DIVELOG JUNE 406

previous Sea Safari Cruise to Raja Ampat, so it was great to catch up. With all the guests arriving on the same flight, we quickly transferred to the Cheng Ho , as we had to get underway, as over the next nine days we would be travelling over 600 nautical miles. Alor has some spectacular reef and muck diving, so we were a little disappointed not to be diving. However, Mark explained that the first leg was the longest, requiring us to depart after lunch so we could reach the first dive site the following morning. He added that we would be travelling each night, and often during the day to cover the vast distance, and that we would only be doing three dives a day. Before we got underway, we did have a special encounter at Alor with a dugong. This male dugong is called Mawar and he is quite a local celebrity, as he seeks out boats and people for company. Unfortunately, he is a little over-friendly, so you are no longer allowed to snorkel with him. We headed out in two small boats and within minutes he joined us. He is a big animal, almost 3m long, and with no fear at all, coming within touching distance many times. I lowered my camera over the side and managed to get a few photos of this amazing encounter. And while it would have been great to get into the water with Mawar, we could see it was wise not to, as he was very frisky, even attempting to hump the boats! After a spectacular lunch, the meals on Sea Safari Cruises are always a great mix of Asian dishes, we got underway for the first crossing. The next morning, we arrived at Reong Island for our checkout dive. This sloping wall was typical of the southern Banda Sea, pretty hard corals in the shallows and lovely sponges, soft corals, sea whips and gorgonians on the

Cheng Ho liveaboard.

slope. There was a good variety of reef fish to be seen and a constant parade of larger pelagic fish like trevally and mackerel. We even came across a “smoking” barrel sponge, that was releasing sperm in a dense cloud. While we didn’t see anything really spectacular, the water was warm and clear and completely devoid of rubbish. Moving again, we did two exploratory dives at Tanjung Tutan. Both sites we explored had fabulous corals and a good variety of reef and pelagic fish. With the crew informing us we weren’t in official hammerhead territory yet, we went with the macro lens to shoot the wonderful reef fishes. We photographed a good variety of anemonefish, angelfish, butterflyfish, dartfish, wrasse and tobies. We were very impressed to see a good number of elegant dottybacks, one of the prettiest little fish found in this area.

Helen with barrel sponge and featherstars.

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DIVE LOG Australasia #406 - June ‘24