Alor Dive Cruise, Indonesia

Waterlogged Date: 4/14/97

The Adventurer is a 100 foot, wooden hull boat built in 1982, and refitted by Baruna in 1995 as a liveaboard dive boat which will carry 20 passengers. I cruised to Komodo and Flores on the Adventurer last May. Many improvements were made since my previous visit including hot showers on the dive platform, especially welcome after coming back from a dive tired and cold ( with the cold upwellings we found, a ten day cruise will cool you down doing four or five dives a day, so BRING RUBBER). We began in Bali, with a Merpati airlines flight east to Maumere on Flores Island which took off a day late, costing us a day of our ten day cruise. Departing Maumere, we were given the opportunity to do a checkout dive to see that all our gear was working. Since I had been checking out my gear for the past three weeks, I chose to do my checkout in a green Bintang bottle (have a beer, that is). The diving is done from inflatables. A briefing preceding the dive telling us a site was a slope and a wall was one we would hear over and over. Indonesia is known for unpredictable and often strong currents, and this area is no exception; the water interchange in the passes between the islands around Alor creates fierce, swirling currents of up to eight or ten knots.. For the most part we had easily manageable currents by choosing to dive near slack tide or in protected areas. Notable exceptions were once at Shark Freeway at Pura Is. and at Kal's Dream at Alor Is. Here the currents were too strong for photography, and at Kal's Dream too strong for safety. We still wanted to do Kal's Dream and were warned by Joshua, the divemaster, of very strong currents with washing machine and toilet flush effects. He was right. We blew around like leaves in a storm, and finally could only hunker down on the bare rock of the sea mount and wait for a lull. It is best to listen to the voice of experience. When we reached Pura Island, we were in for a real treat. We found anemone beds unlike any I had ever seen before. From a depth of 10 feet to over 100 feet, the bottom was carpeted with all different types of anemones for hundreds of yards. Amazing! The coverage was almost solid from 25 feet to 85 feet deep, with hardly any gaps. Anemone fish of many types; shrimp, and crabs inhabited many of them, but I found it hard to look at just one anemone and its inhabitants. To top it off, the next two dives sites we did at Pura we found the same astounding profusion of anemones again, along with lots of fish, sea snakes, and some friendly Indonesian fishermen free-diving to set their woven fish traps in the shallows. Later we were visited by women from a village offering to sell us some hand-woven and dyed cloth, called Ikat, which was fashioned into women's garments. We could see newly-dyed yarn laid out to dry ashore in the village. We did some excellent afternoon and night dives at a site called "Three Coconuts". Many nudibranchs, lionfish including the small, shy two-spotted species, juvenile Pinnate batfish, blue-ribbon eels, crabs, shrimp, cuttlefish, and much more kept us busy. The wall and slope profile held true here again, with a very silty bottom that required considerable care with hands and feet. Most everything we saw was from the surface to fifty feet. After four days at Alor, it was east to Flores and more diving along the north side. The diving was good, with diverse fish life, and reduced the disappointment of having to leave Alor so soon (now we really yearned for that lost day). And on our seventh day, we visited the dragons of Komodo, but the diving at Komodo is as exciting as the land excursion. At a site called Pillarsteen we found lots of football sea cucumbers at 125', curious and colorful critters I had always wanted to see and photograph. Octopus, clown triggerfish, a couple of large bumphead parrotfish, nudibranchs, toxic sea urchins, and more entertained us on this wall dive (no slope this time). We also had a surge which was like an amusement park ride here on the second dive - up and down, up and down, all the way to 65'. We were spared the airplane ride back to Bali, as the Adventurer had another group to pick up. This meant we would get to do more diving. Can't beat that! And some of the best diving of the trip. Banta Island gave us a dynamite view of a smoking volcano, Gunung Api , and provided us with the prettiest stretch of wall I think I have seen in the last ten years. Sea fans, soft corals, fish aplenty, and an easy current to move us along. It was so good we did a hurried, extra dive of 30 minutes just to see that stretch of wall again. Being a photographer means things happen around you and you sometimes miss them because you have tunnel vision through your viewfinder. I missed the four mantas in formation that swam up to my buddy and posed for his empty camera!! Arrgh! When we cruised east that night we could see a red glow from the top of Mount Api as we passed. Wow! Moyo Island provided us with a view of another volcano and three sea mounts that were just swarming with schools of fish, including lots of whitetip and blacktip reef sharks, fans, big sponges, and tons of small stuff. The air and film just ran out too soon. And so did the trip. I managed 33 dives in nine days. For information on Baruna Adventurer Cruises email baruna@denpasar.wasantara.net.id. Report by Woody Mayhew.

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