Over half way through the season and the Jaya is still going strong, fantastic diving and fab weather. This trip headed out into the Komodo National Park with guests Dymphna (an old Wicked family member back to experience Indonesian diving), Ozzy Pete, Volker & Veronika (joining us for the first part of their honeymoon), Brady, Larry, Monique & Brian from the States, Nick & Andreas joining us for another 3 days aboard the Jaya, Karine from France, Reshma from the UK and Argentinian Pablo.
With Captain Surafidin at the helm, we made our first 2 dives at the islands of Sabolan and Sabayor, gorgeous diving just on the outskirts of the national park, giving us sightly more chilled out dives along beautiful reefs.
Juvenile shaded batfish, schools of bumphead parrotfish, a few reef sharks and huge schools of fusiliers and snappers greeted us on these dives and got everyone very excited for the rest of the dives as we moved into the north of Komodo.Night dive up at Karang Bintang, a gorgeous dive site for night diving because of the amount of bioluminescence that can be seen along the reef.
Find of the night were some bearded rocklings, a cool fish that look somewhat like a mix between moray eels and catfish, plus we saw Spanish dancers and dwarf occellated lionfish, lots to keep us occupied!
Since this was our penultimate Manta Ray Education Trip of the season, we aimed to dive as many of our manta ‘hotspots’, places where we hoped we’d have a better chance of seeing some manta rays. Thankfully, the mantas really were out in force, we were lucky to see so many! Up close and personal encounters at the Cauldron (the mantas came so close over our heads we couldn’t even get the belly into the viewfinder of the camera for an ID shot!), and then little reef mantas hanging out getting cleaned at the Witch’s Hat. It was the first manta experience as well for many of our guests, which makes it even more special for everyone on the boat.
Batu Bolong was a break from mantas and instead we focused on the many other fish to be seen! Huge napoleon wrasse, loads of turtles, and massive schools of fusiliers being chased by the rainbow runners and trevallies.
Castle Rock was another incredibly fishy dive, plenty of sharks for everyone, more napoleons, giant trevallies hunting, plus some tiny blue and yellow ribbon eels to watch twirling in and out of their holes as we made our way up into the shallows.
Time to relax for a bit, beach time on Gili Lawa Darat to watch the sun set over the volcano Sangeang – it’s one of our favourite viewpoints, and the guests agreed! After a full-on day of diving, there’s nothing more relaxing than a stroll up to a deserted hilltop to watch a glorious sunset & think back over the great diving that day.
Last morning, and we dived Karang Makassar one last time on the trip to see if we could see any more mantas and get any identification shots, and luck was again on our side, all the groups saw mantas, one big 3.5m reef manta, and plenty of smaller ones feeding up in the shallows.When we got back to the boat we found all the boat crew very excited as a manta had breached just by the boat, so they got to share in the fun too! A brilliant end to a great trip, thanks guys for joining us in the Komodo National Park!
-Wicked Diving Komodo
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