Kupang into the Banda Sea to Sorong with Stan Waterman on Pelagian
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Graham and Stan having an after dive laugh
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It was an honour to be asked to guide a group with the legendary Stan "The
Wordsmith" Waterman and his friends, helping out acting as joint cruise
director along another dive legend in these parts - Larry Smith. All this on
Indonesia's finest live aboard dive vessel Pelagian. It was immediately evident
when the guests arrived at the airport that this would be an excellent cruise with
a great group of keen divers ready for adventure.
Typical Alor reef scene
our first day was to be steaming overnight into the Alor region, just being at the
dinner table with Stan telling just some of the many stories was such a pleasure,
this was to go on each evening. Here the diving started with great black sand critter
hunting. Critters that we seen here included, weedy scorpion fish (rhinopias frondosa),
a pair of giant commerson's frogfish, different leaf scorpion fish & ribbon eels,
lots of Pegasus sea moths, snake eels, opistobranchs, shrimps and crabs galore. All
this was an excellent start to the cruise with everyone keen to get back into water to
get more footage or still images of these amazing critters. The small village where we
anchored Pelagian has a natural hot spring meeting the shoreline, here we all took
advantage of a free hot water spa while being watched by the very amused local children.
This area was so good we stayed for a few days before heading to another village on
Pura Island in the center of Alor; we dived on pristine reefs, finding more excellent
critters and the usual wicked night dives too. Marine life like clown frogfish
(maculatus), a stargazer trying its best to hide in the sand, a few different devil
scorpion fish (inimicus didactylus), the strange looking palaemonid shrimps (leander
plumosus), many cool opistobranchs, lots of really colourful gobies, triplefins, blennies,
host shrimps and crabs hiding in amongst anemones, soft corals, sandy patches and
everywhere we looked beautiful reef. A recently discovered wall dive here with two huge
pinnacles, excellent coral compositions, lots of fish life, this was where we saw the
first of many pigmy sea horses we were to encounter on this cruise. There were mandarin
fish that are regularly seen on a few sites in Alor, though we would see more later that
were much easier to get close to.
Kids playing in Alor
Another highlight of diving around Alor are the locals,
most dives we were joined by local fishermen and children, these wanted to see what we
were doing underwater, they would often swim down to take a closer look, this makes for
great video and still images too. Going into the local village to see them making baskets,
repairing fishing nets and to hear the story of the strange anchor from the mountain made
for a great land excursion, not just for us but the locals as well.
Wetar - our next
stop, a scenic wall dive started the day with lots of large black coral bushes, sea
fans.... more pigmy sea horses, sponges and other cool critters though most had wide
angle lenses to capture the scenery here. We anchored in a small bay near a river
mouth and had opted to explore for muck sites. We had our first ornate & robust
ghost pipe fish, more leaf scorpion fish, a few more opistobranchs and some cool
orangutan crabs hanging out in bubble corals. The topside scenery beckoned, we
headed up the river mouth towards a small house where a small family lived. Larry
had been here before and spoke of crocodiles; sure enough on our way up the river
we encountered a resting crocodile on the riverbank. The friendly locals took us
on a walk up the river where crocodiles are said to hang out in larger numbers, not
today, but the walk was great along the way we heard the story of a man eating
crocodile that had taken a old man a few years earlier.
Sea snake on Gunung Api
- a full day of diving on a tiny island in the middle of the Banda Sea where thousands
of sea birds nest. The diving here has special feature too.... a very unusual number of
sea snakes. Diving on reefs packed with snakes everywhere we looked was great for the
photographers and videographers. In places there are area's where they congregate
together in groups, like most sea snakes they are totally un-interested with divers,
even when approached for close up shots they just go about their usual business.
Lucipara and Penyu Islands - there are areas in this island group with impacted reefs, though with knowledge coming from my
past cruise here and Larry’s past cruises on Cehili we managed to come across great pristine
wall dives with dramatic giant sponges, sea fans, many grottos, caverns, overhangs and swimthroughs.
Good schooling fish life, white tip reef sharks, turtles, lots of dog tooth tuna, here we saw
some of the aptly named plucked chicken pigmy sea horses (hippocampus sp.) along with lots of
great small fishes flitting about on the reef crests. One of the smaller fish we watched with
great interest was the unusual zebra dart gobies (ptereleotris zebra) that were pouting out their
fins and showing off their full colours in large groups.
Banda Niera - center of the
spice island trade with all it's historical interest had us staying here for a
few days, taking shore trips to the forts and to see the nutmeg growing that was
more valuable than gold in times gone by. Our top number one dive here was a dive
site that was stumbled upon on an earlier visit.
Amazing Mandarin fish action in Banda
This site was where we saw the
Mandarin fish in huge numbers, here they are not like in most areas, here they
are easy to get very close too and film. We saw them mating though what is even
more impressive is to wake up early for the male testosterone work out. At dawn
the largest males seem to battle it out, swimming around displaying their fins
in full beauty while making fast jerky movements towards each other. A show well
worth waking up for, for me much more impressive than the mating sequence at dusk.
We dived this regularly; saw other cool critters here, a well-camouflaged frogfish
(coccineus or nummifer?), pipefish galore, and shrimpfish. A few divers actually
started to find old Dutch clay bottles and even old porcelain, they must have been
from the old Dutch ships coming in hundreds of years ago.
Dutch architecture on Banda Niera
Our land tours were
interesting with fantastic views of the volcano. We had great fun too in trying
the local transport called becak's. A tour was arranged to see the old wells
and heard the story of the terrible murders that happened on these islands all
for the sake of spices, the views from the main island of Banda Besar over to Gunung
Api were also excellent. Outer island dives are amazing here with the biggest sea
fans you will ever encounter, in places vast amounts of different species of reef fish.
One dive with a huge scenic swim through was home to a hammerhead seen by a few
divers along with a group of spotted eagle rays that slowly cruised by for our
pleasure. A huge school of jacks came in when called too, while looking at small
coral hermit crabs in the shallows a large school of giant humphead parrotfish
went close by crunching away as they fed. The top night dive here is great for
it's colourful critters including soft coral crabs, shrimps riding the huge
Spanish dancer nudibranch lots of other great nudibranchs, leaf scorpion fish
and great reef scenery around the many coral bommies that make up this site in
the mouth of Banda Niera Bay.
Leopard shark on Koon
- Koon island, both Edi (Pindito) and Larry Smith had dived here many years earlier on Cehili, a site
Larry and one group named "Too Many Fish". Here we were delighted to see lots of schooling
fish life including jacks, batfish, surgeons, unicorns, fusiliers, snappers,
sweetlips, giant chinaman fish, groupers, turtles another group of eagle rays
cruising by. Larry assured us there were more fish on the full moon phase. As the
current picked up, we opted for the walled section with no current, here we came
upon a leopard shark resting in a cavern, these are rarely seen in Indonesian
waters and it was a real joy to see one, more eagle rays cruised by as we were finishing
our dive. In many coralimorths here we saw the unusual and hard to see shrimps
(pliopontonia furtiva) that are so well disguised in their host.
Beautiful shallow soft coral reefs in Misool
-
here we decided to go exploring for new sites not yet visited,
as far as we knew anyway. The first area we came across was so good we stayed a
while, had many amazing dives, great critter life too. Lagoon areas were home to
many twin-spot or crab eye gobies, we watched closely and saw them cleaning out
holes, feeding and even fighting, yes - biting each other, I have never seen this
fish fight before. There were great walls covered with colourful coral life, lots
of fish and amazing colourful invertebrate life. Small islands here are surrounded
by pristine reef with coral reef tops, hard coral compositions and soft coral
covered bommies. One of the guests ventured out from the main reef on one dive site
and came across a beautiful coral covered pinnacle surrounded by thousands of
fish, large Wahoo cruised by along with big dogtooth tuna and a large Napoleon
wrasse, we named it “Michaels Mount”. There was an exceptional site with an excellent coral
slope with bommies covered with an array of soft corals and sea fans all these
were even in very shallow depths. This is really what adventure diving is about,
still being able to come across reefs where you may be amongst the first to ever
dive.
More exploring on the west side of Misool, this time looking for more critter
sites. A small bay offered good anchorage and easy shallow diving. The area we checked
didn’t look too great upon first glance, but as our group loved critters we easily
found some great subjects, one area with many small coral covered bommies had
some good fish life surrounding them. The first wobbiegong was see here along with
another leopard shark sighting. Lots of beautiful yellow partner gobies (cryptocentrus
cinctus) were all over the sandy bottom along with the very shy, much sought after
yellow-faced goby (stonogobiops xanthorhinica). A few small seamounts on the map were
the next stop; here we found good soft coral cover from 60’ and beyond on the otherwise
baron looking landscape. We came across a few really beautiful opistobranchs, a robust
ghost pipefish was seen and some really cute juvenile yellow-banded pipefish.
Kofiau - and more exploring in this
island group, the captain had noticed a small un-marked barrier reef as we entered a
group of small islands. Here the local fisherman had a large fishing net over part of
the reef. We dived here and came across some interesting reef scenery and coral
bommies and a group of cuttlefish that we watched for a long time as they
hovered around together. Other dives in this area were on a reef corner that looked
like it would be a good place for aggregating fish, not too many fish on our dive but
there was no current which made for an easy dive, we came across a great cleaning
station and had a free teeth cleaning session. Moving round to a small-protected bay
with a great welcome from a pod of small dolphins. The area came up with a good muck
dive, here we came across an abundance of different partner gobies, crocodile fish a
few colourful flatworms, shrimps and crabs in and around tube anemones.
Wayag - the north end and
a favourite area for me, for it's scenery was probably the best I have ever seen. Many tiny
islands and blue lagoons make up this great island group called Wayag. Diving here is also
spectacular with excellent reef scenery and marine life around these small tropical islands.
It was here that we took a hand over hand hike up to see the impressive views from the highest
hilltop. The highlight was that Stan Waterman joined us too, I was so impressed and inspired by
this man, I had seen young people struggle and moan at this walk and here was Stan trudging along
so he could see the spectacular views that awaited us. Sure enough everyone agreed it was well
worth the effort.
Hike in Wayag with rewarding panorama
Our trek down was more difficult but we all made it safely. The dives here are
great for the wide angle scenery with schooling sweetlips that line up waiting to be photographed,
lots of nudibranchs are seen in the shallows along with many mantis shrimps often seen out of their
holes in photogenic poses. The lagoons are great for diving in too; our night dive here was great
with huge flatworms, epaulette sharks, strange coralimorph crabs (cyclocoeloma
tuberculata), marbled (saron) shrimps, many strange decorator crabs and lots of small cuttlefish.
Waigeo - home of the Australian run pearl
farm. We found a great safe anchorage surrounded by tiny islands and started diving.
Over the couple of days we spent here, we came across a resting wobbiegong shark, a pair of
very really unusual pipefish in the leathery corals with a pair of tiny bristly filefish
hiding amongst the tentacles along with lots of other ringed pipefish.
Just one of the many rare unusual animals in Waigeo
We often went out
from our anchorage to dive my favoured critter site here. One guest had asked about the
chance of Coleman shrimps in fire urchins I mentioned in the briefing, sure enough we had
lots of fire urchins loaded with Coleman shrimps, zebra crabs too, lots of great opistobranchs
including what has become known as bug bunny (thecacera pacifica), one specific individual
seemed to have a unusual colouration with black spots too. Harlequin crabs and emperor shrimps
were hitching rides on the many sea cucumbers and the file shells I like to call disco clams
were still in their place radiating what looks like sparks across their mantle. The shallowest
pigmy sea horses were seen here too at only 35’. There were a few juvenile barramundi cod swimming heads down as they do and a school
of big fin reef squid hovered above us and let photographers get in close enough to get some great
images. The night dive here is always excellent with many strange decorator crabs filled with thick
algae and one particular decorator that I like to call the fairy crab, for it has beautiful white
stinging hydroids on it's back, watching this crab closely you can often see it taking its food
from the hydroids as they catch passing planktonic creatures.
Batangpele - a small area we came across on
our way towards Mansuar area we decided to explore on the another area on the way, again in a
small protected bay where we once more came across excellent diving and critters, though the
highlight was a hidden reef that we ventured out to. We had dropped in above a huge green lettuce
coral formation and followed the reef down till it met a sandy slope, here we noticed small patches
of pristine reef that led us to a small seamount. Here the fish life was excellent. There was a
school of batfish in a small coral cove where a window could be seen through the reef, a huge
school of blue striped snapper were just a photographers delight, though they had their macro
lenses on for this dive they still admired the excellent reef scenery covered with beautiful
invertebrates, black coral bushes, whip corals, sea fans, giant tubastraea coming out from the
sandy bottom we followed. There were also many larger pelagic fish cruising overhead. On our way
back to the main reef slope we all noticed some really beautiful gobies in the sand, one was a not
so common but beautiful goby (amblyelotris latifasciata). The main reef slope here was mainly hard
corals with scattered bommies, this area was great for opistobranchs, more bugs bunnies though this
time a different species, thecacera picta and the bizarre notodoris gardineri. Towards the reef corner
the reef scenery changed, lots of gorgeous deep purple soft coral covered bommies, lots more schooling
fish life, ending our dive we came across lots of cute pipefish all over the reef top.
Night as usual was excellent with an devil scorpion fish, a couple of carrier crabs trying to
hide under upside down jellies, many opistobranchs (plakobranchus sp.) were seen burying into
the sand in search of food, we came across a few stalks of hydroid filled with large skeleton
shrimps (caprellid sp.), these we watched for a while as they are so amusing, seeming to be boxing with
each other all the time, in the shallows was a giant crocodile fish along with many marbled
(saron) shrimps.
Typical reef & and fish life of Mansuar
- was to the last area
we would be diving was around. First we dived cape Kri to avoid currents that would pick up later
on this site. Reef scenery here is excellent with soft coral covered bommies surrounded by
thousands of small sweepers, the usual wobbiegong sharks that are so often seen on this site,
we watched for a while as a group of yellow-backed fusiliers came in to be cleaned. We were
delighted to watch them come close opening their mouths and actually moving forward and
kissing each other until the wrasses came in to clean them. Our night dive was in search of
the epaulette shark one of the videographers was keen to film.
Unidentified pigmy sea horse in Mansuar
What we did come across early
in the dive were lots of really huge skeleton shrimps, looking over I thought I had noticed
a strange extra fat skeleton shrimp, only to be totally overjoyed when I noticed it was actually
the very rare weedy pigmy sea horse, this has to be the smallest of them all, these were very
active as we watched the pair swim around mid-water between hydroid bushes. We had stayed for a
long time watching them, only reluctantly moving on. We came across some huge pleurobranchs,
then eventually the epaulette shark was seen and close by a pair of huge big fin reef squid.
Before we had gotten out of our suits everyone crowded around looking at the video footage of
the weedy pigmy sea horses. Trying to find them the next day was like trying to find a needle in
a haystack, they had either moved on overnight or were hiding better than we were looking, still
we found the huge skeleton shrimps and some tiny opistobranchs, moving over to the middle of the
reef to see how the fish life was, we encountered the usual huge schools of fish that congregate on
this site when the current starts to pick up, big eye and giant trevallies, barracuda, snappers,
fusiliers, unicorns and the odd Napoleon wrasse all sharing the same small portion of reef. We moved to
the next excellent site in this area named Sardine Reef, here more wobbiegong sharks, the best yet as
they rested on the open reef in good view for everyone to see. Fish life and species here is at it’s
best, vast amounts of assorted reef fish school here along with what has to be the largest
Wahoo we had ever seen, the friendliest batfish, more pigmy sea horses, Dede was patient enough to hang
around, he managed to count around 19 in one small sea fan. Reef scenery here is also excellent
with bommies covered in soft corals and small reef fishes darting all around them. We dived a
known site in a sheltered lagoon, here we found an epaulette shark out in the day, lots of great
partner gobies everywhere we looked and a juvenile Pegasus sea moth we watched for while as it
slowly moved across the sandy bottom, photographers struggled to photograph a beautiful juvenile
Javanese damsel.
Only having two dives for our last day we agreed to dive the plane wreck to
give everyone a dive into the past. I gave the briefing and a short historical account of how the
plane ended up where it is then off we went. Beautiful soft corals and invertebrates cover the
wreck making it look like an extension of the reef. The group being more interested in critters
was easy to please after seeing the wreck, as the reef here is also home to many colourful
flatworms, lots of different tambja, nembrotha and hypselodoris nudibranchs and lots of great
juvenile reef fish in the shallows. Our last dive had to be a great one to end our excellent
adventure cruise, everyone agreed that Sardine Reef would be a fine last dive and surely enough
it was, with more of the great fish life and reef scenery.
Conclusion
Kupang to Sorong makes up an excellent adventure cruise through the far eastern edges of
Indonesia so rarely visited. Brilliant marine life diversity along with many different types
of dive site, lots of wonderful reef scenery and great critter life along the way. Amazing
places to go ashore, in areas you will be surrounded by what can only be described as the most
fantastic groups of small islands, some with beautiful lagoons and powder white sand beaches.
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