Indonesia diving - Area information
Click on these links below for more details about each area:
>
Bali >
Banda Sea >
Fakfak >
Flores Alor >
Halmahera >
Komodo >
Raja Ampat >
Wakatobi & Beyond >
>View a weather and area comparison for diving Indonesia
Diving Wakatobi & Beyond by Dive Liveaboard
With over 2 years of dive guiding, managing Wakatobi Diving Resort and helping
marine life studies at Operation Wallacea. Diving 4 Images will show the very
best of what this whole area has to offer and much more.... Wakatobi Dive
Resort do some great wall diving, imagine this combined with the some great
critter diving, fishy pinnacles & ridges and the crystal clear water
of the outer islands.....ahhhhh!
Though if you really want the ultimate wall diving,
head into the Banda Sea with one of our yearly liveaboard
charters!
When is it best to dive Wakatobi?
It is possible to dive the Wakatobi island group most of the year. The roughest seas
come from the end of December through to the beginning of March. Both Wakatobi
Dive Resort and Operation Wallacea close down operations during this time of the
year. With a liveaboard it is better to avoid these months in order to be able to dive the very best sites on the east
and west of this island group and avoid heavy waves, wind and swell.
Kaledupa region - this area
is the home base of Operation Wallacea www.opwall.com (Hoga Island) who
are always very welcoming. It has probably the best beach in the whole
island group that is why an evening with no night diving here is such
a pleasure. We make a barbeque on this pristine white sand beach and relax
in the cabanas where students would normally be preparing their papers....
Dive sites here vary a lot though we opt for no walls; an even more dramatic
kind of site awaits us. This area has many pinnacles some of which make
up a long ridge that can be dived when currents allow. Scenery along this
ridge and on the pinnacles ranges from excellent to downright outstanding,
with swim-throughs to take you from side of the ridge to the other, giant
sea fans lie vertically along the ridge crest creating the most wonderful
images be it in your mind or on film. There is a great variety of coral
life here including lots of hanging soft corals and hard corals towards
the top of the pinnacles which all come to within a good safety stop of
5m from the surface. Fish life on these pinnacles also ranges from great
to fish soup, with resident giant and blue fin trevallies circling in
the shallows, huge schools of swirling neon fusiliers, unicorns and others
are to be seen just off reef. For the smaller marine life, there usually
lots of scorpion and lion fish feeding here, different species of anemone
and many other reef fish which congregate here. Looking really close there
are also some surprise tiny critters too, wait and see!
There are sea mounts with amazing reef scenery, vast hard coral gardens in the shallows, fish life come in large quantities with schooling barracuda, jacks, vast amounts of fusiliers and sometimes sharks & eagle rays. Coral gardens here make great dive sites as it is easy to settle down on the sandy bottom and just watch the fish and critters go about their usual business amongst some great coral formations.
Tomia region - this is home base of Wakatobi Dive Resort. A little out of the resorts range I have a few sites with amazing coral gardens (one was a recent find which really did stand out as being a great site). A channel in an atoll is often home to eagle rays, jacks, barracuda, huge schools of yellow back fusiliers, after the channel comes a drop off with whip corals, fans and soft corals. The shallow area along this huge reef system has areas where pigmy sea horses can be seen in depths as shallow as 10m, along with many other rare and much sought after critters living amongst colourful reefs and wonderful reef crests to make safety stops pleasurable. A great undulating coral ridge has some great coral reef scenery and often schools of small fusiliers cruise between the ridges of the reef system. Our anchorage here is a great one for it's close location to a great night diving area as well!
Binongko Island - The Wakatobi island group is actually called "Tukang Besi" in local language this means steel worker. This is the only island where steel is forged and knives are still made as they were many years ago, a trip can be arranged to go see this process in action.
Dive sites here are dramatic shear wall dives with giant black coral bushes, predominantly white in one area that gives a feeling of snowfall in winter ahh! There are dramatic caverns; overhangs and areas where lots of fish hang in the mild currents, reef tops are rockier with some small look-throughs covered in brilliantly colourful soft corals. Of the smaller marine life, often sea spiders are seen here; blennies hide their cute little faces in the holes in the rocks, many different species of dottyback, goby, triplefin and often a few real nice surprises can be seen if we look hard enough.
Buton Island - a very special little bay here is home to one of the most amazing macro sites I have seen. In an average depth of 6m you can see the most amazing creatures. Here is a direct sample from logbook of a second dive on this site : - Straight down from boat, 2 ornate ghost pipe fish black with orange and red colouration. Frogfish (dark brown), pipe fish galore, cow fish, a pair of flying gurnards, frogfish (green/yellowy), frogfish (very dark with spots) all this in only 2 square meter area. Lots of weird crabs, anemones, opistobranchs another pair of ghost pipe fish, an area with octopus galore, bobtail squid, 12 ringed pipe fish together, juvenile black snappers and other cool juvenile fish, marbled snake eel, dead fish being devoured by come shell oooh! All this and a maximum depth of 7m. Doing a whole day here you will see many other wonders maybe mimic and blue ringed octopus, cockatoo wasp fish, leaf scorpion fish, inimicus (devil scorpion fish), stonefish and the ever so cool disco clam. There is one more site if you ever needed to try elsewhere, you may see the "bobbit worm" on a different site in this area as well.
Western Islands - now really out in open ocean, here offers virgin diving on walls that are filled with beds of sea fans and gigantic sponges, some of the biggest I have ever seen. Overhangs and huge cracks in the reefs, some making excellent swim-throughs, these I know will bring photographers and videograpahers (everyone else too) such delight. Delicate hanging soft corals and invertebrate life are to be found around the crevices, in amongst these corals are many different crustaceans. At night there is one wall that really does stand out as a most amazing night dive for its brilliant colourful corals and small marine life that hide within them. There are reef corners here that attract great amounts of fish and have amazing coral gardens with large bommies, tubastraea corals (green coral trees) and large table corals with stingrays hiding beneath.
Eastern Islands - these are the most remote islands that are still part of the Wakatobi island group. Being the most remote also makes them the least dived here. All islands on the eastern side are all very low lying and many are full of palm trees with a few having very traditional Bajo (sea gipsy) style villages on stilts, dramatic drop off's, giant canyons, huge overhanging reefs, ravines, the most amazing reef crests, crystal clear water and plenty of fish make these islands just delightful to dive.
In all this area makes for some of the worlds best wall diving along with good diversity of reef systems, coral life, fish and critter life too.
Interested? Click here to mail me for more information.
top