been to smaller resorts in more remote places that had consistent 32% Nitrox filling via a membrane system. On the second and third dive, NDL often became an issue (<10 min), which made the diving unnecessarily stressful. My buddy has a RGBM dive computer that makes him shoot up to shallow depths when approaching NDL. At one point we signalled the guide that we had to shallow up - the guide agreed but only went from 20 to 17 m or so. My buddy hat to go much farther up and I was stuck in the middle, relaying information. It didn't help that on some days the first dive was the shallowest and the third dive the deepest.
There was one occasion where another guest swam into deco and skipped their deco obligation, and thus was locked out of their computer for 24 h. The solution was to dive the upcoming day without computer, because clearly the computer is buggy. Apparently, the guides were aware of this and recommended the guest to stay shallow. I didn't hear the communication and will give them the benefit of the doubt. Still, I would expect a guest suddenly diving without dive computer raising some eyebrows.
Which raises an important question: Why on earth is it allowed to dive without computer, when you regularly do multi-dive profiles that send (conservative) dive computers into deco? Yes, this kind of diving has been the norm for decades, but it is not state-of-the-art anymore. This is not commensurate with the emphasis on "safe" diving.
And all that could be avoided by providing Nitrox - as did the other operator we dove with. There, we never came close NDL (lowest I remember was in the high 20 minutes). That was so much more relaxing and - imagination or not - we felt much less tired after the Nitrox dives.
Still, that's a minor grievance, not a deal breaker, as I think everybody should be responsible for themselves. The deal breaker is the last point.
The ugly: muck diving
The "muck diving" was a disaster. First of all, the site(s) we were at were underwhelming (compared to Alor), but that's not the fault of the resort. The dives themselves were absolute mayhem. Five or more divers crowded on a small subject. People cutting in front of photographs. One guy was so bad, I was thinking about turning his air off under water. Obviously I didn't because I'm not on holidays to pick a fight. It would have been the guides' responsibilities to stop that antisocial behavior. Not only did they not stop it, they seemed to encourage it. In particular one (non-local) guide (the kind that does the thumb and pinky finger "cool" symbol every few seconds) was clowning around under water in a very obnoxious way.
But it became even worse: I've observed multiple(!) guides digging with their much stick through whole patches of sand / rubble in the search of god knows what. After they had the audacity to tell us to use frog kicks to not disturb life in the sand. They turned around small and big rocks covered with life. I can only guess to search for hiding octopuses? One guide used his muck stick to pull feather stars out of cracks. The result: we could observe tiny tentacles of an unknown scared creature. Great. Not. On another occasion, what I believe to be a devil scorpion fish was removed from the sand and placed on a rock for a photo of "poor creature in sand storm". Thanks, but no thanks. At one point, a guide from one group "helped" a diver of another group taking photographs. Doing so, the guide parked the camera housing on living coral. That was the first time I flipped someone of under water (behind their back),.
Frankly, I was shocked by the disrespectful treatment of sea life for the assumed amusement of guests. I was not amused, but disgusted. Clearly, the thrill-seeking we-are-so-cool culture and muck diving do not mix. My theory is that these dives are performed because they take place on the nearest regular dive spot to the resort. If you want to be back earlier, just skip the third dive please! Everybody is back earlier and nothing of value is lost. The two dives before always had enough action to process for a full day. Provide cake or other snacks instead. With the other provider we never did any of these pointless "muck dives".
Conclusion
Unless they solve the systemic harassment of sea life, I cannot recommend this operator, even though overall I enjoyed diving with them a lot. I am grateful for the fantastic "non-muck" dives, in particular the manta and drift dives.
I'm posting this, because in contrast to all other dive resorts I've been to, there wasn't any sort of guest response form and we were never asked about feedback. The whole organisation was intransparent. We were never introduced to a manager or owner. That wasn't a problem, since any problem/question was addressed by a person sitting at the reception desk, but it felt strange. I'm fine with the operation being run as a commune, but I'd just like to know who is responsible for what.
This post is a bit on the longer side, as I also want to point out the positives. For the problematic issues, skip to the The ugly section at the end.
The resort
The resort is exactly as it is advertised: It caters more to a back-packer / thrill-seeker crowd and is not of the luxury kind, which means that some amenities (e.g. afternoon snacks) are missing and the place is somewhat cramped. That's fine - you get what you pay for. Overall, the rooms are clean and the resort currently being refurbished: garden bales are replaced by bungalows. Not recommended for light sleepers though - the morning Muezzin competition is quite loud, monkeys go wild on roofs and sometimes there is a dog concert.
The food was a good compromise of westernized Indonesian cuisine. There were always vegetarian/vegan and meat options. Food on the boats was vegetarian only (except for the crew who fried fish). There is a rotation of Sambals for those who want to spice it up. Obviously, don't expect fancy food as you find it in the big cities - this is a remote location after all.
We went with two boats, one of which was better organized / laid out than the other. Both were fine.
The (mostly female) resort staff was lovely, as one can expect in Indonesia. They went out of their way organizing land excursions managing financial affairs, etc.
Now to the important part, the diving.
The good: guiding on manta and drift dives
This was manta season and Komodo did deliver even on non-manta dives. Diver to guide ratio was excellent. In general, every dive group got their own guide, only solo-travelers were added to other groups. Sometimes, we dove in strong currents, upwellings, downwellings, split currents, all the fun. The other operator we dove with would not have performed these dives as they had more of a "safety first" attitude. That said, these drift dives were great fun and we always felt very safe. Out of two guides we dove with, one stood out with his very clear communication under water: Acoustic signal, wait for eye-contact and then give clear hand-signals. We always knew what would happen next. I feel that I've become a better diver owing to these dives and enjoyed them a lot.
The bad: three dives a day on air
They guide three dives a day, but do not provide Nitrox. There is no excuse for that: the deepest we went was 26 m. I've been to smaller resorts in more remote places that had consistent 32% Nitrox filling via a membrane system. On the second and third dive, NDL often became an issue (<10 min), which made the diving unnecessarily stressful. My buddy has a RGBM dive computer that makes him shoot up to shallow depths when approaching NDL. At one point we signalled the guide that we had to shallow up - the guide agreed but only went from 20 to 17 m or so. My buddy hat to go much farther up and I was stuck in the middle, relaying information. It didn't help that on some days the first dive was the shallowest and the third dive the deepest.
There was one occasion where another guest swam into deco and skipped their deco obligation, and thus was locked out of their computer for 24 h. The solution was to dive the upcoming day without computer, because clearly the computer is buggy. Apparently, the guides were aware of this and recommended the guest to stay shallow. I didn't hear the communication and will give them the benefit of the doubt. Still, I would expect a guest suddenly diving without dive computer raising some eyebrows.
Which raises an important question: Why on earth is it allowed to dive without computer, when you regularly do multi-dive profiles that send (conservative) dive computers into deco? Yes, this kind of diving has been the norm for decades, but it is not state-of-the-art anymore. This is not commensurate with the emphasis on "safe" diving.
And all that could be avoided by providing Nitrox - as did the other operator we dove with. There, we never came close NDL (lowest I remember was in the high 20 minutes). That was so much more relaxing and - imagination or not - we felt much less tired after the Nitrox dives.
Still, that's a minor grievance, not a deal breaker, as I think everybody should be responsible for themselves. The deal breaker is the last point.
The ugly: muck diving
The "muck diving" was a disaster. First of all, the site(s) we were at were underwhelming (compared to Alor), but that's not the fault of the resort. The dives themselves were absolute mayhem. Five or more divers crowded on a small subject. People cutting in front of photographs. One guy was so bad, I was thinking about turning his air off under water. Obviously I didn't because I'm not on holidays to pick a fight. It would have been the guides' responsibilities to stop that antisocial behavior. Not only did they not stop it, they seemed to encourage it. In particular one (non-local) guide (the kind that does the thumb and pinky finger "cool" symbol every few seconds) was clowning around under water in a very obnoxious way.
But it became even worse: I've observed multiple(!) guides digging with their much stick through whole patches of sand / rubble in the search of god knows what. After they had the audacity to tell us to use frog kicks to not disturb life in the sand. They turned around small and big rocks covered with life. I can only guess to search for hiding octopuses? One guide used his muck stick to pull feather stars out of cracks. The result: we could observe tiny tentacles of an unknown scared creature. Great. Not. On another occasion, what I believe to be a devil scorpion fish was removed from the sand and placed on a rock for a photo of "poor creature in sand storm". Thanks, but no thanks. At one point, a guide from one group "helped" a diver of another group taking photographs. Doing so, the guide parked the camera housing on living coral. That was the first time I flipped someone of under water (behind their back),.
Frankly, I was shocked by the disrespectful treatment of sea life for the assumed amusement of guests. I was not amused, but disgusted. Clearly, the thrill-seeking we-are-so-cool culture and muck diving do not mix. My theory is that these dives are performed because they take place on the nearest regular dive spot to the resort. If you want to be back earlier, just skip the third dive please! Everybody is back earlier and nothing of value is lost. The two dives before always had enough action to process for a full day. Provide cake or other snacks instead. With the other provider we never did any of these pointless "muck dives".
Conclusion
Unless they solve the systemic harassment of sea life, I cannot recommend this operator, even though overall I enjoyed diving with them a lot. I am grateful for the fantastic "non-muck" dives, in particular the manta and drift dives.
