Trip Report-Ambon Indonesia 07

[Gill Envy]

Trip Report-Ambon Indonesia 07

Myself, my wife and our friend Andy spent 2 1/2 weeks diving with Maluku divers in Ambon Indonesia back in March of this year (07) and I’m finally getting around to putting up a report about this awesome trip.

Mario and Ika run the place and do a very nice job. The area is safe now. The period of sectarian violence has long past but tourists still stay away, so there is only one dive operation and virtually no other tourist facilities… no cattle boats here!

The people are very pleasant and helpful. The accommodations range from minimalist to decent but by no means 5 star luxury. That said, we’ve found that the more remote the place and more simple the accommodations, the better the diving… Ambon was no exception: beautiful reefs, slow economy, not that many amenities…it’s the kind of trade off we were glad to make.

The diving consists of gently sloping reefs and some nice arches, Chimneys and swim throughs and craggy steep drop offs. In general we found the diving to be spectacular, some of the best we’ve ever done. This is not, however, the place for wreck lovers. There is only one scuttled boat in the bay, it’s sizable and has some potential but as far as we could tell there is only one in the area.

The swift current that helped make the reefs so lush did pose challenges at times but we gradually got used to it. We did resort to carefully selecting patches of common coralline algea as finger holds in order to rest from the current without damaging the reef.

Diving with rebreathers we had the time to gradually make our way against the current out and down along the outcroppings and hang for long periods observing the massive schools of fish and occasional pelagics that like to hang out in the convergence zones. I can’t imagine what our air consumption would have been had we been on OC fighting that current all the way. Instead of short, rushed dives, as we used to do on OC, we were able to stay down for upwards of two hours per dive, spending as long as we wanted in our favorite locations. Shark sightings were made on nearly every dive!

Pulau Tiga (three islands) was by far our favorite place for diving. It’s a bit of a trek from the dive center but well worth it. There are even some lush hard coral reefs still in full glory with giant heads of healthy brain corrals. There are a mix of soft and hard corals and lots of inverts. The most common fish is the blue trigger, a small trigger that schools in the thousands in this area.

Muck diving in the bay is both spectacular and depressing. Plastic is everywhere, but little critters galore. Flamboyant cuttle fish, Devil's finger, various bat fish, lots of different kinds of frog fish, leafy scorpion fish, Rock fish and on and on. Some say it rivals Lembeh straight but I have not been there yet so I can’t concur.

we did not make it out to the Banda islands, but got to see lots of stunning pictures from there when a group returned from a trip. the hard coral looks more extensive, Banda is more remote, which appears to mean even more fish and healtheir reefs. We are hoping to do a trip to Banda in the spring of 08 by livaboard.

In general, the diving in Ambon was more spectacular than the diving we’ve done in Fiji and rivals much of the diving I’ve done in the red sea. It seemed that the spells of hot water had not taken the heavy toll on the corals in Ambon as it has in fiji. Over fishing and pollution seem to be having some effect but the area still offers some world class diving.

We think of trips like this more as expeditions than vacations with all the gear lugging and extensive preparation. We tend to put on our travelers caps and “eat with the romans”. We made it clear early on that we preferred traditional local food rather than insisting on some uninspired rendition of what they think is “American” and we were pleasantly surprised. The local food is simple but very tasty... and they know how to cook it up right! We ate hardly any fish while there, a relatively new change for us. We ate mostly tropical fruits, veggies and chicken and laid off the fish to ease the growing pressures on the reefs. We’ve begun to take the attitude that you can’t simultaneously complain about the lack of fish on the reef and then insist on having them served up for dinner every night… we didn't feel bad about not supporting the fishermen, we added just as many green backs to the economy, we just spent them differently.

All in all, the trip was awesome.

The planning was extensive, given that they had never had rebreather divers there and we had to supply nearly all of our own consumables. Maria and Ika were very helpful in finding a source of O2 for us and supplying bail out bottles. They were also very helpful when one of us had an electronics malfunction and had to resort to OC, going out of their way to provide us with the extra gear we needed.

If you love lush reefs with lots of bio-diversity, you'll love Ambon...and it's very reasonably priced and diving there by rebreather we were able to clock some 55 hours of solid bottom time. Maluku divers and Ambon gets three thumbs up from us!

_________________
Gill Envy

...because we weren't born with gills!

[Gill Envy]

I've created a much more slimmed down, user friendly, version of this article, i'm wondering if a mod can swap it out for me?
thanks,
george

[John Rawlings]

I've created a much more slimmed down, user friendly, version of this article, i'm wondering if a mod can swap it out for me?
thanks,
george

You can do it yourself by opening your first post, clicking on edit, deleting the contents of the old post, and pasting the new parts in.

If you'd rather not do that, send me the "new version" by PM and I'll swap it out for you.

- John

[Gill Envy]

Thanks John, I do believe that the edit button dissappeared after a few days of writing the article. i'll drop you a line with the article in a few days.
george

[John Rawlings]

The "swap" has been accomplished. Please see the "new" article above.

- John

[Joshua Smith]

Wow! Sounds like an amazing trip! Were you on your Megs? Got any pictures?

[LCF]

Sounds like a wonderful adventure. Your descriptions of the food have my mouth watering . . . When we were in Indonesia, I tried to eat nothing but the Indonesian offerings on the menus. The food was wonderful!

I'd like to do a trip like you describe, to a rather out-of-the-way place rather than a large, very Western resort. I think it sounds like a much richer and more authentic experience.

[Gill Envy]

Wow! Sounds like an amazing trip! Were you on your Megs? Got any pictures?

we were diving our evolutions for this trip. i had a new chip in my camera cause some filles to go screwey and finally got them uncorrupted. I have to wade through the two thousand photos again and for some faves...i'll post them soon.

[Ken G]

Thanks for the great report. I look forward to seeing some photos of your trip

[thelawgoddess]

nice tr - sounds like a great trip. i wanna see photos, too!

[Tom Nic]

Great Report!

Waitin' for the photos like everyone else... although I can tell you personal experience it's LOTS of work wading through them and getting them uploaded...

[Gill Envy]

What is the best way to upload images? maybe my account is not enabled? sorry if i'm being thick but I don't see an obvious way to upload.

g[/img]

[Joshua Smith]

Erg- yeah, the images. OK, first, you gotta host 'em offsite- I'm a fan of
imagecave, but there are dozens of other places. They, you gotta grab the url for the image, paste it here, highlight it with the "right click and drag" and then click on the "Img" tag in the upper right of the box your post appears in when you're writing it. It should look like this before you hit "submit":


[img]http:www.mycoolpics.com/image23[/img]


You can also type the [img]and[/img] stuff manually, but make sure there aren't any spaces between the brackets and the url.

[thelawgoddess]

if you use flickr it will give you code that you can use on other websites to link the photo. (click on "all sizes" and pick what size you want to display, then copy the html code to paste into your thread ... or copy the URL to use IMG tags.)

[Gill Envy]

funny you should say flickr, I've just started working with it...what an amazing free system! I've got my meg mods going on it already and just finished culling the Ambon photos. I should be just days away from getting a bunch up from the trip. i'll post the link once I figure out all that.
g

if you use flickr it will give you code that you can use on other websites to link the photo. (click on "all sizes" and pick what size you want to display, then copy the html code to paste into your thread ... or copy the URL to use IMG tags.)

[thelawgoddess]

flilckr's not perfect, but it's pretty useful. i pay for the "pro" account - at $24.95/year it is a bargain for anything these days!

[Gill Envy]

I have finally sorted through all the photos. you can see them here:www.flickr.com/photos/11439506@N07/sets/72157601900242914/

Enjoy!

I've never been diving anywhere where there were so many places with near 100% coverage...maybe I just need to stick to diving the south pacific!

[Curt McNamee]

Great pictures George!!!!