Solomons or Komodo

I'm trying to figure out what to do next summer--either late July or August. I've narrowed it down to either Komodo or the Solomons, both of them by liveaboard. I'm trying to get a better picture of the diving in both. As for Komodo, I know everyone raves about the biodiversity but I've never been quite sure if this is another way of saying that it's all macro diving and no bigger stuff or heavy fish life. For the Solomons, I've read about the pristine coral and the huge schools of fish. I'm wondering are the huge schools still there? What else would I expect to see there? And, if anybody has been to both, where would you go if you had to decide between the two? If anybody can offer any info on either destination, I'd love to hear it.

Fathoms magazine had great story on the Solomons recently. It certainly sounds like a great place to go, but tough to get to.

OBXDIVEGUY:

Fathoms magazine had great story on the Solomons recently. It certainly sounds like a great place to go, but tough to get to.

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Yes, I just read it. Great piece. The Solomons are certainly hard to get to. I was talking to a travel agent figuring I could get there through Fiji which wouldn't be too bad. I was told, don't count on it as Solomon Air changes there flights, often without anouncement, requiring changes in plans. He said I needed to have at least a two day buffer on either end of the trip because of these kinds of problems.

There are direct flights from Brisbane QLD (Australia) to Honiara if that's any help getting to the Solomons. I was there in July and it was fantastic. I didn't do a liveaboard, but stayed on Tulagi, which is about an hours boat ride from Honiara. There is a fantastic mix of WW2 wrecks and reefs to dive on. Very few people go to the Solomons - we were told that their total tourists numbers per year is about 20 000 so the diving is all pristine. I met a couple back in Brisbane who had been on the Bilkini (?Spelling), a liveaboard in the Solomons and they said they felt as though they had been diving in waters where no one else had ever dived.
Mel

We spent a week on a Komodo liveaboard in August 2003, the Mermaid. The boat is operated by the Sea World dive team, spends half the year in Thailand and half in Indonesia. The trip departed from the Tauch Terminal Tulamben resort in Bali. The diving around Komodo was lovely - loads of fish and beautiful corals. Saw everything from sharks to blue ribbon eels. And the stops to see the dragons on Komodo and Rinca islands were fantastic! Water temperature in August was upper 70s and visability was very good.

If you go to the Asia board you can see a post from last week from someone who has recently returned from a trip on the Peter Hughes liveaboard, Komodo Dancer. And another person on the Asia board is planning to do the Mermaid trip in early October.

It's a long journey, especially from the East Coast, and I would recommend spending at least two weeks - one on the liveaboard and one on Bali, which is a wonderful, beautiful island. Happy planning!

((Mistaken double post - isn't there any way to delete these, can you only edit your text??))

Hi,
I've been to Komodo in July with the Komodo Dancer - it was a great trip, really fantastic. Maybe you would like to have a look at the pictures I took there:
http://www.privatvorsorge.at/Fotos/uw/Indonesien_04/Komodo_04/thumb_komodo1.htm
I'd say it's more than a macro destination; as you can see from the images, big fish was more or less "limited" to mantas; we also saw quite a lot maori wrasses, tuna, jacks, but no sharks. There were lots of schooling fish but very small ones no big jack or snapper schools.

If you want to see the big stuff you should go somewhere else, maybe Coral Sea, Palau, PNG... http://members.chello.at/stefan.orosz/uw/Australien_04/thumb_Oz1.htm (Barrier Reef and Coral Sea images)

Don't know about the diving in the Solomons.

Gaby