Indonesia Diving

Banda Islands Scuba Diving

Indonesia’s Banda Islands are historically famed for their spices, but they also possess some excellent scuba diving around the coast line of this tiny five island group.

We got four dives in at the Banda Islands after arriving there from Nusa Laut and before setting out the next day to head for the remote island of Manuk in the heart of the Banda Sea. There is a profusion of dive sites around Banda so this was a quick glimpse. Sorsongi and Banda Ai’s Tenjung Udang (Shrimp Point) were a good start to the day – the former a gentle slope with great viz and beautiful corals, the latter a coral encrusted wall. They provided a fascinating contrast to our third dive at the Lava Flow at the Banda island Gunung Api (not to be confused with Gunung Api, the island of the sea snakes, in the middle of the Banda Sea. Gunung Api means “fire mountain” in Bahasa Indonesia, and as such there are many volcanos across Indo with the same name).

Banda’s Gunung Api is still very much active, with the last eruption as recently as 1988. What’s remarkable about this black, volcanic site where you can see the tranches created by the lava flow – which is a pretty impressive monument in itself to the power of nature – is just how fast the coral have grown back here. You’d think that the lava would have wiped out all chance of life – but there is a flourishing, vast carpet of staghorn coral, plate corals and table corals now growing where the lava once flowed.

Bandanaira Jetty provided a superb environment for a gentle night dive, with frogfish and a cluster of juvenile sweetlips taking refuge amongst the jetty’s pylons. Like Ambon, this was another muck dive par excellence, and another great contrast to the day’s dives.

The Banda Islands Above Water © Chris Mitchell

This looks like something else... © Chris Mitchell

Quite Amazing – A Bottle That’s Been Covered In Coral By Two Plate Corals © Chris Mitchell

Juvenile Sweetlips at Bandaneira Jetty – they move so fast! © Chris Mitchell

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Nusa Laut Scuba Diving – Banda Islands, Indonesia

Lying to the east of Ambon, the island of Nusa Laut possesses some stunning hard coral seascapes – the sheer size and variety of corals here is absolutely stunning

Day 2 of our Banda Sea trip saw us heading from Ambon to Nusa Laut, a small island that’s just to the east of Ambon and en route to the Banda Islands. The reef around Nusa Laut is protected by the locals and the effect of such protection is immediately apparent. It’s hard to imagine a bigger contrast to Day 1’s muck diving in Ambon – where we’d spent our first day grubbing around in murky water over trash-strewn black sand, Nusa Laut was blessed with 30 metre plus visibility creating an incredible deep blue canopy over a jawdropping array of hard corals. (See photos below for a small glimpse of what it really looks like).

Giant Plate Coral, Nusa Laut © Chris Mitchell

Topographically there was a gentle slope down to around 15 metres before a steep dropoff, and the slope was utterly encrusted with every kind of coral hard and soft. It was the huge plate corals – wider than the full length of a diver – and fan corals that really stole the show, but the size of some of the sponge corals – up to a metre across – was also impressive. Apparently the viz is not always so good here, so I feel very lucky we got to see it in these conditions. It’s the sort of dive site that involuntarily makes you say “wow!” when you first jump in – it really is that good. For those who have been to Raja Ampat, Nusa Laut reminded me a little of the lush corals around Misool.

The night dive here was also awesome, as while we had lost the grandeur of the daytime seascape we encountered that rarest – and most dangerous – of creatures, the tiny Blue Ring Octopus.

Blue Ring Octopus on Nusa Laut nightdive © Chris Mitchell

Giant Clam on Nusa Laut nightdive © Chris Mitchell

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Ambon Scuba Diving – The Twilight Zone

Ambon is fast gaining a reputation as an unmissable muck diving destination, with a density of amazing underwater critters to rival Lembeh. The Twilight Zone is the main Ambon dive site that repays repeat visits

Day 1 of our Banda Sea trip on MSY Seahorse saw us getting some easy but deeply rewarding dives in at Ambon’s premier muck site, The Twilight Zone. A standard looking muck site – shallow slope with trash and murky viz – The Twight Zone is unreal – there are so many different, and usually super hard to find, creatures here that it is a serious rival to the quality of muck diving in the Lembeh Strait.

Wonderpus © Chris Mitchell

To prove my point: almost as soon as we hit the water on our very first dive, we encountered a wonderpus within seconds of submerging. It was not particularly bothered by the clutch of excited divers heading towards it, and spent several minutes with us before disappearing into the sand. We did all four dives for the day at The Twilight Zone, and while we didn’t see the wonderpus again, we encountered clown frogfish, Coleman shrimps, stonefish, seahorses, ghost pipefish, demon stingers, leaf fish, mantis shrimp, reptilian eels and tiny cuttlefish – astounding. For photographers, it’s a simultaneous dream and nightmare – a dream because there’s so much to photograph, and a nightmare because there’s never enough time to take a photo of one thing before the guide is banging his tank again on sighting another discovery.

It’s worth having a look at Tony Wu’s excellent multimedia presentation about scuba diving Ambon for a more comprehensive look at the area.

Nudibranch © Chris Mitchell

Frogfish © Chris Mitchell

Clown Frogfish © Chris Mitchell

Honeycomb Moray, Cleaner Shrimp And Cleaner Fish © Chris Mitchell

Leaf Fish © Chris Mitchell

Stonefish © Chris Mitchell

Shrimp © Chris Mitchell

Reptilian Eel © Chris Mitchell

Crab © Chris Mitchell

Cowfish © Chris Mitchell

Cuttlefish © Chris Mitchell

Seahorse © Chris Mitchell

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Diving Gunung Api: Volcano Of The Sea Snakes

In a remote part of Indonesia’s Banda Sea lies the still active volcano Gunung Api, or “Fire Mountain” – and below its lava-encrusted shoreline the volcano is home to hundreds of highly venomous sea snakes that hunt in packs and show little fear of human scuba divers

Sea Snake Coming Right At You © Chris Mitchell

Deep within Indonesia’s 17,000 islands lies Gunung Api, one of the remotest volcanic atolls within the Banda Sea. One hundred and twenty miles away from the nearest landmass, getting there takes several days of solid cruising from a scuba diving liveaboard boat departing from the Banda Islands. (I’ve included Gunung Api’s location on a Google Map below if you’re interested in seeing exactly where it is). For our trip we were on the MSY Seahorse with whom I’d previously explored Raja Ampat. There are only a few months in each year where the Banda Sea is calm enough to be safely crossed. And the reason for all this effort is because below the water the slopes of “Fire Mountain” are home to hundreds, possibly thousands of venomous sea snakes that we were going to go scuba diving with.

Sea Snakes Coming In from Above © Chris Mitchell

Banda Sea Liveaboard Departures
The Banda Sea dive sites are only accessible for a few months a year – see current availability and pricing on Banda Sea liveaboards.

Gunung Api Sea Snake In Mid Water © Chris Mitchell

Two Sea Snakes Swimming Together Over The Reef © Chris Mitchell

Sea Snake In Motion © Chris Mitchell

Given that the banded and olive sea snake species which are found at Gunung Api are poisonous, you may wonder why anyone would willingly want to get in the water with them, especially as the snakes seen here are often a metre or more in length and several centimetres in circumference. The answer is that they are incredibly graceful creatures to watch move through the water, quite beautiful in the fluidity of their motion as they cruise hunting across the reef or head for the surface periodically to breathe before sidewinding back down again to the reef. While sea snakes are poisonous, they are also non-aggressive – although they are very, very curious about scuba divers, as the following photos show. They have no fear about coming very close to investigate.

Sea Snakes Investigating Contents Of Cedric's Boardshorts © Chris Mitchell

Sea Snake On Cedric's Fin © Chris Mitchell

If you look closely, you can see the snake’s forked tongue protruding © Chris Mitchell

Two Snakes In The Blue Over Gunung Api’s Rock And Coral Terrain © Chris Mitchell

Sea Snake Over Gunung Api’s Rocks © Chris Mitchell

Sea Snake In Mid Water © Chris Mitchell

Sea Snakes Over Gunung Api's Corals © Chris Mitchell

Sea Snakes Investigating Their New Scuba Visitors © Chris Mitchell

What is also fascinating about the sea snakes at Gunung Api is that they frequently move in packs together, whereas elsewhere they prefer to operate individually. They have also been seen infiltrating shoals of fish and hunting with them, although I didn’t get to witness this behaviour this time round.

This sea snake group hunting behaviour was completely new to me. The first time I encountered it, I was slightly apart from my group, floating around in 10 metres and scanning the blue around me hoping to get a photo of one of the snakes with a backdrop of the ocean behind it. Several minutes went by and there was not a hint of a snake anywhere to be seen. I was getting a bit bored. I idly looked down to check my camera – and the next thing I knew, there was not one but three sea snakes, each over a metre long, their bodies trailing around me, all staring into the dome of the camera’s housing, as if mesmerised by their own reflections. Did I have the presence of mind to take a photo? No – I did exactly what all my training as a professional scuba diver told me to do and, erm, ran away. Despite knowing they wouldn’t bite, being surrounded by three sea snakes that were extremely close was too much to deal with. I backed off, keeping an eye on them – and they followed me! It took a couple of minutes before they lost interest. However, suitably chastened, I headed back to the reef and now knowing just quite how it felt to be mobbed by snakes, I managed to hold my nerve a bit better when I saw the clusters of snakes pictured below.

The above images are not really the best, for the simple reason the snakes move so fast – it’s really hard work trying to capture them in a split second because they are continually moving and writhing – it’s amazing to watch, and I wish I’d had a video camera because to film these creatures in motion is the only real way to capture their grace.

Sea snakes need to periodically head to the surface in order to breathe, and we would often see them heading up and coming back down again, as well as resting on the surface. On my very last dive on Gunung Api, two snakes followed me from 5 metres until I surfaced myself – when I ducked my head back under the water, they were still circling around my fins. I had to gently wave my fins at them to make them back off before I got onto the boat for fear I might inadvertently whack them otherwise. I wish I’d got a photo of that moment too. It was an amazing end to a fantastic day at Gunung Api – I only wished we could have stayed longer, but given its remote and utterly exposed location, the boat captain wanted to make sail before the bad weather that had been following us across the Banda Sea caught up with us. Thanks to MSY Seahorse for letting me go on this amazing trip to Gunung Api, and I’m looking forward to hopefully heading back out there with Dive Damai in November – and next time, I’m taking a video camera.

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Got The Shot: Bali Wrecks And Muck Diving – Julian Cohen

Julian Cohen got some invaluable underwater photography tuition from photo pro Mike Veitch while in Bali. Here he describes how he got the shot for five of his best Bali pictures

This trip was to be a liveaboard on Citra Pelangi, run by Crystal Divers in Bali. At the time the professional dive photographer and writer Mike Veitch was the photo pro on the boat and I wanted to dive with him. Unfortunately the boat had a mechanical problem that scuppered the trip, however Minni Vangsgaard, the manager of Crystal Divers, reorganized the whole thing and each day Mike met me at my hotel and we went on day trips to Bali’s premier dive spots.

Crystal Bay for Mola Mola, (it took six dives to find one); Manta Point was forty five minutes of freezing cold staring into an empty sea as I am incredibly unlucky when it comes to seeing big things; Liberty wreck at Tulamben was magnificent; Seraya Reef at Tulamben was brilliant muck diving with harlequin shrimps and ornate ghost pipe fish. Mike was an excellent teacher and I learnt a great deal about camera technique and composition.

My rig for this trip was a Nikon D200 in a Subal housing with two Ikelite D-125 strobes.

1/40 at f5 ISO 100 Nikon 10.5mm – All Images Sizes on Flickr

The Liberty wreck at Tulamben is a magnificent dive site. Settled just off a stony beach the wreck lies in crystal clear water ranging from about 12m at the bow to 25m at the stern. This is one of what looks like the mast structures, which is totally encrusted in corals. It is just incredibly colourful. This wreck really is a must see.

1/125 at f22 ISO 100 Nikon 105mm – All Images Sizes on Flickr

I love these shrimp. In fact I love shrimp in general as they come in the most dazzling array of shapes, sizes and colours. The Harlequin was always the holy grail for me (now it is the bumble bee shrimp) as it is just the oddest looking animal, with its pincers that are so large and misshapen it is hard to tell what they actually are. There is a metal dome shaped structure on this site and the shrimp are in there in only 8m of water. Very easy to shoot and I spent a lot of time playing with angles and lighting.

1/50 at f6.3 ISO 100 Nikon 10.5mm – All Images Sizes on Flickr

This shot was one that Mike asked me to shoot. He did it as it is a test of how to balance the ambient light from the blue of the sea with correctly exposing the super structure of the wreck. There is no magic setting for this sort of thing. I use spot exposure to get the colour of the blue and then under expose that by 2/3rds of stop, sometimes a full stop. Always shoot then check the colour on your screen to see if it’s what you are looking for. Then adjust the strobes to give you the exposure for the close object. Every strobe is different and after a while you will know what is likely to be the right setting for your set up. I find that the strobe power I use is normally lower rather than higher. I can’t remember the last time I shot on full, but then I am lucky to be in Asia with clear seas and beautiful weather.

1/200 at f6.3 ISO 100 Nikon 105mm – All Images Sizes on Flickr

Shot at Seraya this was just a quick grab shot as I saw the fish opening its mouth to show an impressive array of teeth. I shot a lot on shallow depth of field on this trip and that has blurred the background nicely in this shot.

1/125 at f16 ISO 100 Nikon 105mm – All Images Sizes on Flickr

This was my first yawning shot. I had seen the behaviour a few times before but never been in a position to shoot it. I saw the fish yawning out of the corner of my eye and rushed over to grab a shot. As I settled in front he did it again. I have since found that this is often the case. Here’s a tip for you: with frogfish they will often yawn two or three times, with a short space in between. The last yawn will be a full on “monster from alien” one with the jaws extending to an unbelievable extent. I have been reliably informed that after a frogfish has been walking and settles into one spot, it will yawn. I have since tried this and it certainly worked for me, I hope it works for you!

See Julian’s complete Bali portfolio on Flickr

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Banda Islands Scuba Diving

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Nusa Laut Scuba Diving – Banda Islands, Indonesia

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Ambon Scuba Diving – The Twilight Zone

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Diving Gunung Api: Volcano Of The Sea Snakes

Banda Sea Dive Sites

Banda Sea Scuba Diving

Got The Shot: Bali Wrecks And Muck Diving – Julian Cohen

My Recent Dive Trips

My Less Recent Dive Trips

Back In The Day Bragging Rights Dive Trips