Diving East Indonesia | Alor to Ambon | Banda Sea Liveaboard

Indonesia has over 17,000 islands. The most isolated of these islands can be found in the Bandar Sea, where there are a chain of volcanoes and remote reef systems which make up the ring of fire. Join me today in part one as I sail 650 nautical miles and scuba dive in some of our planet's most seldom visited places. The trip starts here in the province of East Nusa Tenggara. That's it, touchdown in Alor. Give me a French hug. And this is my old friend Alex. We have known each other for many years. This was our first trip together in 2014 in Komodo and now we start another epic voyage. So here I am in Alor and this is the start of the ring of fire journey. All the way from Alor to Ambon. We're going to go through some really super remote islands in the middle of the Bandar Sea and hopefully we're going to see schooling hammerheads. All right, here we go. I didn't realize we're going to be movie stars. Hello, Pak. Selamat pagi. Selamat pagi. Selamat pagi, Pak. Selamat pagi. Selamat pagi. Selamat pagi. Selamat pagi. Saya Raquel. Saya Amir. Saya Amir. Mowi. So this boat is called teman, which means friend in Indonesia. Here we have a chill out area. Look at this. Some of the rooms are down here. Have a look. Wow, this is a really nice boat. Here we have some more rooms. And now it's time to set up the camera, set up the gear. So I'm going to get all this ready and I'm going to show you. So a few people have been asking me what camera I'm using. And well, it's this one. It's the Sony RX100 Mark 7 and it lives inside this. This is a naughty cam housing. I have new lights. I now have this. This is a wide angle lens, wet lens. And this just simply screws on to here. And together with the lights, now this setup is complete. So I have all my own equipment. Now it's time to get it ready. This is the only time we'll be getting our equipment ready on the boat. It's going to be set up and sitting there, waiting for diving. This is day one of a 13 day scuba diving adventure on board this wonderful wooden sailing boat. Starting here in Aloha. A voyage across the Banda Sea, the Ring of Fire. This is going to be a good trip. It's important so that people can just realize a bit how the site looks like. Have a look around what's going on. Then drift. Okay. We drift along the wall with lots of cracks and crevices and stuff. So if you have a small torch light, that's always good to bring it. Over there, you've got other island. This is Panta Island. So the North is there. All right, let's go diving. Banda Sea, Ring of Fire. Spirits are high on the boat in anticipation of what is to come. Underwater in Aloha is wonderful. A beautiful reef bursting with color. Gardens of hard and soft corals bloom in these nutrient rich waters. But look closer and you will find this is a macro paradise. There are many different animals to see here in Aloha and you can even find the frogfish. One of the most interesting things to see here are these handmade fishing baskets called bubu. They are used to trap fish that cannot find the entry point. A very sustainable fishing method indeed. This just looks amazing to me. I definitely don't want to go diving in that, but the fact that all this water is just rushing through means that these waters are so rich in nutrients, all brought in from the deep ocean. The Indian Ocean over there or the Flores Sea behind that way. And this is Pura Island. And on the deeper part, sometimes, we cannot call it a cleaning station, but sometimes treasure sharks have been seen around. So they're coming from the deep at the end of the sloppy reef and sometimes they're coming back up. We get some reports that some cold water is coming into the strait today. So I've got good hope. And if we're lucky, of course, I'd like to spot one. OK, so this island on the back is Pura. This is the huge volcanic island right in the middle of the Pantar Strait. Current is quite strong, so we dive it on slack tide. OK, so we want to dive it at the end of the rising and get the start of the falling. The best dive sites here in Alor. Are you excited? Yeah, I am. I'm really excited. Yes. We are on the hunt for the thresher shark and the water is very cold, which is a good sign. As we reach the cape of the island, Alec spots something rising from the cold murky waters below. A thresher shark. These sharks are unique because of their very long and powerful tail. They use this to stun fish. We have one more thing to do here in Alor and this time we have to visit the land because deep in the hills there are tribal people. This is the Abui tribe and this is their village, Takpala, home to 14 different families. We are very lucky to see them performing the Lego Lego dance. This dance is performed in a circle around the sacred posse stone at the centre of the village. OK, so that's it. We're saying goodbye to Alor and the next stop is going to be Wetar. Tomorrow morning we wake up in Wetar. So good morning. Behind me is the island of Wetar and there's not really a lot going on on this island. I can't see any villages. There's no phone signal here. It is absolutely wonderful. Sun has just risen over these beautiful islands and the fact that there's no people there means that there's probably a lot of fish. So we just crossed the strait in between Alor and Wetar, which is one of the places where there's lots of volume of water. But there's not so much exploration of this area. All right, now it's time for the most important meal of the day, breakfast. OK, so we're going to dive Pulau Riong on the north coast of Wetar Island. Hopefully it's going to be good. So remote here. The island of Riong has some spectacular gardens of whip corals. But we are looking for big schools of fish and this place does not disappoint. Back on the boat, two of the guests decided to go to the island and I flew my drone above. But little did they know the waves were much bigger than they looked from the boat. So two people went to the shore on a kayak and now they can't get off because the waves are too big. However, our rescue mission didn't go according to plan. You made it! We nearly got took out by again by the wave. Now you can relax. A rescue mission gone wrong. Our next dive site is another island, Pulau Nyata. This site is very interesting because there have been sightings of a very rare shark, one that I have never seen before. Hopefully we get lucky today. Along the reef are huge gorgonian sea fans and massive barrel sponges. We also found this beautiful swim through with very colourful corals and pipe sponges. This big boy is a very mean looking dog tooth tuna. But suddenly coming over the top of the reef, we see the shark we're looking for. This is a very rare silver tip shark. They are very curious and sometimes get a little too close for comfort. Amazing dive site. Oh man, silver tips everywhere. I don't think I've ever seen so many silver tips at the same time. This is Nyata Island. We drop the anchor and head over to the little island of Nyata. It's awesome. Private beach. Wow, well this place is just amazing. Absolute powdery white sand. Only us here on this super secluded private beach. All the different seas. Oh really? Oh, they're all just washed here? Yeah. Wow. Mother nature. Yeah. Mother nature like spreading. There's a flip-flop. Oh yeah, yeah, just that. What kind of plants that one from? So, Raquel, Raquel, what do you think? So we stay, we live here, right? I live here. I live here, I got my phone, I got my phone. All right, all right. I live here. Yeah. Next year we'll be here. See you tomorrow, Raquel. Well, it's been a great day scuba diving here in Pulau Nyata and we're going to say goodbye to this beautiful island and tomorrow morning we'll be saying hello to another island in the middle of the Banda Sea. Life really slows down when you're on a trip like this at the mercy of the ocean. It's a great time to kick back, chill out and watch the sky burn red on the horizon and we're very lucky to see this huge pod of dolphins. Okay, so we're in Nusleur, Nusleur, which is part of the Dama Archipelago and here you have Nusleur, which is an island but it's nearly unaccessible. You cannot reach it with a speedboat because it's an atoll actually and in the south of Dama, you've got Terbong Utara and Terbong Selatan and those ones are good as well. Everything is wool full of fish. Let's get ready to dive. Nusleur is our gateway to the Banda Sea. Everything starts to look a little bit different. The corals, the species of fish. We also disturb the stingray who glides into the abyss and this is what the Banda Sea is famous for. Big scores of hunters like these jacks. It's Raquel's birthday today and this is what to expect when it's your birthday on a conjo trip. Literally my birthday now. We are heading to Terbong Utara. So the island on the back, this is still Nusleur here and then we go, there's an island in the south of Dama which is really good. Huge drop off. Really, really good diving again. This is another beautiful island here in the Banda Sea and we're going to go diving just off the coast of this one. Two islands, Terbong Utara and Terbong Selatan. No ferries, nothing coming to this place. We are in the middle of nowhere right now. I think it would be awesome. You ready? One thing I love about these trips is that when we see an island with a nice beach, we can just stop and explore. There is no feeling like setting foot on a remote island in the middle of nowhere. The middle of the Banda Sea on one of the most remote little islands I've ever been on. It's incredible. Five years ago I was here and there was actually a sunken boat here and here is some of the remnants of it. Today has been absolutely incredible. We've dived in probably some of the most remote places here in Indonesia. It's really, really, really healthy reefs, healthy coral and tomorrow we're going to arrive in a place called Pulau Tiong. It's a volcano. I'm sticking out of the water and it's actually on the horizon right now. The moon has just risen over the top of it. It just looks so imposing. So it's another volcanic islet lost in the middle of nowhere, let's say. So this behind me, this is Pulau Tiong and it's an active volcano. The smell of sulfur is just billowing from this volcano. We're going to dive somewhere in this sort of cave that this crater is creating. Unfortunately for this dive the visibility was not so good but the coral is wonderful and some of the species are like nothing I have ever seen before. When the visibility is bad it's time to look closer in the reef and you will be surprised at what you might find. Earlier we spotted a little village on this island and we decided to go check it out. I wonder how many foreigners have ever been to this place? Wow this is amazing. We're on this tiny little island called Pulau Tiong What's your name? Toby. So we're on this really, really remote island here in the Banda Sea. There's a village over here. So every two weeks a ferry visits here and the local people here they're trading the nutmeg and cloves and coconuts and some fish for different items that come. And there's a gen set here but no phone signal. No phone signal, right? No, no phone signal. I don't really know where we're going right now. It's somewhere up here. It's just a funny little walk, right? Cool place though. Not many people coming here, I can tell you that. So the people here, they came to this island. They know when they arrived, this group of people who live here now. And they found a well in the jungle. And the legend is that the hobbit people, the small people who inhabited Indonesia before, actually lived here before and they built the well. And then those hobbit people, they found the water and then they didn't have to do anything because it came out from the land. Yeah. So that's more or less their belief, you know, like the mythology of their tribe. They made another village in Seram. So like some people from here migrate to Seram. At five years old, they send their kids to Seram. They have a village, which is the second village of Mesa, where, you know, they have their people and the family and they can take care of the kids and they can go to the school. Wow, that was a real experience, that was. And just learning a lot in this little village. Sun has gone down now. It's time to go back to the boat. But really, really nice experience that was. And people are so lovely here. Village is really clean and just lovely place. Back on the boat, we chart our course for the next leg of this incredible journey across the Banda Sea. So please join me for part two, where we will be visiting more remote reefs and witnessing underwater spectacles straight out of a Planet Earth documentary. So please don't forget to subscribe and get notified. We will be exploring the Banda Archipelago. And of course, we finally find the elusive hammerhead sharks.