Wicked Diving Komodo - Our first trip! (Part 2)

Wicked Diving - Komodo Diving season has begun - Part 2

Hot sticky rice and mango to warm us upback on the Jaya as we head down South to the island of Rinja to moor up for the night dive.
Wainulu is a shallow reef ideal for diving at night, sheltered and no current, and the potential for mandarin fish! So red filters ready on the torches, off to search for these pretty dragonets,along with all other kinds of nudibranchs, crustaceans and night creatures! No luck with the elusive dancers, but plenty of shrimps, a little frogfish and loads of scorpionfish.

Early morning of the 5th and we’re up bright and early to head to land and explore Rinja for some dragons. The Komodo Dragons are a type of monitor lizard endemic to this area, and they’re well worth getting up early for!

Successful in our search, we made our way back to the Komodo Liveaboard and back north into the park to dive Batu Balong. A big pinnacle covered in gorgeous corals, with a plethora of cool things hanging out, this is one of our favourite sites in the area.

Next up, Karang Makassar, a funky drift dive in search of animals both big and small!

2 mantas, an eagle ray, and a very cool thorny stingray - not bad for 50 minutes underwater! Gili Lawa Darat next for a night dive, little scorpionfish and nudibranchs we’ve never seen before.

Onto the last day of the trip, but not so sad for Jason and Moonho, as they’re joining us on the next 3 day 3 night liveaboard on the Jaya!

2 more dives in the North of the park today to finish up, Castle Rock and Crystal Bumi, 2 beautiful pinnacle dive sites with plenty of fish action. Giant trevallies galore, grey reef sharks cruising beneath us, and so many fish swirling all round, these dive sites can’t always be dived due to the strong currents, but when we can get to them they’re a spectacular sight.

Back to land for a few hours down time before we collect the guests for the next trip, and back out to the Komodo National Park we go!

Wicked Diving, Komodo

Wicked's Komodo Diving Season has Begun!

KD01 – 3^rd-6^th 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 3^rd 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!

Wicked Diving, Komodo