P.S : I edit some of the portions to make the report shorter.
1st - 2nd day
We took SQ from Singapore to Bali, stayed overnight, and boarding GT Air to Labuan Bajo, Flores Island the next day. From airport we went directly to the seaport to board MV Tarata.
First dive at Sebayur was not really good. There wasn't much sea life and the coral looked damaged, but it was the check out dive.
The night dive was better. We started to see more things as we embarked to the real sea. Cute little tiny polka dot crab, huge lobster, Spanish dancer, Octopus, Moray Eels ridden by a crab, Imperial Shrimp, few types of Nudibranch.
3rd day
When we jumped, we were greeted by the excellent visibility. The corals were healthy and everything looked good and colorful. The current was gradually stronger and soon, we were doing superman dive.
Second dive, we reached Batu Bolong or Current city.
It was the first dive we saw Manta Ray. It was a huge Black Manta, we were enjoying the beautiful sign of colorful fish and coral, saw school of big fish too, Jacks/big eye trevally consisted of Giant Trevally, Black Trevally, Blue fin and common silver trevally, various type of fusiliers in school when we heard teng kleneng kleneng sound from Sebastian tank banger. We looked to the right and I saw the Manta passed by. It was a glorious sight with the most posh fish in the sea. It mingled with us but maintained the distance for a while and then disappeared to the blue. We continued the dive and did our safety stop and in between other fish including giant barracuda. Other than that, we saw Napoleon Wrasse again, Marbled Grouper, Magpie Sweetlips, Yellow Sweetlips, Mackarel. There were so many big fish!
On the third dive we only managed to enjoy first few minutes of the dive. We found a big crocodile fish and took picture for a while and then, the current started to pick up.
It was quite a hellish dive! We had to fight the current along the dive. Sometimes we found sheltered rock and rest for a while, but most of the dive we had to use the reef hooks to relieve our fingertip. Even the fish and corals around us were moving like crazy. We were exhausted.
We did the night dive in Pantai Merah, sinking down, we were greeted by barramundi cod, something we dont often see and a white frogfish. It was a rewarding night dive, we also saw a weird big triangle coral as big as head walking around, but we had no idea what drove it around, maybe a gigantic hermit crab? We saw spiky cuttlefish and spiky super mini cuttlefish which was only the size of rice! I found a ugly big nudibranch which is different with other type of nudi, instead of soft bodied, that one was hard. Ive never seen it somewhere else. We also saw a lot of spiky crab, spiky shrimp. As we were heading North, the water temperature had become colder, I clocked 24 Celcius degree on this night dive.
4th day
Before the first dive, we went to Pulau Komodo for the Komodo Dragon land tour. This is almost the only place where Komodo Dragon survive in their natural habitat.
From the jetty, we passed by small stalls, actually only consisted off tables selling Komodo dragons souvenir. After that, we were briefed by the Park Ranger, two rangers would guide us, one in front and one in back, we were reunited with the other six. The rangers had stick with two branches at the end; it didnt look like it capable of stopping Komodo if they decide to attack though. Although the dragons look slow and lazy, they can run faster than a dog and they can swim across island. We saw the baby Komodo hiding on the tree; they have to do that to survive from their elder because Komodo are cannibals.
Along the way, we also saw birds, spiders, cicada, there was a pair of tourist who came only to enjoy bird sighting. We also saw very huge male deer and wild boar.
The Ranger brought us to the small hill and from there, we had very nice view of the sea.
We only saw few Komodo along the way. They were walking through the bushed and shrub; one was checking us immediately after we entered the forest because it smelt our presence.
At the end of the walk, we took a rest and enjoyed very nice coca cola, then we had to walk back to the boat on those floating big hollow plastic, made specially for the walkway. We squeezed everybody in the dingy, couldnt wait to get off the island and got down to the water because of the very very hot weather. We reached the big boat, and after some rest we prepared for the first dive.
We visited Pantai Merah again for the first dive, the frog fish had moved, we saw a lot of nudibranch and of course, a lot of fish.
The temperature dropped down to 23 degree underwater.
After the first dive, we started moving to Padar Island, second dive was done there, with Pillarsteen as the dive point. The dive was special, although the sun was shining strong on the surface, below there was dark, murky and spooky and mysterious. It felt almost surreal. Although the darkness and limited visibility made us enjoy less, it gave the feeling like we were doing dusk dive or dawn dive.
This was also the dive while I encountered some nasty experience with the current. We were enjoying the wall when suddenly I felt some current started to push me up. It begun with slow but soon built up to faster pace, I saw myself being drifted up from my group, the current swept harder and my mask was filled with water. I wasnt able to see and I knew the current kept trying to push me to the surface and to the rock. I only could think of few possibilities, I could be carried up to the surface and risked decompression sickness , or carried to another swell or current and hit something dangerous; animal, rock or boat.
It was only slightly more than five meters away from the surface, so I grabbed hard on the rock to prevent me shooting up to the surface. It was hard, the current was ripping, lucky, I managed to find a good grip and positioned myself as close as possible to the wall to minimize the effect of the current, then with another hand to make sure my regulator and mask was in place, and then tried to clear away the water from the mask. When I was able to see, the vertical up current was not as strong, I let go the grip and finned head down to the deeper and caught up with my friends, who were also holding on something from the additional horizontal current.
The current subsidized after few minutes, so I was able to clear up my whole mask and thanked the one upstairs to let me got away from the danger. It was really a challenging dive.
Its spooky but somehow, there was something unexplainable that made me like the dive, minus the crazy current incident.
From the deep, We saw shadow of big fish around, including one mysterious very huge Giant Grouper floating slowly above us.
We were secretly grateful that it was swimming quite a distance from us. The rest of the dive we also faced swinging current. Swing to the right, swing to the left, again, and again, together with those fish around us.
The story still continues for this dive. We were crowding around one rock where we found a dozen yellow spiky nudibranch. We were excited, because its quite difficult to find so many nudibranch gather naturally in one spot. We took pictures, and when we looked around, we realized, the whole slope, the whole landscape was full of the same type of nudibranch. Each of them was only few centimeters apart. It was amazing nudibranch rain, something we had never seen. We passed by tons and tons of them, and when the dive was coming to the end, we did our safety stop in the blue.
During our surface interval, we often saw Komodo dragons cruising on the beach and monkeys also. Some sailing boat were parked nearby purposely to send their tourists when they saw the dragons. We saw few tourists walking on the beach where there were two small dragons. When one of the dragon approached them, all of them jumped back to the boat. Ha ha chicken..
Sunset dive, we did backroll and my mask fell down because of it slipped from the hood. We had to wait for the dingy to bring us my spare mask while others descended first. We followed the bubble trace, and jumped down. I could see three bubble rows at first, so we descended. When we were descending, we no longer saw bubbles, what we saw was a dark volume of water and eyes, thousands of eyes surround us. We were in the middle of very big school of big eyes trevally. It was spooky; we tried to look once more, to adjust our eyes to the darkness, no bubbles. We communicated underwater and decided to surface, when we looked at the computer, we were on eighteen-meter depth. It was surprising because we were only descending a bit from the surface when we looked for the bubble. Seemed like there was a slight down current pushing us down too. We surfaced and the dingy was still around. He informed us that our friends were not in the same point anymore. We climbed back to the boat and decided to abort. But when we were traveling to the big boat, we saw The DM was waving my mask, he was in the surface. He told us we could still continue, so we wore the fins and jumped down again. We saw slipper lobster, big colorful crabs, nudibranch and two dancing decorator crabs. The decorator crabs was lifting the fists high in the air, eh, water, face to face and made movement like dancing. I suspected they were mating?
At this trip, we were introduced to the sea apples. The bright red creature with yellow spiky tentacles. It was everywhere, sized of human head. Sea apples can be found in not many water, but in Flores water, its abundant and everywhere.
1st - 2nd day
We took SQ from Singapore to Bali, stayed overnight, and boarding GT Air to Labuan Bajo, Flores Island the next day. From airport we went directly to the seaport to board MV Tarata.
First dive at Sebayur was not really good. There wasn't much sea life and the coral looked damaged, but it was the check out dive.
The night dive was better. We started to see more things as we embarked to the real sea. Cute little tiny polka dot crab, huge lobster, Spanish dancer, Octopus, Moray Eels ridden by a crab, Imperial Shrimp, few types of Nudibranch.
3rd day
When we jumped, we were greeted by the excellent visibility. The corals were healthy and everything looked good and colorful. The current was gradually stronger and soon, we were doing superman dive.
Second dive, we reached Batu Bolong or Current city.
It was the first dive we saw Manta Ray. It was a huge Black Manta, we were enjoying the beautiful sign of colorful fish and coral, saw school of big fish too, Jacks/big eye trevally consisted of Giant Trevally, Black Trevally, Blue fin and common silver trevally, various type of fusiliers in school when we heard teng kleneng kleneng sound from Sebastian tank banger. We looked to the right and I saw the Manta passed by. It was a glorious sight with the most posh fish in the sea. It mingled with us but maintained the distance for a while and then disappeared to the blue. We continued the dive and did our safety stop and in between other fish including giant barracuda. Other than that, we saw Napoleon Wrasse again, Marbled Grouper, Magpie Sweetlips, Yellow Sweetlips, Mackarel. There were so many big fish!
On the third dive we only managed to enjoy first few minutes of the dive. We found a big crocodile fish and took picture for a while and then, the current started to pick up.
It was quite a hellish dive! We had to fight the current along the dive. Sometimes we found sheltered rock and rest for a while, but most of the dive we had to use the reef hooks to relieve our fingertip. Even the fish and corals around us were moving like crazy. We were exhausted.
We did the night dive in Pantai Merah, sinking down, we were greeted by barramundi cod, something we dont often see and a white frogfish. It was a rewarding night dive, we also saw a weird big triangle coral as big as head walking around, but we had no idea what drove it around, maybe a gigantic hermit crab? We saw spiky cuttlefish and spiky super mini cuttlefish which was only the size of rice! I found a ugly big nudibranch which is different with other type of nudi, instead of soft bodied, that one was hard. Ive never seen it somewhere else. We also saw a lot of spiky crab, spiky shrimp. As we were heading North, the water temperature had become colder, I clocked 24 Celcius degree on this night dive.
4th day
Before the first dive, we went to Pulau Komodo for the Komodo Dragon land tour. This is almost the only place where Komodo Dragon survive in their natural habitat.
From the jetty, we passed by small stalls, actually only consisted off tables selling Komodo dragons souvenir. After that, we were briefed by the Park Ranger, two rangers would guide us, one in front and one in back, we were reunited with the other six. The rangers had stick with two branches at the end; it didnt look like it capable of stopping Komodo if they decide to attack though. Although the dragons look slow and lazy, they can run faster than a dog and they can swim across island. We saw the baby Komodo hiding on the tree; they have to do that to survive from their elder because Komodo are cannibals.
Along the way, we also saw birds, spiders, cicada, there was a pair of tourist who came only to enjoy bird sighting. We also saw very huge male deer and wild boar.
The Ranger brought us to the small hill and from there, we had very nice view of the sea.
We only saw few Komodo along the way. They were walking through the bushed and shrub; one was checking us immediately after we entered the forest because it smelt our presence.
At the end of the walk, we took a rest and enjoyed very nice coca cola, then we had to walk back to the boat on those floating big hollow plastic, made specially for the walkway. We squeezed everybody in the dingy, couldnt wait to get off the island and got down to the water because of the very very hot weather. We reached the big boat, and after some rest we prepared for the first dive.
We visited Pantai Merah again for the first dive, the frog fish had moved, we saw a lot of nudibranch and of course, a lot of fish.
The temperature dropped down to 23 degree underwater.
After the first dive, we started moving to Padar Island, second dive was done there, with Pillarsteen as the dive point. The dive was special, although the sun was shining strong on the surface, below there was dark, murky and spooky and mysterious. It felt almost surreal. Although the darkness and limited visibility made us enjoy less, it gave the feeling like we were doing dusk dive or dawn dive.
This was also the dive while I encountered some nasty experience with the current. We were enjoying the wall when suddenly I felt some current started to push me up. It begun with slow but soon built up to faster pace, I saw myself being drifted up from my group, the current swept harder and my mask was filled with water. I wasnt able to see and I knew the current kept trying to push me to the surface and to the rock. I only could think of few possibilities, I could be carried up to the surface and risked decompression sickness , or carried to another swell or current and hit something dangerous; animal, rock or boat.
It was only slightly more than five meters away from the surface, so I grabbed hard on the rock to prevent me shooting up to the surface. It was hard, the current was ripping, lucky, I managed to find a good grip and positioned myself as close as possible to the wall to minimize the effect of the current, then with another hand to make sure my regulator and mask was in place, and then tried to clear away the water from the mask. When I was able to see, the vertical up current was not as strong, I let go the grip and finned head down to the deeper and caught up with my friends, who were also holding on something from the additional horizontal current.
The current subsidized after few minutes, so I was able to clear up my whole mask and thanked the one upstairs to let me got away from the danger. It was really a challenging dive.
Its spooky but somehow, there was something unexplainable that made me like the dive, minus the crazy current incident.
From the deep, We saw shadow of big fish around, including one mysterious very huge Giant Grouper floating slowly above us.
We were secretly grateful that it was swimming quite a distance from us. The rest of the dive we also faced swinging current. Swing to the right, swing to the left, again, and again, together with those fish around us.
The story still continues for this dive. We were crowding around one rock where we found a dozen yellow spiky nudibranch. We were excited, because its quite difficult to find so many nudibranch gather naturally in one spot. We took pictures, and when we looked around, we realized, the whole slope, the whole landscape was full of the same type of nudibranch. Each of them was only few centimeters apart. It was amazing nudibranch rain, something we had never seen. We passed by tons and tons of them, and when the dive was coming to the end, we did our safety stop in the blue.
During our surface interval, we often saw Komodo dragons cruising on the beach and monkeys also. Some sailing boat were parked nearby purposely to send their tourists when they saw the dragons. We saw few tourists walking on the beach where there were two small dragons. When one of the dragon approached them, all of them jumped back to the boat. Ha ha chicken..
Sunset dive, we did backroll and my mask fell down because of it slipped from the hood. We had to wait for the dingy to bring us my spare mask while others descended first. We followed the bubble trace, and jumped down. I could see three bubble rows at first, so we descended. When we were descending, we no longer saw bubbles, what we saw was a dark volume of water and eyes, thousands of eyes surround us. We were in the middle of very big school of big eyes trevally. It was spooky; we tried to look once more, to adjust our eyes to the darkness, no bubbles. We communicated underwater and decided to surface, when we looked at the computer, we were on eighteen-meter depth. It was surprising because we were only descending a bit from the surface when we looked for the bubble. Seemed like there was a slight down current pushing us down too. We surfaced and the dingy was still around. He informed us that our friends were not in the same point anymore. We climbed back to the boat and decided to abort. But when we were traveling to the big boat, we saw The DM was waving my mask, he was in the surface. He told us we could still continue, so we wore the fins and jumped down again. We saw slipper lobster, big colorful crabs, nudibranch and two dancing decorator crabs. The decorator crabs was lifting the fists high in the air, eh, water, face to face and made movement like dancing. I suspected they were mating?
At this trip, we were introduced to the sea apples. The bright red creature with yellow spiky tentacles. It was everywhere, sized of human head. Sea apples can be found in not many water, but in Flores water, its abundant and everywhere.