Indonesia Scuba Diving
including Komodo, Bunaken, Bali, Kalimantan, Sangalaki, Sulawesi, Irian Jaya, and Alor
An Undercurrent Insider Report on Indonesia Diving
The Consumer Newsletter for Serious Divers Since 1975
Overview of Indonesia
Indonesia is the hottest dive destination on the planet, thanks to superlative diving. Good airfares and inexpensive food and hotels make it reachable for many Americans who can afford at least two weeks' time. Bali's culture is fantastic (especially go inland) and the diving is good (but even better elsewhere) and inexpensive. Balibased live-aboards regularly visit the excellent diving near and around Komodo Island and stage land visits with the famed Komodo dragons. They are finding new destinations. Perhaps no more diverse marine life exists anywhere than that around the Raja Ampat islands, offshore Irian Jaya, which shares the same landmass as Papua New Guinea.
Indonesia Seasonal Dive Planner
The thousands of Indonesian islands are spread out over
mainly an equatorial tropical climate, but the diving season is as complex as
everything else about this diverse amalgam of a country. Avoid the wet monsoon
season, generally December through the middle of March. The dry monsoon of southeast
winds curtails the diving in Flores during July and August. The Moluccas, however,
have their wet monsoons the reverse of everyone else, in July and August, and
diving should be avoided then. Depending on your specific destination, April-May
and September are the best all-round months to dive Indonesia.
Indonesia Feature Articles and Reader Reports
Attention!
You must be an Undercurrent Online Member to access MOST links in this section.
However
older articles can be accessed by the public --
these links have a button you can click to see the article.
|
|
For Undercurrent Online Members Only |
Instant Reader Reports - the most recent ones available online |
Land Based
A Different Experience at Wakatobi Resort, 8/07
A Second Opinion of Kungkungan Bay Resort, 6/07
New Lodges around Lembeh 03/07
Kungkungan Bay Resort, North Sulawesi, Indonesia, 03/07
Infection Warning, 2/07
Lembeh Resort, North Sulawesi: the best critter diving in the world?, 9/04
North Sulawesi, Indonesia diving by land and sea, 8/04
Sipadan Dive Operators Evicted (see sidebar, p.4), 7/04
Raja Ampat Islands, 9/03
The Dragons (see sidebar, p. 3), 2/03
|
Liveaboards
Indonesian Liveaboard Update, 10/07
The Pelagian, Wakatobi, Indonesia, 8/07
Other Raja Ampat Liveaboards, 7/07
SMY Ondina, Raja Ampat, West Papua, 7/07
What Happened to Larry Smith's Liveaboard?, 6/07
North Sulawesi Aggressor, Sulawesi Sea, Indonesia, 2/07
Reports on a new Indonesian live-aboard destination, 8/05
Pelagian itinerary change angers divers, 8/05
Komodo Liveaboards Indonesia can it get any better? (Kararu, Sea Safaris 3 and Komodo Dancer), 2/03 |
| Reader Reports - from the Travelin' Divers' Chapbooks |
| Reader Reports - from the Travelin' Divers' Chapbooks |
Editor's Book Picks for Indonesia
including Komodo, Bunaken, Bali, Kalimantan, Sangalaki, Sulawesi, Irian Jaya, and Alor
The books below are my favorites about diving in this part of the
world All books are available at a significant discount from Amazon.com;
just follow the links. -- BD
Reef
Fish Identification: Tropical Pacific: by Gerald Allen, Rodger Steene, Paul Humann, & Ned DeLoach. At last, here's a comprehensive fish ID guide covering the reefs of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The generous 500-page text, displaying 2,500 underwater photographs of 2,000 species, identifies the myriad fishes that inhabit the warm tropical seas between Thailand and Tahiti. The concise text accompanying each species portrait includes the fish's common, scientific and family names, size, description, visually distinctive features, preferred habitat, typical behavior, depth range, and geographical distribution. This is an essential book for every diver traveling westward. 6x9 inches. Order
through us, get Amazon.com's best price and a good hunk of the profit will be donated to the Coral Reef Alliance.
If you're headed south out of San Diego, Fishes of the Tropical Eastern Pacific
by Gerald R. Allen, D. Ross Robertson, is the fish guide
you need. With 324 photo-packed pages covering 680 species of sharks and sailfish,
wrasses and razorfish, pipefish and pearlfish, this is the ultimate ID book for
the Baja, Costa Rica, the Galapagos, and the Sea of Cortez. Sponsored by the Smithsonian
Institute Drs. Gerald Allen and Ross Robertson took years to produce this definitive
volume that describes and comments on the remarkable behavior of these critters.
Hardbound, $85.
Coral Reef Animals of the Indo-Pacific
by Terrence M. Gosliner, David W. Behrens, Gary C. Williams.
At last -- a just-published, complete guide to help you identify
the uncountable variety of weird critters you'll see on any Indo-Pacific dive,
complete with full-color photo of 1,100 species. About Coral Reef Animals of the
Indo-Pacific, Chris Newbert says, "This invaluable new book makes identification
easy and enjoyable." There are scores of flatworms, nudibranchs galore, bumblebee
shrimp, painted crayfish, pompom crabs, side-gilled sea slugs, and endless corals.
Marine biologists Terry Gosliner, David Behrens, and Gary Williams cover the reefs
from the Solomons to Sipadan, from the Maldives to Maui, from Palau to Papua New
Guinea. They provide good notes to help you find and identify each critter. Indispensable
for any Indo-Pacific trip. Paperback,
8x110, 314 pages, $45.00.
Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide
by Gerald R. Allen, Roger Steene. I was trying to pack
light for a change. Surely the Solomon Sea would have good identification books
aboard. Not so; the only book on the boat belonged to a fellow passenger. It was
one that I had not seen before, the Indo-Pacific Coral Reef Field Guide,
by two of the best fish guys around, Gerry Allen and Roger Steene. The problem
was this fellow passenger kept it in a plastic baggie most of the trip and I had
to beg to see it. Great book, good traveling size, and it covers everything from
fish, shells, marine plants, mammals, corals, and invertebrates to sea birds and
more. Now I've got my own, and it won't do you any good to beg me to borrow it.
This is one of two books that I will not travel to the Pacific without. Good for
travel to the Red Sea, East Africa, Seychelles, Mauritius, Maldives, Andaman Sea,
Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Australia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and Hawaii,
it has 1,800 color illustrations in a 6x8 1/2 paperback format with 378 pages.
$39.95.
You might find some other books of interest in our Editor's
Book Picks section.
|