Komodo Liveaboard trip report - July 23-26, 2012

8 new guests joined Team Jaya for the next 3 days on trip 16 of the season - Andy, Brad & Sophie from NZ, Aurelie from France, Jennifer from Switzerland, Ingolf from Germany & Roy and Sharon from the States. We made our way straight into the National Park, with a check dive at Karang Bintang South, where a big school of Bumphead parrotfish were there to welcome us to Komodo!

Dinner and Rummikub to pass away the evening, then since it was such a clear night, time to gather on the sundeck and stargaze with the astronomy app on the iPad :) technology gets everywhere!

Brad and Sophie were completing their Advanced Adventurer on this Komodo liveaboard, a great way to do the advanced course, plenty of time to get in your 5 dives for the course but also get extra dives with an instructor to practice the skills throughout the trip.




We spent the next day in the north of the park, with a fun drift through The Passage, then learned about diving in split currents when we dived Castle Rock, a late afternoon dive on the rising tide, a gorgeous dive, very sharky and loads of fish swirling round us, doing our safety stop in a massive bait ball of fusiliers.


We weren't so lucky with the manta rays at Karang Makassar this trip, but it was a gorgeous dive, not so much current so we were able to explore around all the bommies as we drifted by, baby white tip sharks, peacock mantis shrimps scuttling around, lots of scorpionfish and moray eels, and cute little thorny box fish hiding out in the rubble on the bottom.



The night dive at Wainilu was amazing, so much to see, leaf fish, dwarf occellated lionfish, juvenile painted frogfish, flying gurnards, decorator anemone crabs...the list of cool and funky critters was endless! We tested the fish ID books knowledge filling in our logbooks after that dive!

Last day with a beautiful dive at Tengah, chilly waters but so much life! A couple of turtles swam by to say hello, and so many juvenile fish were hiding in and around the overhangs on the rockier sections of the divesite. Diving finished for the trip and off to Rinca to search for Komodo Dragons – a successful search, a fun hike, and a great end to 3 brilliant days of diving!

-Wicked Diving Komodo