Dive Review of Triton Bay Divers in
Indonesia/Triton Bay

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Triton Bay Divers: "Triton Bay Divers Remote, But Worth the Effort to Get There", Mar, 2017, by David E Reubush, VA, US ( Top Contributor 66 reports with 33 Helpful votes). Report 9520 has 3 Helpful votes.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Triton Bay Divers is a relatively new (2 years old), small (6 cabins) dive resort in Triton Bay. My dive buddy and I got off the Dewi Nusantara at the end of its trip to Triton Bay and transferred to Triton Bay Divers by boat. The resort occupies a beautiful location on the shores of Triton Bay with a white sand beach and towering palm trees. Facing the shore from the water the dining room/bar/lounge is on the left followed by 4 cabins, the dive center, the last 2 guest cabins, and the owners cabin. Jimmy, one of the owners, was in residence while we were there. At this point the resort is so new that it is still a work-in-progress. Jimmy has plans to add nitrox, solar power, and a host of other additions in the future as funds become available. My buddy and I ended up occupying the last empty cabin when we arrived as Graham Abbott and Shannon Conway were already there with a group of 8 other photographers. The resort owns 2, relatively small dive boats and rented a third (a third, resort owned boat is under construction) while we were there so that there were 4 divers and a guide on each boat. Additionally, Graham and Shannon rotated through the 3 boats so that, when one of them was on our boat we usually ended up with the guide to ourselves. The resort's 3 guides; Andi, Rein, and Ben; were very adept at finding the kind of little stuff that I love. The normal schedule is breakfast at 7, first dive at 8 (with a nominal time limit of 70 minutes, but we normally saw longer), a surface interval on a beach near the dive site with snacks, a second dive, return to the resort for lunch, and an afternoon dive between 3 and 4, with dinner at about 7:30 depending on whether there was a night dive and how many went on the night dive. The weather was similar to what we saw on the Dewi, typically warm, sunny days with clouds building in the afternoon followed by rain into the evening/night. The visibility was also similar, with lots of particulates in the water. Most dives saw little to no current, but we did have one dive where a slight current resulted in increased visibility which dropped significantly when the current dropped off near the end of the dive. We also had one dive where we surfaced into a driving rainstorm which resulted in rough seas, but other than that most of the seas were pretty flat. We saw lots of pygmy seahorses, hairy shrimp, dwarf and pygmy cuttlefish, various pipefish, and numerous nudibranchs etc. While the visibility was similar to that we had when we were on the Dewi I was much happier with the diving. We did one dive at "flasher beach," a location about 30 to 40 minutes from the resort with an abundance of flasher wrasse. This was my first encounter with flasher wrasse and I found them to be as frustrating to photograph as pygmy seahorses. There were an abundance of them, but trying to time the photograph with when one happened to "flash" was extremely difficult. I got a couple of reasonable pictures, but none that I would classify as great. At Christmas Rock we found about a dozen dwarf cuttlefish, among other things. At Bo's Rainbow I followed a pair of mating cuttlefish around until I finally got a good shot. On our last afternoon we did the house reef right off the resort. It was so good that I wondered why we had not done it before. We found several pipefish that I had never seen before, a diamond filefish (According to the Allen/Steene/Humann/DeLoach reference it is very rare.), a flamboyant cuttlefish, some other cuttlefish, a big moray, and a translucent worm with small black spots that I have never seen before and could not find in any of my references and a host of other interesting stuff. My dive buddy also found a place there with flasher wrasse and got a couple of good shots. The resort took one boat a day, when requested, to the fishing platforms where the whale sharks are found. Since my buddy and I had done the whale sharks from the Dewi and it was a long boat ride we did not elect to do this dive, although I will say TBD divers were allowed to dive with the whale sharks while the Dewi was only allowed to snorkel. We found the food at the resort to be very good, especially considering the remoteness of the location. You order breakfast (eggs, pancakes, fried noodles, fried rice, etc.) from a menu the night before. Most mornings there was so much food that I could not finish it. Lunch was typically a salad, a fish dish, and a chicken dish, all served family style. Dinner was similar. On a couple of occasions we also had venison as an extra dish at dinner. Dinner finished off with a homemade dessert (most were excellent). Our favorite was strawberry ice-cream with nutmeg fruit. None of us were familiar with the fruit of the nutmeg. While the seed is ground up to make the spice the fruit itself is quite good, and we all enjoyed a number of nutmeg fruit drinks and desserts while we were there. Overall, I was very happy with my time at the resort, but would be remiss if I did not mention a few of the glitches which resulted from the newness/remoteness of the location. The first night we were there they had a problem with the generator which ended up frying my strobe battery charger (and, from what I heard a few others). If you go, I would suggest taking a surge protector. As things turned out I had 2 fully charged (Ikelite 161) strobe batteries for a single strobe. These batteries lasted me almost 4 days of diving, at which point I found that you can get reasonably good macro pictures using a Sola video light with increased ISO, lower numerical f-stop, and slower shutter speeds on the camera. Relying on a generator, where the fuel has to be brought in all the way from Kaimana, results in them normally turning off the generator at night. Since the resort was full they did leave it on while we were there, but the generator did not put out enough power to drive air conditioners, so the only cooling in the cabins is a ceiling fan. On days when it did not rain before dark the cabins got rather warm and there were no screens on the front door or window. While we did sleep under a mosquito net the fact that there is endemic malaria in the area kept us from opening either from dusk into the night. We suggested to Jimmy that he get screens for at least the window and he seemed amenable to that suggestion. The only other glitch we experienced seemed to be only a characteristic of our cabin 6. Every couple of days the shower drain would stop up and the shower water would flood the rest of the bathroom. This was more an annoyance than anything serious. I look forward to returning.
Websites	Triton Bay Divers
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	Australia, Belize, Bimini, Bonaire, Caymans, Curacao, Fiji, Galapagos, Indonesia (Wakatobi, Raja Ampat, Komodo, Lembeh, Bali, Banda Sea), Philippines, Red Sea, Solomon Islands, Southern Bahamas, St. Thomas, Turks & Caicos
Closest Airport	Kaimana	Getting There	Get off a live-aboard in Triton Bay or fly to Jakarta, fly to Ambon, fly to Kaimana, transfer to the harbor, get on a Triton Bay Divers boat and it's a 1.5 to 2 hour boat ride
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, rainy	Seas	calm, no currents
Water Temp	82-83°F / 28-28°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	20-70 Ft/ 6-21 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	Dive responsibly.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	no
What I Saw
Sharks	1 or 2	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	1 or 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics	N/A
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	2 large rinse tanks on-shore for cameras. There was plenty of space so that you could just leave your camera in the rinse tank if you didn't need to work on it. No camera room, but there were tables both inside and outside the rooms which could be used. Cameras were handled carefully when being transferred to and from the boats, and on the boats, but no rinse tanks on the boats.

Report currently has 3 Helpful votes

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Dive Review of Triton Bay Divers in Indonesia/Triton Bay

Triton Bay Divers: "Triton Bay Divers Remote, But Worth the Effort to Get There", Mar, 2017,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Dive Review of Triton Bay Divers in
Indonesia/Triton Bay