Dive Review of Grand Komodo -- Raja Ampat Explorer in
Indonesia/Raja Ampat

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Grand Komodo -- Raja Ampat Explorer, May, 2010, by Mel Cundiff, CO, US ( 1 report). Report 5660.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	MV Raja Ampat Explorer, Raja Ampat, Indonesia May - June, 2010 On May 24, 2010, nine of us who have shared multiple diving trips to the western Pacific embarked on a twelve-day trip to Raja Ampat aboard the flagship of the Grand Komodo Fleet, the “MV Raja Ampat Explorer,” (www.komodoalordive.com/aboutus.htm). Almost all of us have been diving in Raja Ampat previously and have been on three other Komodo boats. This was the most comfortable of the lot, having a length of 109 feet, a beam of 24.4 feet and a crew of 11. If there has been one “stand out” from our Komodo trips, it has been the boat crew, consisting of only Indonesian natives with an infectious desire to make our trip as successful and comfortable as possible. For instance, as we came back to our cabins after our night dives, there were glasses and ice awaiting us for a celebratory toast of Scotch before going to the mess for dinner. While only a few of the crew could speak English, we never had a communication problem! All aspects of our boat accommodations including food, diving and diversions were totally professional and attended to. Reno Kirtya, the fleet owner, had graciously arranged to have Weka, our dive master, and Agi, our cook, on board for us. This was our fourth trip with these two, and four of the other crew members had been with us on at least one previous trip. I have bragged about the food on these boats for years and Agi is the best! Breakfasts were mostly American style, with lunches and dinners mostly Asian style with lots of fish, shrimp and chicken. There were always ample seconds, and there were creative between-dive snacks. There were four standard dives a day, always including a night dive, and several of us got in 38 dives on the trip. We had three dive masters and all dives were done from two hard-bodied zodiacs. With only nine divers on a boat equipped for 14, we had a lot of room. The dives were only minutes from the mother ship, so the two zodiacs with three dive masters could easily handle a full boat of 14 divers. After a dive the crew stowed our gear, and with two dive deck showers we were clean and dry and seated in the mess hall quickly. Our rooms had en suite showers, but they were seldom used. The camera table and rinse tanks were adequate, and forward on the main deck was ample room for battery charging with numerous 110 and 220 outlets. The monitor in the mess was used to view our video and still images, and there were DVD movies available. There was a good selection of ID books to identify the critters we were seeing. Trying to describe the diversity of organisms in an eastern Indonesian marine environment to a naïve diver is ludicrous at best. Even veteran divers to this area are constantly seeing new species of fish they haven’t previously identified. The diversity of organisms is just plain overwhelming, thus providing reasons for divers to return. For instance, in some of the worst dive sites in Raja Ampat the species diversity can be 5-10 times greater than in the best of the dive sites in the Caribbean. I have outlined some of the prominent species of the area on previous write-ups and will refrain from repeating myself here. As I log my dives I highlight any species that I haven’t recognized seeing on previous trips, and there were 25 new species I saw on this trip, about half of which were nudibranchs. I saw many more than this – these are just the ones I recognized as new at the time. Among these there were two stand-outs. One was a 22-inch long, very dark-red hexabranch I saw on a night dive. There were a number of smaller ones of toned-down reds-to-earthen colors, but this was full bodied and robust. One guide book indicates that they have been seen to 20 inches long in the Red Sea, so this was obviously a world-class sized nudibranch. Secondly, I had heard about a walking octopus prior to this trip but had never seen one; but on a night dive, as if performing on a stage, with a red-to-brown, peanut-shaped body about 2 inches long, one came bipedaling towards me on two of its tentacles projecting downward a couple of inches toward the substrate with an upright stance like a person walking. The other tentacles were not visible. Before I could get anyone’s attention, it found a hole and quickly disappeared. On what I thought was good authority, I had heard that the most diverse reefs were in the southern part, so we spent the first six days diving around Misool before heading where we had dived before in northern Raja Ampat. We all agreed that the northern islands had the greater diversity of organisms. However, one dive near Misool had about 8-10 different hues of some of the most beautiful broccoli corals I have seen anywhere – Fiji included. Pygmy sea horses (multiple species), walking (Epaulette) and carpet (Wobbegong) sharks were seen on many of our dives, and the world-class giant clams were common in these northern islands. The very largest of these clams reached a length of 68 inches, and their robust central girth was almost circular in cross section. There were a half dozen others we saw that were 60 inches in length. These dimensions exceed those found in any guidebooks and using a few estimates (e.g., such as a 68-inch clam approximates a sphere of about 40 inches in diameter; CaCO3 having a density of 2.7; and the shell constituting about 1/4 of the total body weight of the clam) would bring the weight of these largest of clams to about 1730 lbs., significantly above that of the largest Colossal squid which weighed in at 1091 lbs. and is considered to be the largest invertebrate on record. I think there is a good chance that this record can be challenged. While in the south, the toadstool-shaped islands like those of Palau were common – there were a couple that stood on a narrow, slender stalk of rock that supported the above-water islet from 40-50 feet down. One could swim around the narrow base and look upward at the umbrella-shaped island above with a diameter 3-4 times greater than its supporting rocky stalk. Surely the most memorable dive to most of the members of our group was the second manta dive near Kree. We spent 60 minutes at 60 feet watching four mantas continuously circling two raised outcrops with lots of cleaners providing services for them. The wing spans ranged from 13-17 feet, and by the end of our session their passes were within touching distance of us. They were still there when we left. Instead of the typical angelfish cleaners, these cleaners were butterflyfish and wrasses. Our bookings for these trips have been arranged by Nancy Gimblin of Great Destinations out of Sacramento (www.skindiver.com/). She has traveled and dived extensively in Indonesia since 1967, long before it became a popular dive destination. Mel Cundiff – Broomfield, CO – 8/04/2010 Cundiff@Colorado.EDU
Websites	Grand Komodo -- Raja Ampat Explorer
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	Most of the best coral reefs in the world.
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny	Seas	calm
Water Temp	85-89°F / 29-32°C	Wetsuit Thickness
Water Visibility	15-100 Ft/ 5-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	[Unspecified]
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	no
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	Squadrons
Dolphins	Schools	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	[None]

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Dive Review of Grand Komodo -- Raja Ampat Explorer in Indonesia/Raja Ampat

Grand Komodo -- Raja Ampat Explorer, May, 2010,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Grand Komodo -- Raja Ampat Explorer in
Indonesia/Raja Ampat