Sorry to hear about your short trip to Southern Komodo, skipping Cannibal Rock & hearing the site was bombed out (this is the casualty of the site being closed for 2.5 years. I saw the same in Tulamben, the local wiped out Bumphead parrotfish & Brown marble grouper and lots of coral ruins in Sangalaki, Kakaban & Maratua too. Really sad situation. I’m hoping now Indonesia is open, those fish bombing would be less & less often as the local would get income from tourism). At least you dove in Manta Alley!
On 22 July we met Mermaid 1 in Moyo. They were on the way back to Bali, while we were on our way to Komodo. I spoke to Celso (he was the cruise director when I was on Mermaid 1 back in 2014) & some of the DMs then. They gave us a good tip about diving with Whalesharks under a bagan in Teluk Saleh, which we did on our way back to Bali on 3 August. Did you do that?
Hmm I don't think we went to Horseshoe Bay at all, did not go Torpedo either. No dives to see the whale sharks either. We had some boat trouble with the engines and unlucky currents, our first day was completely wasted. We were supposed to be at Moyo on the morning of day 2 and do 3 dives, but had to skip that entirely because of how slow the boat moved overnight. Was told normally it moves at 7-9 knots but we were moving at 2 knots, they thought something was wrong with the engine and went to go check, then said it was fine and it was just currents being unusually strong in pushing against us. Apparently it has never happened before and indeed I did not think this was a risk when I booked this boat... Then on the way back one of the engines which normally turns at 1500 rpm was only able to do 1200 rpm, so we were slow but managed to make it back on time. Our last dive was at Angel Reef in Moyo which ironically was meant to be our first/check dive.
Manta Alley was great, but I had superb manta interactions on all 3 dives and would have been happy with just 1 dive there. I didn't mind repeating for the second dive but by the third I was definitely itching to see another site. I think I will have to do a return trip to Komodo south during the proper high season, was just a bit bummed that we only saw 1 site there this time. A lot of the shorter trips that only go to the north/central areas were much cheaper and wanting a fast boat that would spend two days in the south was one of the reasons that tipped us towards the mermaid.