KD01 – 3rd-6th June 2011
The boat’s ready, dive sites checked, schedule’s sorted and the staff are raring to go – ready for the start of our season in the Komodo National Park!
Established in 1980, and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, Komodo NP is well known for it’s diverse marine life, and we’re all very excited to be able to explore this incredible region with the guests, both above and below water
Moonho and Jason are our lucky guests on this first Komodo Liveaboard trip, we picked them up on June 3rd from Labuan Bajo and with Captain Suddin at the wheel we set out for the nearby island of Sabayor, accompanied on our way out of the harbour by a pod of spinner dolphins, an auspicious start to our first trip!
Early clearance from the harbourmaster and flat seas meant we arrived at Sabayor a wee bit ahead of schedule, so we gave the dive safety briefing and jumped in for a check dive on Sabayor Wall.
Beautiful reef starting at 5 metres and dropping off along a wall down to around 25 metres, the dive site is sheltered by a large ridge, so ideal for a mellow first dive to get people used to equipment, buoyancy and being back in the water.
It’s also a gorgeous dive site, with an abundance of reef fish, resident batfish, plenty of flatworms and nudibranchs to search for, and the odd ray hiding out in the sand to spot.
Into the National Park the next morning – 67% of the park is marine, so plenty of ocean for us to explore!
We picked Tatawa Besar and Tatawa Kecil as our divesites for the day, a sloping reef drift dive first, and we were lucky enough to have a manta ray cruise past, as well as spotting blue ribbon eels, tiny spider crabs on whip coral, huge schools of bannerfish and red-toothed triggerfish everywhere.
Big schools of midnight snapper & batfish swirling round us, whilst Ricky & Diego found us a couple of super-shy and minute bagabanti pygmy seahorses. Tatawa Kecil is a spectacular divesite topography wise, with steep walls, overhangs, boulders, and so many nooks and crannies for the smaller marine creatures to hang out in, really a dynamic site, and very different from our Komodo diving so far.
Join us tomorrow for more on the first trip of the season!
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