Dragons, Currents and Hidden Gems

There hasn’t been much activity on the blog recently, mostly since I’ve been stowed away on various boats exploring the marine life around the Komodo Islands. I just got back from a very comfortable liveaboard trip ran by Safari Bali, who have been kind enough to let me hop on the Sea Safari 7 as resident marine biologist. In return for the trip I do presentations for the guests, help them identify creatures they’ve seen, or generally answer any ocean-related question they might have. A great deal if you ask me, since it gives me the chance to do research in one of the best dive destinations in the world.

Komodo has been one of my favourite spots since I dived it the first time six years ago. The enormous diversity in marine life and dive sites is hard to find anywhere else. Raja Ampat might have more species, but to me Komodo is more interesting. There are more muck sites, stronger currents, lots of weird critters and they’ve got dragons…it’s hard to top dragons.

Komodo Dragon (Photo by Jennifer Tambosco)

Komodo national park was established in 1980 and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1986. The park was originally designed to protect the endemic Komodo Dragons. They are the world’s largest reptile and are only found in the Komodo National Park and a few areas on the west coast of Flores. It was quickly recognised that the diversity in the surrounding ocean was a lot bigger than on land and protection was put in place for the marine environment as well.

Ghostpipefish party, six Solenostomus paradoxus hanging out

Life under water is governed by the strong currents around the islands. The Komodo islands form a passage between the Pacific and Indian Ocean, the water flowing between them causes the famous currents in the area. These currents bring in important nutrients on which the marine life depends and it doesn’t take many dives in the area before you realise just how much of an effect they have. Diving in Komodo is always exciting, not just because you’re often flying around under water at exhilarating speeds, but also because of the enormous diversity of life that is created by these currents.

Pygmy Seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti)

Explaining just how diverse and exciting diving in Komodo is very difficult. To make life easier for myself, here is an excerpt from my logbook from the trip: manta rays, sharks, eagle rays, frogfishes, octopuses, turtles, napoleon wrasses, seahorses, ghostpipefishes, giant trevallies,… On top of that reefs are generally very healthy, with huge clouds of reef fish hovering around them. From the boat we’ve seen at least 3 different species of dolphins and a whale. In this crazy fish soup I spent most of my time looking for pygmy seahorses, which greatly confused some of the other divers on board. Why bother with critters 1cm in size if you’ve got manta rays and sharks flying overhead? This is a fair point, but I am trying to get an idea of how many pygmy seahorse are out there, so the manta rays will have to wait… In all fairness, I might have gotten distracted a few times, but who can blame me for that?

Selfie time with the local kids 🙂 (Photo by Jennifer Tambosco)

I am also using these trips to explore other sites in the area for critters. There are over 17000 islands in Indonesia and the best way to explore them is by boat. Some of the places we dived at along the way are absolutely beautiful and still pretty unexplored. One of my favourites was Sangeang, an active complex volcano (it has 2 cones) with 2 small villages on its slopes that specialise in traditional boat building. The dive sites around Sangeang are phenomenal; great muck diving, loads of critters, and mostly unexplored. Another gem (though better known) is the south of Komodo. The waters around Nusa Kode are cold (20°C) but very rich, it had some of the highest concentrations of anemonefishes I’ve seen in Asia. A night dive in the bay made it in my top 3 of best night dives ever, I won’t bore you with details, but if you like weird and wonderful critters it’s an absolute must!

Bontoh village, Sangeang volcano in the background