Bali to Komodo with Komodo Dancer

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May 14th - May 29th

Resident sea horse in Rinca

A check out cruise joining the Ombak Biru (Komodo Dancer) in order to gain a thorough knowledge of the boat systems and procedures for my forthcoming charters. An excellent cruise on a great boat, with excellent food, snacks, drinks with outstanding waiter service between our busy dive schedule. A very different cruise for me, the Komodo Dancers usual itinerary is a little different from what I have done in the past. It was great, I got to learn a few new sites from them and they learnt a few new ones from me. This is the joy of being friends with many different operators out here and chartering different vessels.

Manta ray from south Komodo

A whole mix of dives, most being more geared towards the bigger marine life and reef diving. A few excellent new sites to me, one being the manta ray site, now I know it very well after a high quality dive on the Komodo Dancer. We had excellent manta ray action with many huge rays coming in very close. At one moment I counted 5 individuals around the myself and the group, the reef on this site is worth another dive, even if the manta rays are not there it is still a high quality reef dive with excellent schooling fish life, a few sharks and a big Napoleon wrasse. On other big fish dive sites we encountered many huge Napoleon wrasse, reef sharks small schools of jacks, barracuda, other pelagic fish and lots of other schooling fishes.

Resident frogfish in Rinca

Another new site was one with amazing reef scenery along a coral spur with a great soft coral wall and probably one of the best hard coral reef tops in the National Park, along this same reef is an amazing area for wicked wide angle photography with giant sea fans and coral bommies coming out of a white sandy slope, all very shallow too. Mooring up in this area for an afternoon is ideal for those wanting to get the most out of these sites.

One of the regular Stargazers

Considering most of the group were not really into critters, we still came across 7 different frogfish on numerous sites including a few resident's I knew of. There were 12 different leaf scorpion fish in allsorts of colour variations, many being residents of regular dive sites, 3 different - devilfish, Caledonian/demon stinger, Indian walkman - too man names for this fish, lets unify and call it inimicus, which is it's real name after all!

Robust ghost pipefish

Their were 5 different ghost pipefish, too many pigmy sea horses to be bothered counting, nudibranchs galore including the regular Spanish dancer on night dives, a huge solar powered slug, stargazers also showed their ugly faces at night, mandarin fish were there in a usual place at dusk, though very shy and small. On another excellent black sand site I spent the whole dive in the sandy area and eventually found it, the favoured little crab we all love and seek out - the ever so cute and unique boxer crab.

Komodo Dragon and wild boar

As for dragon action, as usual the Dragons were near the ranger station and more on the Dragon Walk. While we were in Rinca the dragons were very frisky and chased a group of keen photographers away, certainly gave them all a fright.

Pink leaf fish on Banta island

Now I just can't wait to get back out there in June on Pelagian, this is going to be my long awaited Black Sand Critter Cruise and after the two recent trips out to the area I am so keen to get back out there and send some quality time diving the best of best black sand sites and some other favoured critter sites.

Thanks to Mark Shuttleworth for the use of his photo's.

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