
In October 2014 we had been living in Singapore for over 18 months. Since a visit to the Dive Show early in our stay we really wanted to dive in Raja Ampat, off the coast of North West Papua. Having met one of the owners of the Dewi Nusantara we also wanted do it with them. However they get booked up pretty quickly, only dive the area at certain times of the year and also the whole trip takes 12-13 days when you include travel on top of the 10 days diving so it took this long for us to get here.
Why Raja Ampat? This is a pretty unique diving area located off the West coast of the 'Bird's Head peninsula' of West Papua in the far East of Indonesia. Raja Ampat means 'four kings' and there are four main islands and hundreds of little ones, rocks and reefs here as well. Much of the area is marine reserve and fish, sharks, rays and turtles are protected. The marine biodiversity is huge with 1000s of species of fish and two thirds of the world's species of hard and soft coral. Many of these are unique to this area. There are a few resorts but to get to see most of the area you have to stay on a liveaboard.
The Dewi Nusantara is a 47m three masted wooden schooner built in Kalimantan, Borneo, in 2008. It has very comfortable cabins and living quarters, a great diving deck, two large 7m tenders, and top technology including twin engines, compressors, water makers, generators etc. The crew are enormously helpful and friendly, we had a very good (new) cook, and cruise director Andrea Duggan looked after all our needs.
Diving conditions vary depending on location. When we were here in October the viz was fair to very good - lots of plankton attracted the mantas and huge quantities of silversides. Currents can be quite strong, particularly on seamounts although you can usually find shelter on the reef. Reefhooks are useful for hanging around and watching those mantas cleaning. Water temperature was around 27 deg C - I was OK in my 0.5mm skin but others had thicker wetsuits.
The video below captures some the great moments of our diving - manta rays, huge clouds of bait fish but is not made as a polished record of our trip.
Check out the other webpages on the left and the photo gallery for more info on this amazing location. The 'About' page also has details of how to get there and a short reading list.