This past November I was fortunate to spend three weeks diving in eastern Indonesia, at Ambon, Banda, and Raja Ampat (Misool in the South and Waigeo and Mansour in the North). As Ive enjoyed and learned from many postings here on ScubaBoard for some time as a silent visitor, I thought I might share a trip review to encourage everyone to visit eastern Indonesia, to provide feedback on the dive operators I used, and to spark a bit of office daydreaming for the cubicle bound.
Synopsis
Background to Trip
This fall, faced with a bit of unexpected down time at work I decided to take a last minute trip to Raja Ampat. Why Raja Ampat? You could call it word of mouth. On my first liveaboard a few years back, at Tubbataha, on the first dive of that trip (with maybe 20 dives in total under my belt) I rolled off the skiff and ended up just about on top of a white tip resting on the reef flat. We finned over to the sheer drop off when the sky went dark and the first of two mantas buzzed us from behind. Thirty minutes (new divers suck air fast at depth), two dozen sharks, two turtles, and a massive school of jacks later, I climbed back onto the skiff filled with amazement and delight. Cruise director Keri was kind enough to wait until later in the day to tell me that all that I had seen was nothing compared to the coral, macro, and fish diversity of Raja Ampat. A few hundred dives later that first dive at Tubbataha is still one of my three all time favorite, together with Palaus German Channel on a full moon flood tide on my birthday, and, now, Sardines at Kri. Having been to Raja Ampat first hand, I can attest that Keris passion was not misplaced.
As I planned my trip on short notice, Jez at Premier Liveaboard Diving suggested the Black Manta, which was making a 10-day transition trip from the lesser visited Ambon and Banda to Misool in the southern part of Raja Ampat, ending in Sorong. I then booked one week directly with the land based Papua Divings Kri Eco resort in the north.
The Black Manta
The Black Manta is a custom built diving boat with room for around 20 passengers and three RIBs which was relocated last year from Thailand to Indonesia. This is the only steel hull boat I saw in three weeks in Eastern Indonesia. While perhaps a tad less romantic than the teak bugis schooner of fantasy, it compared favorably in size, appearance, and (based on other passengers comments) stability with the reality of the wooden liveaboards I did see. The DMs and crew were local (mostly from Manado); the French cruise director Cedric had previously spent a few years as cruise director on another boat in Raja Ampat before globe hopping on land (us cubicle dwellers dream of holiday is it possible that those on permanent holiday dream of cubicles?). I was very happy with the Black Manta and would join another trip with them if time permits. The boat was well designed, rooms were clean and the common area and outside decks spacious. The dive deck ran like clockwork (I did 28 dives of a possible 33 dives on the trip, and had 28 full fills with right nitrox mix), and random equipment spares were always available when needed (Cedric, I still have your bungee!); Cedrics 3-D dive briefings were accurate, informative and entertaining (beware of current at the peanut butter jar); and the DMs, Stanny in particular, were good guides with great critter knowledge and awareness of underwater ecology. Compared with other boats I considered it was good value too. There were about 18 divers on our trip, a mix of French, German/Swiss, Australian, and American. The seven French were in their 50s, lifelong divers with 1500+ dives apiece; the rest of us were mostly in our 30s and 40s, about half with cameras and most with 500+ dives. The only drawback I saw is that there is no special purpose enclosed camera room, though there was sufficient dry table space on the dive deck for everyones camera kit between dives.
Diving - Ambon
The trip was expected to start after dinner on Tuesday, so I took a red-eye flight from Jakarta to Ambon arriving at dawn, planning to spend the day exploring in Ambon before embarking. As it happens, the port is about 1 hour from downtown Ambon; as a number of divers had arrived the night before, Cedric decided to get everyone in the water a day early. Ambon Bay is long, shallow, and silty, a characteristic muck diving environment. While my previous mucky experience left me cold, the combination of greater experience and a good guide gave me a new perspective this trip, starting here with large stonefish, a bunch of different kinds of scorpionfish and frogfish, common sea horses, cuttlefish flamboyant and otherwise, and my first wonderpus octopus. Oh, did I mention the stunning purple rhinopias, white mouth half open, perched amidst green algae on the seabed? We ended one dive near a fishing dock where amidst all the muck batfish and juvenile trevally had gathered to eat discarded scraps, as dappled sunlight filtered through gaps in the wooden planking above. Shame I hadnt organized the camera before I hopped in the water.
Banda
Tuesday night, we decided to sail from Ambon a day early to maximize our time among the corals and karsts of Misool. We spent Wednesday and Thursday around the Banda Islands. The waters here on the edge of the Banda Sea were deep, the currents in some places rippingly strong (goodbye, new split fins), and the marine life correspondingly diverse: turtles, black tip reef sharks, large schools of rainbow runners, snapper, and barracuda. The Banda Islands includes two main islands Banda Neira (the small island and capital) and Banda Besar, curling around the Gungam Api (sp) volcano. In the late 1980s, lava flows from the volcano smothered a reef offshore. The lava flow remains a sterile black scar, with large glasslike chunks three and four feet across down to the waterline. In contrast, below the waves, the combination of temperature, nutrients and current has enabled acropora coral in table, lettuce, and staghorn forms to carpet the entire slide (perhaps 300-500 meters wide) in just over two decades. For many, this was a highlight of the trip.
Wednesday evening, I skipped what was reportedly a pretty good muck dive at dusk and opted for beers on the harbor overlooking the volcano; the following morning we spent a few hours touring the town with its Dutch and English colonial architecture and a nutmeg plantation, the source of the islands fame and fate. Banda was for many centuries the worlds sole supplier of nutmeg and an important source of cloves and cinnamon. Chinese, Javans, Malays, and others had long traded with locals for nutmeg and other spices; in the 17th century, however, the Portuguese and Dutch sought absolute control of the nutmeg supply, leading to the depopulation of the original inhabitants of the island and their replacement with slaves from Sulawesi. Run, a nearby, uninhabited, waterless rock claimed by the English, was traded to the Dutch in partial exchange for title to Manhattan in 1667. The spices are good, but not good enough to justify that trade unless you see Wall Street as permanently underwater and plan on doing lot of diving. Today, the 20,000 people on the islands are 95% Muslim, with a few Christians (there is at least one active Christian church) and Chinese (who dominate trade).
Thursday midday, we set off from Banda to East Seram, stopping off at Batu Kapal, a set of three evenly spaced pinnacles set off from a sea mount. Here, we found large barrel sponges and huge gorgonians at the saddle point between pinnacles and sea mount, many schooling fish on the point, hunting napoleon wrasse, and neat species including a soapfish and a neon-yellow leafy scorpionfish tucked in among the soft coral. There were also a few interesting swimthroughs, if I remember correctly.
Koon / East Seram
Koon is the easternmost island in a chain off the eastern tip of Seram, exposed to strong currents and the plankton they carry. It would be an understatement to say that there are lots of fish there. Im not sure whether it was really early in the morning, too much plankton in the water, or just all the fish swarming everywhere and blocking out the light, but on our first dive the visibility was terrible. Huge schools of trevally, snapper, batfish, and barracuda, plus all the usual fusiliers, dusky unicornfish, silversides (sardines?), etc. A nasty downcurrent too I remember pulling myself back up the wall at one point in the dive. The visibility had cleared by lunchtime, but even with less plankton hence fewer fish in the water this was a good dive.
Misool
North and South Raja Ampat have different reputations: the North (particularly around Mansour and the Dampier Straight) having stronger currents, more fish, larger fish, and greater diversity; the South (namely Misool) having the better visibility and more attractive coral. Having spent a week diving in each, I would generally agree in terms of visibility, currents, and coral. The fish life in Misool for both macro and schooling fish was quite impressive, if not Sardines-level smack-you-in-the-face dense. After chatting with a few different folks, Im not sure whether fish density up north is due to underwater topography and currents, or the longer period of time the area has been subject to environmental protections and fishing restrictions.
We spent four days diving around Misool. The main island of Misool (home to some 5,000 native Papuans spread across a dozen or so villages, a land-based resort, and an under-construction airstrip) is surrounded by karst islets, with jagged vertical walls ending in snaggletooth tops 100 meters high and a maze of saddles, pinnacles, and swimthroughs below the water. The combination of forms and currents gives rise to unique dive sites and significant diversity here a hard coral edge to a corner with large schooling fish and pelagics, around the corner a quiet patch with sponges, tunicates, and nudibranchs galore, over there a wall covered in magnificent gorgonians and a million silversides of one type or another and filled every dive with excitement and anticipation. The larger fish we encountered included schools of great barracuda (15-20 fish in each); great, silver, bluefin, and yellow/orange trevally; rainbow runners; midnight snappers; unicornfish; several kinds of sweetlips; batfish; big herds of four foot long, two foot high bumphead parrotfish chomping away at the coral; fusiliers; many albeit solitary napoleon wrasse (of different sizes and phases); dogtooth tuna; emperor bream; barramundi; and lots of different species of puffer.
Though Raja Ampat does not have a reputation for sharks we did see a number of juvenile white tip and black tip reef sharks (mostly in ones and twos); one adult grey reef shark; and two Raja Ampat Epaulette Sharks resting on ledges.
Raja Ampat does have a reputation for pygmy sea horses and ghost pipefish, and these I saw in abundance. I certainly wasnt looking for them explicitly, but I managed to see and photograph 6 of the 14 ghost pipefish variations in Allen, Steene et. al. There were frequent h. bargibanti sightings (in red pink and purple color schemes), and a few h. denise. One of the other divers (with Stanny, of course) saw h. colemani near Batanta as well.
Nudibranchs there were lots of them. There were lots of different kinds of them. Solo, mating, multiple couples mating simultaneously. I had a look through a field guide on the darned things and for a brief moment was proud to distinguish dorid from aeolid and dendronotid from arminid. The Spanish dancer was pretty easy: I had not seen one before, and initially thought it was a practical joke imagine a two foot long pink and white plush throw pillow crawling along the reef. But just which of half a dozen kinds of identical looking other dorids is that in my photograph?
Theres also a bit of coral. Some two meter wide gorgonians for instance. Some look like half moons. Some look like trees. Some are red, some are blue, some are yellow, some are white. Some are inhabited by transparent gobies, commensal shrimp, and pygmy sea horses. Almost all are in flawless condition, thanks no doubt to the natural environment and the still-low number of divers in the water. Then there were the hard coral heads, including some near-perfect hemispheres three meters in diameter
There was also a variety of leafy scorpionfish, octopus, cuttlefish, cowries, lobsters crabs and shrimp in all sizes and colors, including transparent. And an unexpected but inquisitive manta. And many green sea turtles, and a hawksbill or two. But we need to move on or well never finish this trip report. Go visit yourself for goodness sake. Id list a bunch of dive site names but names is all that they would be. Magic Mountain, Boo Corner, The Window, Nudibranch Rock, Kaleidoscope Rock, Fiabacet, Daron pretty much everywhere we went something special was waiting for us. There were stories that some folks were staying on Misool for a month at a time. I havent stayed in any place for a full month for at least fifteen years, but Misool region definitely has enough to entertain any diver with the time and $ to spare.
(CONTINUED)
Synopsis
- What: Two weeks on the Black Manta liveaboard and one week at Papua Divings Kri Eco resort
- When: November 2011
- Who: Reasonably experienced diver typically given to criticism and understatement
- Why: Word of mouth, downtime at work, and concern that the reefs might not last another decade
- Review in a nutshell: Grand Canyon, High Sierras-level Awesome. A phenomenal mix of coral, macro, and huge schools of fish. Topside landscape (volcanoes, karsts, and rainforest) equally magnificent. Go!
Background to Trip
This fall, faced with a bit of unexpected down time at work I decided to take a last minute trip to Raja Ampat. Why Raja Ampat? You could call it word of mouth. On my first liveaboard a few years back, at Tubbataha, on the first dive of that trip (with maybe 20 dives in total under my belt) I rolled off the skiff and ended up just about on top of a white tip resting on the reef flat. We finned over to the sheer drop off when the sky went dark and the first of two mantas buzzed us from behind. Thirty minutes (new divers suck air fast at depth), two dozen sharks, two turtles, and a massive school of jacks later, I climbed back onto the skiff filled with amazement and delight. Cruise director Keri was kind enough to wait until later in the day to tell me that all that I had seen was nothing compared to the coral, macro, and fish diversity of Raja Ampat. A few hundred dives later that first dive at Tubbataha is still one of my three all time favorite, together with Palaus German Channel on a full moon flood tide on my birthday, and, now, Sardines at Kri. Having been to Raja Ampat first hand, I can attest that Keris passion was not misplaced.
As I planned my trip on short notice, Jez at Premier Liveaboard Diving suggested the Black Manta, which was making a 10-day transition trip from the lesser visited Ambon and Banda to Misool in the southern part of Raja Ampat, ending in Sorong. I then booked one week directly with the land based Papua Divings Kri Eco resort in the north.
The Black Manta
The Black Manta is a custom built diving boat with room for around 20 passengers and three RIBs which was relocated last year from Thailand to Indonesia. This is the only steel hull boat I saw in three weeks in Eastern Indonesia. While perhaps a tad less romantic than the teak bugis schooner of fantasy, it compared favorably in size, appearance, and (based on other passengers comments) stability with the reality of the wooden liveaboards I did see. The DMs and crew were local (mostly from Manado); the French cruise director Cedric had previously spent a few years as cruise director on another boat in Raja Ampat before globe hopping on land (us cubicle dwellers dream of holiday is it possible that those on permanent holiday dream of cubicles?). I was very happy with the Black Manta and would join another trip with them if time permits. The boat was well designed, rooms were clean and the common area and outside decks spacious. The dive deck ran like clockwork (I did 28 dives of a possible 33 dives on the trip, and had 28 full fills with right nitrox mix), and random equipment spares were always available when needed (Cedric, I still have your bungee!); Cedrics 3-D dive briefings were accurate, informative and entertaining (beware of current at the peanut butter jar); and the DMs, Stanny in particular, were good guides with great critter knowledge and awareness of underwater ecology. Compared with other boats I considered it was good value too. There were about 18 divers on our trip, a mix of French, German/Swiss, Australian, and American. The seven French were in their 50s, lifelong divers with 1500+ dives apiece; the rest of us were mostly in our 30s and 40s, about half with cameras and most with 500+ dives. The only drawback I saw is that there is no special purpose enclosed camera room, though there was sufficient dry table space on the dive deck for everyones camera kit between dives.
Diving - Ambon
The trip was expected to start after dinner on Tuesday, so I took a red-eye flight from Jakarta to Ambon arriving at dawn, planning to spend the day exploring in Ambon before embarking. As it happens, the port is about 1 hour from downtown Ambon; as a number of divers had arrived the night before, Cedric decided to get everyone in the water a day early. Ambon Bay is long, shallow, and silty, a characteristic muck diving environment. While my previous mucky experience left me cold, the combination of greater experience and a good guide gave me a new perspective this trip, starting here with large stonefish, a bunch of different kinds of scorpionfish and frogfish, common sea horses, cuttlefish flamboyant and otherwise, and my first wonderpus octopus. Oh, did I mention the stunning purple rhinopias, white mouth half open, perched amidst green algae on the seabed? We ended one dive near a fishing dock where amidst all the muck batfish and juvenile trevally had gathered to eat discarded scraps, as dappled sunlight filtered through gaps in the wooden planking above. Shame I hadnt organized the camera before I hopped in the water.
Banda
Tuesday night, we decided to sail from Ambon a day early to maximize our time among the corals and karsts of Misool. We spent Wednesday and Thursday around the Banda Islands. The waters here on the edge of the Banda Sea were deep, the currents in some places rippingly strong (goodbye, new split fins), and the marine life correspondingly diverse: turtles, black tip reef sharks, large schools of rainbow runners, snapper, and barracuda. The Banda Islands includes two main islands Banda Neira (the small island and capital) and Banda Besar, curling around the Gungam Api (sp) volcano. In the late 1980s, lava flows from the volcano smothered a reef offshore. The lava flow remains a sterile black scar, with large glasslike chunks three and four feet across down to the waterline. In contrast, below the waves, the combination of temperature, nutrients and current has enabled acropora coral in table, lettuce, and staghorn forms to carpet the entire slide (perhaps 300-500 meters wide) in just over two decades. For many, this was a highlight of the trip.
Wednesday evening, I skipped what was reportedly a pretty good muck dive at dusk and opted for beers on the harbor overlooking the volcano; the following morning we spent a few hours touring the town with its Dutch and English colonial architecture and a nutmeg plantation, the source of the islands fame and fate. Banda was for many centuries the worlds sole supplier of nutmeg and an important source of cloves and cinnamon. Chinese, Javans, Malays, and others had long traded with locals for nutmeg and other spices; in the 17th century, however, the Portuguese and Dutch sought absolute control of the nutmeg supply, leading to the depopulation of the original inhabitants of the island and their replacement with slaves from Sulawesi. Run, a nearby, uninhabited, waterless rock claimed by the English, was traded to the Dutch in partial exchange for title to Manhattan in 1667. The spices are good, but not good enough to justify that trade unless you see Wall Street as permanently underwater and plan on doing lot of diving. Today, the 20,000 people on the islands are 95% Muslim, with a few Christians (there is at least one active Christian church) and Chinese (who dominate trade).
Thursday midday, we set off from Banda to East Seram, stopping off at Batu Kapal, a set of three evenly spaced pinnacles set off from a sea mount. Here, we found large barrel sponges and huge gorgonians at the saddle point between pinnacles and sea mount, many schooling fish on the point, hunting napoleon wrasse, and neat species including a soapfish and a neon-yellow leafy scorpionfish tucked in among the soft coral. There were also a few interesting swimthroughs, if I remember correctly.
Koon / East Seram
Koon is the easternmost island in a chain off the eastern tip of Seram, exposed to strong currents and the plankton they carry. It would be an understatement to say that there are lots of fish there. Im not sure whether it was really early in the morning, too much plankton in the water, or just all the fish swarming everywhere and blocking out the light, but on our first dive the visibility was terrible. Huge schools of trevally, snapper, batfish, and barracuda, plus all the usual fusiliers, dusky unicornfish, silversides (sardines?), etc. A nasty downcurrent too I remember pulling myself back up the wall at one point in the dive. The visibility had cleared by lunchtime, but even with less plankton hence fewer fish in the water this was a good dive.
Misool
North and South Raja Ampat have different reputations: the North (particularly around Mansour and the Dampier Straight) having stronger currents, more fish, larger fish, and greater diversity; the South (namely Misool) having the better visibility and more attractive coral. Having spent a week diving in each, I would generally agree in terms of visibility, currents, and coral. The fish life in Misool for both macro and schooling fish was quite impressive, if not Sardines-level smack-you-in-the-face dense. After chatting with a few different folks, Im not sure whether fish density up north is due to underwater topography and currents, or the longer period of time the area has been subject to environmental protections and fishing restrictions.
We spent four days diving around Misool. The main island of Misool (home to some 5,000 native Papuans spread across a dozen or so villages, a land-based resort, and an under-construction airstrip) is surrounded by karst islets, with jagged vertical walls ending in snaggletooth tops 100 meters high and a maze of saddles, pinnacles, and swimthroughs below the water. The combination of forms and currents gives rise to unique dive sites and significant diversity here a hard coral edge to a corner with large schooling fish and pelagics, around the corner a quiet patch with sponges, tunicates, and nudibranchs galore, over there a wall covered in magnificent gorgonians and a million silversides of one type or another and filled every dive with excitement and anticipation. The larger fish we encountered included schools of great barracuda (15-20 fish in each); great, silver, bluefin, and yellow/orange trevally; rainbow runners; midnight snappers; unicornfish; several kinds of sweetlips; batfish; big herds of four foot long, two foot high bumphead parrotfish chomping away at the coral; fusiliers; many albeit solitary napoleon wrasse (of different sizes and phases); dogtooth tuna; emperor bream; barramundi; and lots of different species of puffer.
Though Raja Ampat does not have a reputation for sharks we did see a number of juvenile white tip and black tip reef sharks (mostly in ones and twos); one adult grey reef shark; and two Raja Ampat Epaulette Sharks resting on ledges.
Raja Ampat does have a reputation for pygmy sea horses and ghost pipefish, and these I saw in abundance. I certainly wasnt looking for them explicitly, but I managed to see and photograph 6 of the 14 ghost pipefish variations in Allen, Steene et. al. There were frequent h. bargibanti sightings (in red pink and purple color schemes), and a few h. denise. One of the other divers (with Stanny, of course) saw h. colemani near Batanta as well.
Nudibranchs there were lots of them. There were lots of different kinds of them. Solo, mating, multiple couples mating simultaneously. I had a look through a field guide on the darned things and for a brief moment was proud to distinguish dorid from aeolid and dendronotid from arminid. The Spanish dancer was pretty easy: I had not seen one before, and initially thought it was a practical joke imagine a two foot long pink and white plush throw pillow crawling along the reef. But just which of half a dozen kinds of identical looking other dorids is that in my photograph?
Theres also a bit of coral. Some two meter wide gorgonians for instance. Some look like half moons. Some look like trees. Some are red, some are blue, some are yellow, some are white. Some are inhabited by transparent gobies, commensal shrimp, and pygmy sea horses. Almost all are in flawless condition, thanks no doubt to the natural environment and the still-low number of divers in the water. Then there were the hard coral heads, including some near-perfect hemispheres three meters in diameter
There was also a variety of leafy scorpionfish, octopus, cuttlefish, cowries, lobsters crabs and shrimp in all sizes and colors, including transparent. And an unexpected but inquisitive manta. And many green sea turtles, and a hawksbill or two. But we need to move on or well never finish this trip report. Go visit yourself for goodness sake. Id list a bunch of dive site names but names is all that they would be. Magic Mountain, Boo Corner, The Window, Nudibranch Rock, Kaleidoscope Rock, Fiabacet, Daron pretty much everywhere we went something special was waiting for us. There were stories that some folks were staying on Misool for a month at a time. I havent stayed in any place for a full month for at least fifteen years, but Misool region definitely has enough to entertain any diver with the time and $ to spare.
(CONTINUED)
