Trip Report: Cities of Fish: Raja Ampat March 6-17 2011

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Magrone

Contributor
Messages
232
Reaction score
42
Location
KAUAI
# of dives
1000 - 2499
This trip was originally supposed to be one week diving the Banda Islands on a liveaboard and one week divng Ambon. However, one week before our flight, I received an email from our tour agent that our liveaboard had been canceled due to bad weather and engine problems. Needless to say, my girlfriend and I were frustrated and disappointed but also determined to come up with an alternative to save our trip since getting two weeks off together is rare.


Our tour agent suggested a LOB to Raja Ampat that ended up being perfect for dates. It was a bit more than we intended to pay for the trip but decided it was worth it since we have been wanting to dive Raja Ampat for a long time and may not get another chance for a while.

We booked our flights to Sorong through Batavia online using Paypal. Batavia is currently the only Indonesian airlines that I know of that allows foreigners to book directly using the web. Lion Air etc. may look like they allow to pay through their website but they still don’t accept foreign credit cards.

So after an overnight in Manila and another in Jakarta we boarded our Batavia flight (on time!) for the last leg of the journey. The Batavia flight from Jakarta to Sorong was scheduled for one stop in Surabaya and one stop in Makassar. Upon landing in Surabaya, the right wheel on the plane exploded, our plane swerved on the runway and eventually stopped, a long way from the airport terminal. Our Indonesian adventure was now official.

After a long , miserable night with little sleep we eventually boarded a second plane to take us the rest of the way to Sorong. We met Dolphin Mcair, the trip Coordinator and dive guide at the airport and boarded the KM Biddidari in the port of Sorong on March 6. We had to alter the itinerary slightly due to a late arrival, but this had little impact on our trip. No dives were missed, we just started in the North since it was closer to Sorong and saved the south for the last part of the trip.

Despite having a travelers bug, Bali Belly, or whatever you want to call it, Andrea and I were happy that the trip had been salvaged (twice) and we were on a nice boat with a great crew and friendly host to assist our every need.

The KM Bidadari is a mid-range wooden Indonesian Schooner based out of Bali. The interior is very nice with Balinese wood carving accents throughout. The rooms were spacious enough for two, but not for my DSLR camera rig. I kept my camera and all of the accompanied gear up in the saloon area. Luckily there were only two other passengers who had compacts so this wasn’t a problem. In fact these were the only two other passengers on the boat which was a blessing. If there were more, and with camera equipment, I can see this boat being a bit cramped for camera stuff. Which is kind of odd to think about since the boat is 100ft long with 4 levels. We were very happy with the boat overall. The sundeck on top was a very nice place to relax between dives and the saloon area had big couches to recline on during briefings, etc. It was a nice home for two weeks, but to be fair there were some reports of leaking in the cabins when it rained and the generator was a little noisy in our cabin. I slept like a log every night though.

Our first dive was at Sardine Reef in the Dampier Straight. I realized as soon as I descended that all the trouble of getting here was worth it. Stunning, pristine corals everywhere; massive schools of rainbow runners, fusiliers and bait fish that surrounded the bommies ordained in white and pink soft corals; sea whips, seafans, crinoids packed in on top of each other competing for space. If Raja Ampat were compared to a city, it would have to be New York. Each dive site a new neighborhood with different ethnic groups, or species, intermingled in great numbers, with traffic jams of fish at dawn and dusk in regular intervals.


Despite the claims of no sharks in RA I was surprised to see six black and white tip reef sharks almost immediately. Other highlights of our first dive were two mantas, (12ft and 6ft) a Wobbegong shark, four blue spotted stingrays, Big Napolean Wrasse, Giant trevally, huge batfish in small schools and several Barramundi Cod that would dive under bommies when a diver approached. The barramundi sighting would be a regular occurrence on almost every dive and I remember seeing a very large one the size of a small dinner table that would not come out of its hiding place.





On the second dive a huge marble ray the size of a large dinner table swam right through our dive group. It was soon followed by an eagle ray that swooped by as we perused an amazing sloping wall of soft corals and giant sea fans. A group of Juvenille Batfish was found among the millions of glass fish hanging around the lettuce corals. Another Wobbegong shark, a large school of yellow line snapper and a larger school of juvenile barracuda ended our dive after an hour.



I will refrain from boring the reader with descriptions from my dive logs but I wanted to make clear that this was the typical underwater experience we had on our trip; with big credit going to Dolphin, something rare and amazing was found about every five minutes of the dive.


Manta point/Manta Sandy is worth mentioning because this was my most memorable dive to date. While I held my camera straight up, 3 or 4 mantas would take turns circling in to hover over me for a few moments to receive their bubble massage as if they were my customers. Tons of divers on this dive and probably six of them had my same experience. A manta with a white underside took a special liking to Andrea and kept coming back to her over and over. Dolphin counted 12 different mantas in total and after an hour and half they wandered off and we surfaced. The second dive at Manta Point went much like the first only there were 5 or 6 different mantas instead of 12.


I regret skipping one of the most exciting dives of the trip due to my Bali Belly getting the best of me. It was the second time visiting Sardine Reef but after a string of dives that were ended early, followed by vomiting, not to mention a scary moment at 80 feet when I was close to blacking out, I decided to sleep in and let the antibiotics kick in. Andrea reports: “Sharks, sharks, sharks. 3 gray reefs swimming in from the blue, 5 black tips – very nice sized swimming up from the bottom together, 5 white tips, 1 wobbegong hiding under coral. Huge school of bat fish, a school of Spanish Mackerel followed by dog tooth tuna and regular tuna, 4 spotted eagle rays. Gentle to moderate current. Good visibility, 60 ft plus.”

I did not skip anymore dives after that.

Some very exciting macro night dives at the Pearl farm pier followed: decorator crabs, arrow crabs, more wobbegongs, huge crocodilefish, devil scorpionfish, pegassus sea moths, orange octopi, walking sharks, numerous juvenile cuttlefish, false scorpionfish, wasp fish, on and on.


Cape Kri was a beautiful dive both times and the amount of fish in the water was again, unbelievable.

Ahh crap... I can't get the images to work. Here is a link to the photos on facebook:

Login | Facebook
 
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Great set of photos at FB ... thanks! And good report ... we have eleven more months before we go back ... can't wait!
 
must...not...black...out....leaf scorpionfish....must...not...mobular ray...must...mantis shrimp...massive wall of silversides..must not... :) why we go to RA.
 
9 months and counting!! I really have got to stop reading these reviews! They are sending my expectations for the trip higher and higher and higher!!! I swear I'm gonna explode from Great Expectations!

Thanks Shasta for the review. Your time spent writing the review and sharing your brilliant pics is greatly appreciated!
 
Thanks for the trip report & Beautiful photos!!!
May we know how much is the LOB per night?
 
But wait there's more...

We arrived in Wagmab-Farondi in the south on March 13th after a 12 hour voyage from Melissa’s garden. The underwater seascape was altogether different in the south. Large walls with gargantuan gorgonians and barrel sponges reminiscent of Tubbataha without all the sharks. In fact, I don’t think we saw another shark on the rest of the trip. The fish were much less active on our first day in the south at Wedding Cake but the corals made up for it. It was like hovering over a neon forest, only this time I was sober:wink: The night dives were much less interesting here without many macro subjects other than corals and shrimps and the occasional juvenile batfish, but this was not a surprise from previous experience diving walls at night; easily the most boring dives of the trip.

These sites were cool with all the amazing soft corals and HUGE sea fans, but I was expecting a little more fish action. Before I had the chance to write off the south as inferior to the north, we dove at Boo windows and once again I was blown away. Visibility on this dive was 100 ft but the hard rain we experienced all morning had darkened the scene and made it a little difficult for wide angle photos. Huge schools of fish and very interesting topography along with large seafans where pygmy seahorses could be found having sex (damn, wrong lens!) made this one of the best dives of the trip.

Kaleidescope was just about as good, but Nudi Rock was a wide angle photographers dream; My favorite dive of the trip and overall favorite dive sight anywhere. So many schools of fish hovering close to the amazingly HUGE coral formations I couldn’t make up my mind what to frame. If I dove this sight the rest of the trip I would have been happy.

We did our night dive in Farondi Cave which produced much more macro (tons of Nudis) than the previous southern night dives. We finished the trip with the same dive during the day, which proved to be more interesting because of the huge window that you enter through when starting the dive + the huge school of fusiliers that hang motionless in the cave at the end of the dive.

Overall the trip was a great success and I don’t regret shelling out the extra cash for the Raja aAmpat LOB. We did receive a pretty big discount due to our cancellation ($600 per person) and I have to give credit to Enrico at Dive The World for finding us a replacement boat ASAP.

The KM Biddadari crew did a great job of loading our gear and cameras on and off the skiffs and were always very helpful with anything that we needed. Good food was served every meal and even a ceremonial last dinner of the trip was prepared and the captain joined us.

Dolphin deserves a lot of praise for making this trip go so well. He is a great guy, genuine with a good sense of humor, and an EXCELLENT dive guide with 15 years of experience diving Raja Ampat. He also runs trips in Komodo on the Mermaid 2.
Info on trip prices for KM Biddadari are listed on their website: KM Bidadari liveaboard diving and cultural programs index.html

Andrea and I ended up paying $3000 each for the 12 day cruise. A lot of money, but it was the best 10 days of diving I have done so far. It’s hard to imagine a better trip, but I’ll keep trying for it.

Thanks for all the comments.

More pics including the blown wheel on our Batavia flight are here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=1794651740191&id=1056602315&aid=2095588
 
Nice job!

I bet that blown tire mustve been a jolt!
 
Great report Tony, excellent photos as well, there seemed to be a lot of wide angle work to do! (sorry to let the gearhead in me ask you a question : 10-17 Tokina I suppose?)
I wish I could go there someday, if ever there was a land operation on the edge of a nice beach that woudln't cost a leg for a week (maybe 2-3 years far).

Well... that might have been an unpleasant feeling the moment the tyre blew :frown:, I'm not very confident with some Indonesian airlines looking at their global records (Not esp. thinking about Batavia though), Must admit I wasn't very comfortable the plane was shaken with strong monsoon winds in between Ambon and Surabaya :errrr:.

On your side don't forget to give Ambon/Banda a chance before it gets too notorious. :)
 
Thanks Luko,

I would be going to Ambon/Banda this July but I hear the weather is pretty bad that time of year. I think I may end up doing a month in Bali instead. I think you're right. Once the airlines get their act together, Eastern Indonesia will probabbly become a tourist hot spot. Until then, I guess we can be grateful that the wheels still blow up when landing.:)

Oh, and yes, Tokina 10-17. I alternated between this and the 60mm (mostly for night dives). If i owned a decent mid range lens I would have used it on some of the dives, but the vis was so good I was having too much fun shooting wide. First trip with the Tokina so maybe I went a little overboard with corals, but there's not much for WA shooting in Guam.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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