Dive Review of Wakatobi -- Pelagian in
Indonesia/Sulawesi

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Wakatobi -- Pelagian, Jan, 2012, by John Sommerer, MD, US ( Contributor 15 reports with 7 Helpful votes). Report 6404.
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	A fine ship with a good crew. The remodeled cabins (since Wakatobi acquired Pelagian) are really, really nice. The other two cabins are fine, but not quite so plush. Good bathrooms with rain showers and plenty of hot water. The common areas were very nicely appointed and comfortable. Good a/v equipment and stereo. The A/C had some trouble keeping the rooms and salon cool on the sunniest days. The Pelagian has new engines, and can make 12 kts, though the typical cruising speed was 10-11 kts. This allows them to cover the distance between Wakatobi and Buton Island (and back) comfortably in a 5 day cruise. In fact, the last morning's dives were at Wakatobi sites and they asked us the night before if there were any we wanted to repeat. We repeated Blade, and in a way not feasible from the resort, where divers need to come back to the mooring. The other dive was the site just next to Blade, not the one that many of the guests asked for (perhaps the resort was diving the site that morning). The daily schedule easily allows four dives a day (including a 70 min night dive). Although the whole crew is friendly, you interact mainly with the Cruise Director, the other two dive guides, your tender driver, and the stewards. Food is excellent, with custom-made (2nd) breakfasts, and a choice of 3 entrees (and even those are negotiable if you don't want something on the plan, or you want to mix) at lunch and dinner. Water, fruit juice, milk, coffee and tea are free, beer and soda are cold and reasonably priced, and wine (like most of Indonesia) is very overpriced. The diving was excellent. The day spent at Pasar Wajo on Buton Island was very good muck, almost on a level with Lembeh. The mandarin dive at Magic Pier was so good (and I've been on a lot of them), I may not bother with them any more, unless I'm back here. The majority of the diving was more characteristic of the plush reefs typical of Wakatobi resort. While I am inclined to be positive about the operation, there were a few problems on our trip. A couple of dives were somewhat wasted by doing a wall in very high current. One was a night dive in over two knots for half the dive time. That's a long time to be drifting without an opportunity to hunt for critters. These instances seemed to be a result of changes to the route or anchorage based on an almost pathological desire to avoid any boat motion on the Pelagian. I don't know if one of the other guests was prone to seasickness and requested this, but I'd much rather rock at bit, put on the "patch" and dive the best sites. If you can't stand boat motion -- don't go on a liveaboard. The dive tenders are smallish zodiacs with a driver's console in the front. The dive gear gets stored in rack behind the driver, and four sets of gear get really crushed together. We had some minor equipment problems as a result. For example, one of my releasable weight pockets got released in the rack, and it plunged to the abyss when I inverted to descend for a night dive (my bad for not checking them before entering the water). We had four divers and the guide in our tender, and gearing up was a bit crowded. With the normal compliment of 5 divers plus guide (if the Pelagian were full) it would really be a mosh. Don't know any remedy, because it's clear they can't fit bigger tenders on the top deck where they are stored during transit. Tank fills were always generous (3100+), and the nitrox was reliable (but see below). The other area where I was a bit disappointed was "our" dive guide. He was a very nice man, and wanted to please, but he was just not a very good spotter. The two dives we did with the other guides we saw a lot more critters. I initially expected this not to be a problem as we were led to believe that the guides would rotate (and we confirmed this was the usual procedure on returning to the resort), but in effect we got this guy all the time. The cruise director did all but one dive with the other tender (with only one or two guests -- I guess repeaters get special treatment). The third dive guide was still out of commission from a barotrauma to her middle ear she received two cruises earlier retrieving a dropped camera, and she only made a few dives. While sympathetic to her situation, she had been replaced the cruise before ours, and should have been during ours as well. The situation was awkward, since the injured dive guide and the cruise director are married. The frequent requests for how to improve our dive experience characteristic of Wakatobi were lacking on the Pelagian. Our dive guide asked us once, but it was hard to say, "find more stuff." The cruise director did not ask, perhaps because it was easy to predict what we might answer, and he wasn't prepared to deal with that. Just to clarify, we do not believe that we should be totally dependent on the dive guide to find interesting things, and we found lots on our own. But both the expectations engendered by the dive briefings, and the tally after the dive, in comparison with the other tender, showed that we missed a lot. Finally, "our" dive guide had a lot of trouble with analyzing nitrox (on the Pelagian, the procedure is for the guides to "help" you analyze your gas, i.e. they use the analyzer and show you the readout). He preferred to put the analyzer in the mouthpiece, which I hate, since it's a great way to spread a cold through a whole boat. He was responsive to my request to dismount the first stage and measure directly from the tank. But there were two analyzers on board, one of which was flaky. For some reason, he always brought both analyzers into the tender, and I had to explain that I really didn't think the tank had 39% oxygen. Relatively minor annoyance, repeated 14 times. Despite these problems (or rather, assuming they were specific to my trip , except the tender, and not the general case), if I went to Wakatobi again, I'd spend more time on the Pelagian and less at the resort. Between 4 dives a day vs three, and the inevitable insects ashore, I guess I'm just a liveaboard bigot...
Websites	Wakatobi -- Pelagian
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	501-1000 dives
Where else diving	Indonesia, Polynesia, Micronesia, Galapagos, Costa Rica, Revillagigedos, Caribbean, Maldives, New Zealand, Easter Island
Closest Airport		Getting There
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, cloudy	Seas	currents, no currents
Water Temp	84-86°F / 29-30°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	20-80 Ft/ 6-24 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	?
Enforced diving restrictions	70 minutes max time
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	None	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	Staff very careful with equipment. Camera room was excellent, but would be crowded if there were more than 4-5 guests with cameras.

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Dive Review of Wakatobi -- Pelagian in Indonesia/Sulawesi

Wakatobi -- Pelagian, Jan, 2012,

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 Wakatobi -- Pelagian in
Indonesia/Sulawesi