Indonesia Scuba Diving

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. Bali-based live-aboards regularly visit the excellent diving near and around Komodo Island and stage land visits with the famed Komodo dragons. The Lembeh Straits are renowned for muck diving. 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. Check with the State Department before travel, but nearly all diving is far from terrorist targets.

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.

Featured Links
The Seven Seas Dive Liveaboard Accommodating 16 guests in 8 AC state rooms with en-suite bathrooms. Featuring spacious dive deck, 3 dive tenders, shaded lounging areas and quality food and wines.	Dive Paradise Indonesia Diving the Mother Lode of Marine Tourism : Eastern Indonesia with competent crew aboard mv TemuKira, RajaAmpat Explorer, PutriPapua, Tarata, NusaTara	Kasawari Lembeh Resort A boutique lifestyle dive resort for those looking for luxuary and personalized, safe and hassel-free diving.	Odyssea Divers @ Cocotinos A small resort located 25 mins from Manado Airport on a beach overlooking Bunaken Marine Park. 16 Villas & 2 Suites, pool, WIFI. EAN32 & Technical available.
Reef & Rainforest, Dive & Adventure Travel A full service dive travel agency located in California. We specialize in exotic destinations (South Pacific, Indian Ocean, Africa, South & Central America).	Island Dreams Travel Island Dreams specializes in dive travel to Indonesia. We've dived it many times ourselves, and stand ready to customize your Indonesia scuba diving adventure.	Lembeh Resort / Lembeh Divers Critter Diver's Paradise. 14 villas; lush tropical gardens; pool. Guides boast 60,000+ Lembeh dives; custom dive planning; huge camera room.	Dive Advice & Amazing Adventures Travel Dominick Macan & Kirsten Treais. Passion & Professionalism. Customized dive & adventure travel to the finest destinations worldwide.

Indonesia Feature Articles and Reader Reports

Attention! You must be an Undercurrent Online Member to access MOST links in this section. However some articles can be accessed by the public -- these links have a button you can click to see the article.

For Undercurrent Online Members and some available for Public

Dive Articles - 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 Available For Public Raja Ampat Islands, 9/03 The Dragons (see sidebar, p. 3), 2/03 Wakatobi in the Tukang Besis, 10/97 Lombok , 3/97 Derawan Dive Resort, 6/96 Kungkungan Bay, 6/96 Cehili returns , 2/95

Dive Articles - Liveaboards Raja Ampat Liveaboard Update;, 6/08 Cheng Ho, Raja Ampat, Indonesia;, 6/08 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 Available For Public Komodo Live Aboards: can it get any better? [View as html], (Kararu, Sea Safaris 3 and Komodo Dancer) , 2/03 Chasing the Dragons of Komodo Aboard the Sea Contacts I from Bali to Komodo, 9/99 Pindito , 5/97 Baruna Explorer , 8/96 Serenade Sulawesi, 4/95

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.