DIVE SITES

CORAL REEFS
Maumere also offers the opportunity to explore great marine life, around 40 different dive sites in the Marine Garden of the Bay of Maumere. Dive into the crystal clear water with normal visibility of 60 - 150 yard and the right temperature of 26 - 28°Celcius, where you will see more species of fish than anywhere else and exciting marine life.

If you are interested in small rare critters, Maumere is still well worth a visit, there is a real muck dive site (because it is known for a lot of endemic species. However the scuba diving in this part of Flores has suffered from a large tsunami wave that hit the northern coast in 1992 and devastated one of the major dive areas around Maumere. I regret to say, that there is also some damage from dynamite fishing on the north coast of Flores. We heard several explosions while diving and also saw the sad results - craters of destroyed reefs!

We did a 2-week live aboard trip on the Komodo plus in Nusa Tenggara, diving around the Komodo islands, Flores and Alor and also did a few dives on the northern coast of Flores which I liked a lot.

DIVING
Sambolan kecil: This island lies in the western part of Flores, close to Labuan Bajo. It offers diving on a slope, then a flat sandy area with sand eels and a stationary group of barracudas, and an underwater mound at about 25 to 30 meter. Just behind the mound we encountered a huge group of bumphead parrotfish (over 20 animals) and schooling batfish. A nice dive. Dive sites here and in the north of Komodo can be reached by day trip from Labuan Bajo or on a livea board trip.

House reefs (Maumere Bay): From reports by several divers I conclude, that the house reefs of Sea World and Dive Happy are very interesting places for muck diving. They told me about finding rare critters like the mimic octopus, ghost pipefishes and frogfishes. Unfortunately I haven't dived there myself and I couldn't find more information about these dive sites anywhere.

Wai Terang Wreck: Close to Wodong to the east of Maumere you will find the wreck of a Japanese World War II freighter lying on its side from a depth of 25 m up to 12 m and about 100m from the beach. It is a nice wreck, though you can't dive inside very well. Since the grey sand here is very fine it is better to dive in small groups and get a grip on your buoyancy. Nicely covered with lots of soft corals and lionfishes everywhere.

Pangah Batang is about 2 hours from Maumere and about an hour from Wodong and can also be reached by liveaboard. We did 2 dives here and saw an eagle ray and sharks on both dives. There is an underwater ridge around 12 to 30 meter with beautiful gorgonian fans, very large and impressive. Many of them are of the species Muricella, a gorgonian known to be the habitat of the pygmy seahorse. I searched a few of them, but the current was quite fierce so I gave up.

Tanjung Gedang: It is only accessible by liveaboard. We did two dives here, one going towards Alor, and on our request, one more coming back. This is a great dive site, we saw eagle rays as well as several sharks on both dives. A huge grouper - must have been nearly 2 m in length - swam lazily just below us for a long time and dogtooth tunas and rainbow runners accompanied us. On the flat reef top I found a velvet snail and other nudibranchs such as Pteraelidia ianthina (blue dragon)and Chromodoris kunei.

Atoll Pasir Sari and Marayajang: We did only a few dives here, because the corals were at some places totally covered with algae and funnel weed. Visibility was quite bad and we heard explosions from dynamite fish bombs on both dives. We didn't feel like staying around longer, diving in Komodo promised to be much better!

EAST OF FLORES

While going east towards Alor we passed the islands of Adonara, Solor and Lembata (Lomblen) and did a few dives there. Lomblen island (Lembata): A steep slope with lots of black corals and large sponges. We did a night dive at the sea mound, but I didn't find anything special.

Batang island: We dived at this place on our way to Alor, it is only accessible by liveaboard. The dive site might be interesting if you are willing to go below 50 meter. We went to 46 m and just swept over a jagged drop-off, taking glimpses of what lay beneath us. We had a nice drift dive past a forest of long, white whip corals, all bent nearly to the ground by the strong current. On the reef flat there were nice table corals, some with a diameter of over 3 meter and untouched! As a nice surprise two eagle rays were swooping over the reef and we followed them for over 10 minutes before they turned away.

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