Trip Report
Beyond Komodo Critter Cruise 2007
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This was not actually meant to be into Komodo at all, originally the aim was to
dive more of Sangeang island and the north of Sumbawa, do some exploring for
critters and go in search of more top critter sites. The weather gods were
not quite working in our favour, the water clarity on the north was
terrible, even on northern Sangaeng, not just that, it was cold too and we
were not all that prepared for cold water. After a few days of diving on
Sangeang I decided to make the decision to head south to warmer and more
than likely clearer water. Often if water is cold up north it will be warmer
down south and this was indeed the case.
So let’s get back to the diving and how the diving went. Our first dive was
in Bima, a new spot I’ve been diving a few times already. Conditions were
not so good, so bad it was hard to find any divers, though we managed to
keep close and find some cool critters, among them a few zebra crabs in long
spined urchins and not the usual fire urchins, then a gorgeous thorny sea
horse, plenty of nudibranchs and lionfish galore, though we were after more.
For the night dive we moved to Copi Cat, a site further outside of the bay
in the hope of better conditions. Conditions seemed to be better, at night
we didn’t really notice too much as the critters we saw kept us all more
than busy, first of all we kept spotting endless different nudibranchs
including a juvenile Spanish dancer, then as we moved back over the sand we
came across 2 pairs of Pegasus sea moths, then I heard a tank banging, I
knew it was the sound of Yan so I headed of in his direction, he was
pointing down into the sand at a Bobbit worm, a few small cardinal fish
moved within striking distance, we saw the Bobbit worm lunge slightly out
its hole, then as a fish went too close the Bobbit worm struck so fast the
fish disappeared in front of us in a small cloud of soft sand as the Bobbit
worm had took its meal down in its hole.
We stayed on Copi Cat the next day, here we had a few robust ghost pipefish,
lots of spindle cowry’s, though the highlight was a mimic octopus which
stayed out of its hole longer than we had patience for! After two dives here
and the visibility getting lower I decided to head to Sangeang before our
planned schedule. On Sangeang we still really poor water clarity and very
cold water. Though we had a great variety of nudibranchs, a few frogfish and
Boxer crabs galore. After twi days of cold water and very low visibility I
decided to head south, no one had any objections as they were here for
adventure diving and critter good hunting.
We tried an area on east Komodo that was fairly good, we had a few solar
powered nudbranchs, ghost pipefishes and gobies galore, this was not enough
for us and we headed into to report in to the Park HQ. Here I opted to dive
a very interesting sea mount, this site is one I had dived previously with a
few keen critter divers. The site is very unique with thousands of different
holothurians (sea cucumbers) all over the site in many unusual different
species. Here we dived a few times and found the gorgeous and much sought
after gymnodoris aurita, a few inimicus (devilfish), more nudibranchs and
had great watching a few different species of flasher wrasse flashing their
glorious colours for us. For our night dive best conditions were on Pantai
Merah, for the critter lovers I tend to dive a slightly different area than
others here. We had a giant frogfish which has been resident here for quite
some time now, coleman shrimps in fire urchins and more solar powered slugs
with the usual array of bizarre crustaceans on night dives here. Next up was
a site that is turning out to be one of Komodos top sites, not only for
critters either, I call it Taman Rahasia (Secret Garden), this site has it
all, excellent biodiversity of fish species, often big fish sightings like
manta, mobula, eagle and giant sting rays along with a fantastic reef. When
I took Michael Aw to this site he said it was the most unique site he had
dived in Komodo, like me Michael loved the giant black coral bushes topped
with thousands of baitfish and sweepers, so much so he made his image of
this his Christmas card. As there was a fairly awkward swell we only made
dive, but it was a great dive with 2 giant frogfish, black robust ghost
pipefish, bugs bunny nudibranchs, mobula rays and then the most unusual
nudibranch I have ever seen, sadly no one managed to take a decent photo and
I never had my camera with me. This animal was square like a foccacia bread,
it had gills that were almost flat on its back, its rhinophores were
retracted but slightly visible, colour was a pale washed out blue grey, what
was most interesting was that when it was touched it had almost polyp like
nodules that moved out from the sides of its body – very bizarre indeed!
Next up was into Horseshoe Bay where we had great visibility, warm water,
though very few fish. We were not here for fish though we were after
critters and did we hit them, first of all we kept finding the cannibal (Roboastra
luteolineolata) nudibranchs feeding away, along with the most fantastic
Ceratosoma magnifica and a giant one too! We found the resident frogfish,
including an extra one, I knew there two giants but now we found 3 of them,
them a small painted frogfish in a gorgeous technicolour orange colour form
and this was just on one dive site in the day. On the black sand critter
site Torpedo Alley we had fantastic dives, with a juvenile hairy frogfish, a
few other juvenile painted frogfish, stargazer, the usual torpedo rays, a
very cool juvenile Kuiters dragonet, many different carrier crabs and very
bizarre decorator crabs many of which look like a walking reef, we had few
different feeding armina sea slugs, I spotted a wonderpuss though it was
very shy and immediately dropped down into a hole on the sand never to be
seen again!
I knew of a small cleaning station with thousands cardinal fish I wanted to
dive with this group, I couldn’t find the cleaning station area, as
visibility was much lower on this side of the bay, though this didn’t matter
as what we did come across and all managed to see was the rarest of the
rare, a very cool hairy octopus which made the dive a best ever dive for
many of us.
Next up was east Rinca, I know a few great areas here, though I chose the
spot best for critters, we had not really seen too many fire urchin critters
and last time out on this particular site we had lots of fire urchin
critters, today was no exception zebra crabs were all over the place we had
a few Coleman shrimps, a few turtles and plenty of fish on oen side of the
site. Heading to a calmer anchorage I hit another spot I had only dived a
few times, though wanted to check out more. Here we really hit big time, one
site Needle Beach started off slow then we hit the hotspot with sawblade
shrimps, zebra crab in long spined urchin unusual algae sea slug, a thorny
sea horse and another most bizarre sea slug none of had seen before, though
I thought I had noticed this one from a book sure enough it was a
pluerobranchus mamillatus, then we hit yet another really rare critter, the
Volitans or slender sea moth. Then we headed to check out yet another
critter site, this was called Parkers Putsin’ Patch after a good friend who
joined me on a check out dive here. We had only been down a few minutes when
tank bangers were going off like alarm bells, a pair of wonderpuss were
wrapped in a passionate embrace, yes mating wonderpuss, what more could you
want to see? Then as we watched the wonderpuss moving around, we noticed a
small frogfish appear from behind a sponge, this was a very rare and unusual
species I have came across a few times, it may be a Randalls frogfish though
I have yet to have a positive ID on it, then we came across the very cool
snake blennie another wonderpuss, giant crinoid shrimps and flasher wrasse
galore. I really wanted to dive this at night, though we really had to head
north with the current through the very narrow passage between Rinca and
Flores. We eventually came to a spot for a night dive, this one turned out
not to the hottest of night dives, though we did come across a juvenile
pinnate batfish which made the dive for me.
For our last day I wanted to go out with a boom, though hey how could we top
what we had already seen, I think we had dives that were better than what
Lembeh Straits can offer. So it was back to Taman Rahasia for our last
couple of dives and yes it really did come up trumps once more… It is funny
as we were all joking and divers were putting in orders for their critter
wish list, Mary Jane had asked for wonderpuss and had a pair mating, Hanna
is always after frogfish and we had plenty of these to keep Hanna smiling
for ages, joking I said I wanted to see a Flamboyant cuttlefish, this is
after all one of the only animals I was waiting to see, whilst at Lembeh
there were none around, so when Yan turned to me with a huge grin on his
face I knew he had something, sure enough he had found Flambo and did I
enjoy watching this most bizarre of animals. I had plenty fo video of this
animal but it seems no one had ever really captured properly the bizarre way
this animal walks along the bottom, it uses it’s two front tentacles and
then pushes it skin underneath its body to create feet like appendages on
which it walks. This cuttlefish is like no other as it must have no buoyancy
device, when it tries to swim off fast, it kind of lunges itself into the
air then lands with a bump each time which I found highly amusing, sadly it
was at 21m and my no deco time dropped fast at this depth. On this site we
also saw a pair of gorgeous thorny seahorses in a fan and a very rare zebra
batfish - juvenile P. batavianus along with more solar powered sea slugs and
other cool nudibranchs.
I think this trip would be hard to repeat, though I would to try again with
a group of mad keen critter lovers. It certain gives a very interesting
angle on Komodo diving.
On a negative point - we saw lots of small fishing vessels within
National Park boundaries and no ranger at all! We even saw the boats with
nets in the water within Park boundaries, which is illegal within Komodo and
has been for a long time. I heard stories about National Park Rangers taking
money direct from operators who are found diving without paying for their
Park fee, instead of the money going to the Park HQ it goes direct to
corrupt rangers, this is only what I have been told and from we saw there
certainly no ranger presence within the areas we dived and the local illegal
fishermen were taking advantage of this. Whilst in Horseshoe Bay we saw many
small boats drying their catch on the rocks and fending off dragons with
rocks and sticks. I have sent a letter of complaint to the people in charge
of Komodo National Park in the hope that do something soon!
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