Trip Report Scuba Junkie Komodo: sketchy diving practices

[cetacean]

Many of us have added that poster to our ignore. list.

That's one way to handle this...

Feels a bit extreme, but to each their own.

 

[stepfen]

For whatever it worths here is my experience doing a LoB with SJ Komodo (Eliya):
- About nitrox use, it was available as an option (with some extra cost). I considered it as a must as the plan was to do 4 dives a day / 20 dives total over 6 days. Looking at my logs though, Ι never surfaced with SurfGF above 50-55% (!!!), hence in retrospect I could have easily done the exact same dives with air (some fellow divers actually did). The extra cost for nitrox (something like $100-150 for the whole trip) was reasonable enough that for me it didn't make sense not to dive nitrox.
- About guides. I didn't see any abuse of critters. They do have a no touch / no harass rule and the boat director was quite strict enforcing the rules (in a couple of unrelated to critter harassment occasions he stuck with the rules and didn't let fellow divers who broke the rules dive). Maybe that also prevented dive guides from misbehaving?? My understanding is that most (if not all) dive guides on Eliya are also working (occasionally) in the resort.
- About meeting the owners/managers, on the meeting day all the local (i.e. Labuan Bajo) management team and their staff was there to greet/help us. I haven't been to the resort but my understanding is that commuting to/from the resort to LBJ is quite difficult (there is no road connection!!) hence maybe they just normally stay in LBJ for convenience.

 

[Dan]

Pulau Weh was interesting, although not being able to dive Friday mornings was unfortunate.

What’s interesting about Pulau Weh?

Is it cool to blow up pufferfish and video it?

 

[Dan]

If you think Nitrox is only useful for square profiles then you are clearly stuck in the past (or you don't like exntending your bottom times). You often make very bombastic statements - this one may be your all time best... on a day where you are diving 3-4 multilevel dives are you getting more bottom time diving Nitrox (let's say the dive is 85ft and above) or air? Is it that you just like diving less?

Good points!

 

[cetacean]

What’s interesting about Pulau Weh?

Is it cool to blow up pufferfish and video it?

@Dan

I was trying to be "polite..."

Pulau Weh was worth about 2 days of diving (not worth the effort in getting there), and that was pushing it. We didn't run into any guides harrassing the animals, but we did have some underwhelming dives during our 4 days we allocated to dive there (of which we only did 3...).

Supposedly the diving was decent ~30 years ago (with several species of sharks, etc.). The area has been heavily overfished.

It's likely also worth noting that "harassing" pupperfish was fairly common across the more touristy Asian diving destinations (so not limited to Pulau Weh).

 

[34109411]

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.

don't get stressed cause of you NDL if it get close to 0 just go up to shallower depth, don't rely on the DM to tell you what to do. In these case manage your dive so you stay always on the top of the group. (i use to do that quiet often in belize, when i was going to the blue hole.

I could understand nitrox will be much better for 3 dive a days.

Like other said cost of running nitrox might be expensive or just to get the blend itself. On the other hand when travelling aboard i suggest you check with the dive operators what they have to offer prior to to book with them. Don't take anything for granted.

Be safe

 

[Plutonist]

@Plutonist that's the thing, all of those questions were asked of me at the end of my trip and also other divers when checking out. so if the staff were still excellent, then the fact you weren't asked is due to some other reason. as we weren't there, none of us can posit why.

Welp, hospitality is a tough business - screw up a single week and you'll get bad reviews. That's why it's important to have proper protocols. I'll take your word for it and will assume that the usual local management was absent or busy for whatever reason. It's still a massive organisational failure to not have a proper replacement.

And it still doesn't excuse them from the harassment of wildlife and the unsafe diving practices in a resort that doesn't cater towards "serious" divers of all things. What remains is the feeling that the management:
- Cares about the net profit
- Doesn't care about the guests' safety
- Doesn't care about wildlife (<- and that's a massive deal breaker for me)

The last point was so egregious, that this is certainly not a one-off occurrence. I don't buy it whatever other's say, sorry. And as I expected we now have someone else's confirmation of what we observed.

Your personal opinion might be "everybody's responsible for themselves" and that's fine. But from a business point of view that's just insane. Imagine some unrelated accident happens and their practices come to light. We risk that for a few bucks? Appears pointlessly greedy.

I could care less if you feel this was the OP's fault for not asking - in hindsight of course it was. That still don't mean they can't share their experiences here.

Please don't repeat this person's gibberish. I made it very clear on the first page that I was well aware of the fact that they are air-only and accepted that. Still, that's a downside of the place that is worth pointing out, especially given that the profiles were not appropriate for air-only, as evidenced by a skipped deco obligation.

According to @stepfen, they CAN provide Nitrox for ca 5-7€ on their liveaboard, which just annihilates the "can't provide Nitrox" arguments.

@stepfen: It seems that the experiences on liveaboard and resort are crass opposites.

don't get stressed cause of you NDL if it get close to 0 just go up to shallower depth, don't rely on the DM to tell you what to do.

Yes, that's exactly what we did. Still would have been more relaxing if the NDL stayed in the high 20s as was the case with the other operator.

 

[Sascha314]

The part about muck diving and behaviour is the important one. Well the operator is not responsible for the guest, but the guides should intervene. Difficult situation as its the paying customer and they cannot afford to offend too many, especially if many behave similar at once.

No nitrox ... well in the range of 25 to 30, maybe 35m it will give you most benefit. But you will not die on air, follow a conservative computer. Better have 2min of deco than just go shallower and be constant at 0 to 1min NDL in that process.
Well yes you are not certified for it, but a certificate does not make you more resilient for DCS in anyway, its more.about safety margins and what do know and do about. You should leave more gas reserve and do not panic if you have a small deco obligation. Just ascent then slowly and controlled, latest if you notice you have like 1-3min deco, better than ascent quickly at exactly 0min... So yes your dive will be a bit more limited in depth time.
Question: are these rectangular profiles are is there something to be seen around 10 to 15m?

The deal breaker for me would be no meat on the boat

 

[Plutonist]

Question: are these rectangular profiles are is there something to be seen around 10 to 15m?

The deeper dives typically are pinnacle dives, where you slowly ascend in a zig-zag manner. The drift dives are, in general, rather shallow. I just checked my log and there was not a single rectangular profile. The coral garden in the shallows often is the best part (if you like fish soup, as I do).

The deal breaker for me would be no meat on the boat

They make pretty tasty stuff out of tempeh, tahu (tofu) and egg - you should give it a try. Or ask the crew for some of their fish. I reckon they would share.

 

[Dan]

don't get stressed cause of you NDL if it get close to 0 just go up to shallower depth, don't rely on the DM to tell you what to do. In these case manage your dive so you stay always on the top of the group. (i use to do that quiet often in belize, when i was going to the blue hole.

I could understand nitrox will be much better for 3 dive a days.

Like other said cost of running nitrox might be expensive or just to get the blend itself. On the other hand when travelling aboard i suggest you check with the dive operators what they have to offer prior to to book with them. Don't take anything for granted.

Be safe

I don’t know why people freak out when they hit 0 NDL. Even with 1-2 minutes Deco that’s not big deal and the Deco time clears up as you go to shallower depth. Instead of 3 minutes safety stop, you end up doing say 5 minutes.