420 Dive Log Australasia OCTOBER 2026

Oceanic Manta Ray

THE DIVING Our first dive at Mioskon was to a site I had visited before. This site has a sloping reef and sandy plain, and I was very pleased to see that the corals and fish population looked healthy and there was no rubbish on the corals. I was very surprised that the first thing I saw was a group of three Moluccan Bluespotted Maskrays. On my previous trips I was very disappointed at not seeing any stingrays, this was a positive change. On the sand was a large colony of spotted garden eels. Drifting slowly on the reef wall and going no deeper than 20m, I photographed soft corals, gorgonians and whip corals that had swarms of coral snappers around them. This looked just like the Raja Ampat I know and loved. We also saw two crocodilefish, a large variety of angelfish, batfish, fusiliers, rockcods, pufferfish, sweetlips, trevally, parrotfish, wrasse, tuskfish and several sea anemones with anemonefish. We even found a tasselled wobbegong resting under a ledge, one of the signature species of Raja Ampat. The next dive was just as good at Friwen Wall, another site I had visited before. We started the dive on a lovely sloping reef wall, again packed with pretty corals and lots of reef and pelagic fishes. It was great to see a blacktip reef shark in the shallows, as on my previous trips reef sharks were hardly seen. Then we got to the familiar section of the site that I remembered well, a wall from the surface to 20m that is overhung by tree branches. This wall is riddled with cracks and crevices, and covered in sponges, gorgonians, soft corals and sea whips. The fish life was wonderful, mostly small fish, but still a huge variety including a rarely seen comet. There were also lots of invertebrates on show, including sea stars, shrimps, crabs and nudibranchs. Once again, I was happy to see no rubbish and healthy corals.

The afternoon dive was at a new site for me, Batu Lima. An inshore site, the visibility was not as good, only 10m (we generally had 15m to 30m viz), however this sloping reef was again overloaded with corals and fishes. With a macro lens on the camera, I concentrated on the smaller critters, and fortunately our guide Cliff had a good eye for these. On the sand he pointed out a shortpouch pygmy pipehorse and several nudibranchs, while on the reef I photographed dottybacks, blennies, tobies, clown anemonefish and a flashing fileshell. Early the next morning we were off to one of Raja Ampat’s most famous dive sites, Blue Magic. A large bommie rising from 35m to 10m, this site attracts schools of pelagic fish, reef sharks and even oceanic manta rays. Being a popular site the resort had to book a slot to dive Blue Magic; our allocated time was 7am. I had dived Blue Magic before, and I can say it was just as magic. A current was sweeping over the bommie, bringing nutrients to the lovely corals and allowing the fish to swarm. We saw schools of barracuda, trevally, snappers, fusiliers and batfish, plus whitetip and blacktip reef sharks, a tasselled wobbegong and abundant reef fish. Unfortunately, like my previous visits, no oceanic manta ray.

Spotted Moray getting a clean

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DIVE LOG Australasia #420 October ‘26

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