Ultimate Indonesia February/March 2009

A Trip Report By Duncan Robins

"The world's most spectacular reefs", "the best tropical critter diving", "a truly extraordinary dive adventure", "the most beautiful thriving and biodiverse coral reefs in the world". To say expectations from the Divequest brochure were high may be an understatement.

The Ultimate Indonesia Divequest adventure was set up to combine the very weird and the very wonderful. The weird being the strange and bewildering array of creatures at Lembeh Strait, the wonderful being the vast selection of amazing reef life of Raja Ampat.

The holiday began for me on 15th February (some others had opted for an extension at the beginning of the trip). We flew from London via Singapore to Manado followed by an hour or so minibus transfer to Lembeh. After a short boat ride and we were at Lembeh Resort.

There were 14 of us in the group plus esteemed underwater photographer/marine biologist Alex Mustard. Everyone was an experienced diver and everyone had underwater photography equipment, a few with good compact camera setups, most with housed DSLRs and also someone shooting video.



Following our arrival at Lembeh Resort there was a brief check-in and briefing then we were taken to our respective bungalows. The members of the group who were on the extension were out diving so it was an opportunity to familiarise ourselves with resort and introduce ourselves properly to each other and settle in for the 3 days.

There were smiles on the faces of the rest of the group when they returned and they were full of enthusiastic banter on the days diving - hopefully we were going to be in for a treat!

The Lembeh Resort was great. It’s totally set up for divers (although if you have the top bungalow you may disagree). The facilities for photography were perhaps the best I’ve seen - a huge camera-room with individual work stations, plenty of power points, several rinse tanks that were refreshed with clean fresh water on a regular basis The bungalows were airy, clean and all the facilities you'd want. There was also a perfectly situated swimming pool overlooking the Lembeh Strait and a great vantage point at sunset. After settling in we had dinner at the restaurant (which was excellent) and a relatively early night after all the travelling, ready for the first days diving



After our dive briefing we made our way from the dive centre to the dive boats (a whole 5 meters). All the dive kit had been transferred to the boat for us, and camera gear was also carefully moved by the crew. Boat trips to the dive sites were very comfortable and ranged from 5 minutes to about 20 minutes depending on the site. Topside, the land around Lembeh Strait was very impressive - a green, tropical, volcanic paradise. Below the surface, not so. The sand is grey/black and there's a fair amount of rubbish and plastic in the water in a couple of areas. However that’s not what you go to see. Once you're under and you've got your eye in a bit it’s a whole new world. There’s the bizarre to the beautiful, the most amazing colourful creatures you could possibly ever dream up, the smallest animals you've ever seen and highly camouflaged ones that may take a couple of minutes to actually spot. In 3 days of diving I saw many types of frogfish, ornate ghostpipefish, flamboyant cuttlefish, many different crabs and shrimps, flying gurnards, a vast array of nudibranchs, stargazers, several different scorpion fish and loads and loads more. The guides at Lembeh are excellent and you get so much more out of the diving by following them as they have years of experience in spotting these creatures and they still have boundless energy and enthusiasm for what they are doing. The highlight for me had to be seeing a mimic octopus. In fact not just one mimic octopus but two. Mating. I’ve never really been into voyeurism in any way but this was quite an amazing sight. There's debate over whether these invertebrates really do mimic subjects. For me there is no doubt. They was a definite resemblance to a very bad photo. I have captured many examples as evidence.

I loved Lembeh, it was a great experience and I saw lots of things I've never seen before. After 3 days diving I was ready to move on and see the reef vistas of Raja Ampat. I guess there's only so much staring at creatures less than the size of your finger some people can handle!

We returned to Manado and caught a flight to Sorong (pronounced 'So Wrong'). A taxi ride to the port and we got our first glimpse of the Seven Seas - our liveaboard vessel for the next 12 nights. The Seven Seas is a stunning 33m traditionally built schooner designed for 16 divers (there were 14 guests and our leaders - Alex Mustard plus Graham Abbott from Diving4Images who joined us for the Raja Ampat leg) plus the crew.



After a safety briefing, introduction to the crew and the various formalities we were off for our 12 day adventure around Raja Ampat.
We actually managed to squeeze a try dive in that day which was nice but the light didn't last long. This was the first proper reef of the trip so far.

Liveaboard accommodation is never going to be enormous but the rooms on the Seven Seas were ample. Facilities on board the Seven Seas were terrific and the crew could not have been friendlier. The food was good and very varied, some days quite western other times we'd have something a little more authentic to Indonesia which was nice. The diving was really well organised, briefings informative and the diving itself was truly magnificent.

I got the impression no 2 trips in the Seven Seas are the same, the itinerary was guided by a combination of weather, guides preference and diver requests. We spent the first day at Kofiau, 5 days around Misool, onto Batanta, up to Waigeo before returning to Sorong. Whilst we travelled a long distance most of this was done during the night to optimise dive time.

The Raja Ampat archipelago is huge and unspoiled - we saw no signs of civilisation for almost the entire trip. In fact the only sign there had been anyone there before us was the total absence of any sharks. I say total, a handful of very shy ones were seen during the trip. We packed in a wide variety of diving at Raja Ampat from an algae patch to Manta diving, from soft coral gardens to huge swim-throughs. The highlight for many was the blue water mangroves at Misool- a unique habitat with great photographic opportunities.

The coral life and diversity was certainly the most impressive I have ever seen. The sea life was incredibly diverse and numerous - pygmy seahorses, sea snakes, eels, giant clams, turtles, barracuda, manta rays, shrimps, crabs, cuttlefish, squid, octopus etc - in fact looking through my reef guide afterwards, I think we covered just about every family of life there is!

The diving was never deep and was relatively straight forward although there was a mild current on a few dives. The water was warm - some people in fact found it more comfortable to dive without a wetsuit.



Graham was an excellent guide, this guy has taken the worlds top underwater photography and film people around this area including the likes of David Doubilet, Howard Hall and Peter Scoones. His eye for the creatures, and his knowledge of them were excellent but to me his most impressive quality was his undying sense of humour and obvious passion for doing what he is doing. Our other dive guide was Stuart - one of the Seven Seas crew. Again his patience and willingness to help in anyway helped make the trip the success it undoubtedly was.

Alex of course was also very helpful and although this wasn't a photography workshop or had any formal teaching he was always available to ask questions of and provide handy hints and tips. The trip was well organised and we got to see the variety of life and habitat we were hoping for - and more.

The coral life in Raja Ampat is stunning and it is pristine, it is thriving, and it is truly extraordinary - I guess those early high expectations were met, and perhaps even surpassed.

Words and images by Duncan Robbins. Alex Mustard is leading a Quest For Diversity to Papua New Guniea in May 2010. Click here for more details.