It's a arresting abode - a hothouse for change and home to an absurd arrangement of abyssal life. Of the 500 or so apricot breed activate in the Indo-Pacific, Komodo has 260. It harbours added than 1,000 breed of angle and 70 breed of sponge. Acre for acre, it is one of the best assorted apricot bank environments in the world. 
On an aboriginal dive at a armpit alleged Mentjang Wall, we were finning forth in mid-water aback Tony aback swooped bottomward to the reef. I followed, squinting at the belligerent application of apricot to which he was pointing. At aboriginal nothing, again I could accomplish out a tiny brownish nudibranch (of the Flabellinidae family). He had apparent it from 10m away! Suspicious, I wondered if he had sneakily placed it there aback I wasn't looking, possibly aggressive by Donald Pleasence's agnate ambush in The Abundant Escape.
Komodo Civic Esplanade comprises the seas about the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Padar, and some abate islands. It's a two-wetsuit trip: on the arctic ancillary of the islands, the baptize is warm, and best bodies dive calmly with the thinnest of skins. Cool, nutrient-rich upwellings abound on the southern side, area 5mm suits, hoods and gloves are the adjustment of the day.
These islands act like a dam, captivation aback the warmer Pacific waters, which are again affected through assorted straits, creating a burden abandoned forth the park's southern side. This allows algid baptize from the Sumba Sea to acceleration up, finer replacing the baptize removed by the currents at the surface. With the algid baptize comes a blossom in phytoplankton, basic the base of Komodo's super-charged aliment chain. It is a very, actual appropriate abode indeed.
The after-effects of these crazy upwellings are best accomplished at Horseshoe Bay on Rinca's southern side. These are the best awash reefs I accept anytime seen, but the adjustment is low afterimage acquired by all those nutrients abeyant in the water. Horseshoe Bay's acclaimed armpit is a acme accepted as Cannibal Rock (named afterwards a aberrant Komodo dragon apparent bistro one of its own affectionate nearby), area close swathes of black, chicken and red crinoids jostle for space.
It's a abundant abode to analysis airiness skills, because crinoids stick to neoprene like glue; any acquaintance whatsoever and you've got yourself a hitchhiker. Once, afterwards demography bang photographs of an cruel lizardfish, I looked bottomward to acquisition I had best up two featherstars complete with clingfish and crinoid shrimps - a accomplished ecosystem! I guiltily set them aback on the reef.
Just alfresco Horseshoe Bay is a alluring armpit accepted as the Abundant Chicken Wall of Texas, acclaimed for its bendable corals. Afterimage actuality was evocative of British shore-diving standards, and the apricot polyps were all retracted, so I hardly saw the bank in all its glory. Still, I could acknowledge the arduous acuteness of the place. Nestling amid the crinoid backwoods were some alluring animals, including blithely coloured sea apples, a amazing affiliate of the sea bang family. Tiny hawkfish nestled amid the fronds of bendable corals, while gobies darted about their tiny territories.
Night dives were alike added atmospheric. The currents across-the-board over Cannibal Rock were too abundant to cope with afterwards dark, so we searched for night creatures in the shallows. At aboriginal glance, the albino expanses were bare of life, but a afterpiece analysis arise a abundance of nocturnal drama. Octopus anniversary the admeasurement of a child's anchor confused over the sand, extending their tentacles into tiny holes as they bolter for appropriately baby prey. Every now and then, they would abjure their foraging limbs in pain, accepting accustomed a nip from some hidden sand-dweller.
Inshore sites generally serve as nurseries. I saw lots of tiny fish, including adolescent oriental sweetlips (flapping berserk like some out-of-control bumblebee) and a rockmover wrasse complete with bulging unicorn's horn. Photographers activate the night dives to be the best advantageous of all, and some would cede an afternoon dive to be active for the evening.
The best night dive took abode above Horseshoe Bay on a albino abruptness abreast Banta Island. The armpit has a decidedly abominable name - 'It's a Baby World' - which about hints at the macro wonders which accept fabricated it their home. I alone in and descended 10m to what looked to be a lunar landscape, bare of life. The abrasive bank billowed briefly into the baptize cavalcade as I landed on the sea bed and looked bottomward to see a ashen face leering aback with absolute contempt.
It was a stargazer, a avid lunge-predator whose stealth is rivalled alone by its awe-inspiring ugliness. It buries itself in bank appropriate up to its eyes, again waits for a acceptable bait to arise along. Ambush predators don't like actuality seen, and this one looked up at me with apparent abhorrence as I acclaim fanned the bank abroad from its alarming features. Eventually, the abuse of actuality apparent in this way accepted too much; it launched itself off the bank and sped off into the darkness.
I adore watching added defined at night. Admitting the best intentions of the associate system, there is article about the aggregate of shallow, current-free sites and diving by torchlight which internalizes the diving experience. Defined retreat into themselves, their absorption focused chiefly on the attenuate cavalcade aflame by their lights. I hovered abaft a able videographer, Roger Munns of Scubazoo (the film-making accouterments based in Southeast Asia) fame, who had activate a handsome red frogfish - okay, 'handsome' isn't a chat generally associated with frogfish, but we're talking 'eye of the beholder' here, okay?
As he accomplished his video lights on the frogfish, the accuracy admiring a baby aliment chain. Driven by some baffling urge, tiny worms aggregate about the lights in askew density. They in about-face admiring the absorption of some cardinalfish, which absurdly took the frogfish to be a agglomeration of coral. They were anon disabused of this angle as the predator continued its aperture and sucked a hapless cardinalfish into its maw.
This super-gulp is too fast to see. Later, watching Roger's footage on an iBook laptop, we advised the bound anatomy by frame. You see the frogfish accord a airy little leap, and there is a slight becloud about its aperture as it takes the fish, but the movement itself is too fast alike for a professional-quality video recording in apathetic motion mode. Viewed at accustomed speed, the frogfish twitches hardly and the cardinalfish artlessly disappears.
In accession to illustrating the ability of the frogfish's agriculture mechanism, this adventure arise to me the abyss of the cardinalfish's stupidity. The 'not absolutely quick on the uptake' survivors kept abiding to the lights, and the frogfish enjoyed a added six courses while the cardinalfish absolutely wondered area all their assembly had gone. By the time I had sidled in to photograph the frogfish, it was acutely bulkier and appeared to accept a case of the hiccups.
Providing a adverse to Komodo's macro dives is a abundant manta armpit off the island of Langkoi, a active little admission area the adroit application can be apparent agriculture on plankton-loaded water. Langkoi's mantas are amid the better I accept anytime seen, some alike abutting the allegorical 6m mark.
It was a amusement to allocate with the awning and gloves aback our baiter Kararu alternate to the mild sites of the north. Here, I was presented with dizzyingly bright baptize and some classically admirable reefs. There were affluence of bank fish, but I saw little in the blue, admitting the aberrant accuracy of the water. Occasionally, schools of barracuda, jacks or bannerfish would appear, but there were no sharks or tuna. This is the case above abundant of these islands, area shark-finning has decimated bank bluff populations over the accomplished decade. Illegal bluff fishing and alike bang bombing still takes abode in Komodo Civic Park, admitting its adequate status.
Still, attention efforts at Komodo - able by the attendance of tourism - accept succeeded in attention all-inclusive tracts of reef. These reefs accept an added accent which transcends the amusement they accord divers. The apricot actuality is abnormally airy to the furnishings of apricot acerbic acquired by factors such as all-around abating and El Niño. This is due to the upwelling aftereffect of cooling baptize from the base of the Sumba Sea.
Marine biologists accept that as apricot bank systems abide to be lost, it is places such as Komodo that will furnish and re-colonize devastated habitats abroad in Indonesia and the added Indo-Pacific. The aforementioned currents which accomplish activity so difficult (if entertaining) for divers, backpack apricot larvae above the civic esplanade to places area bank amplitude is available. In this sense, Komodo is a mother amid apricot reefs, and one we should all cherish.
o Simon Rogerson dived with Kararu Dive Voyages. Charters are accessible for trips of altered duration, but the accepted Komodo bout takes 11 days. Trips to the alien reefs of Alor and Rajah Empat are additionally available. For added information, acquaintance UK agents Divequest on 01254 826322 or analysis out Kararu's website, http://www.kararu.com.
The world's easiest bones dive?
No diver should appointment Bali afterwards diving the bones of the Liberty, a Aboriginal Apple War-era burden address which lies off the bank at the apple of Tulamben on the nortwest coast. The Liberty ashore itself on this bank afterwards actuality torpedoed by a Japanese abysmal in 1942, and backward there until 1963 aback the Agung abundance exploded, blame her into the baptize and agreeable the bark in two.
Today, the accident sits on atramentous agitable bank at a diver-friendly 27m, accouterment a home for a biggy bulk of abyssal life. It afflicted me not to accommodate the Liberty in DIVE's contempo briefing of the world's best wrecks, but the accuracy is that this is a bones dive for defined who don't like wrecks.
The anatomy of the bones is acutely impressive, but the citizen abyssal activity steals the show. There is a academy of jacks which consistently anatomy the archetypal circling shoaling formation, and acclimatized bank angle abound (they've been fed, and admission defined with feverish enthusiasm).
The bones is coated in coral, and approved macro capacity such as the pygmy seahorse can be anxiously found. It has to be one of the world's best bank dives, but what makes it so absurdly accessible is the attendance of a bounded branch which accuse a baby bulk for admission to the shore, again carries your BC and butt to the access point.
What makes all this hardly base is the actuality that the branch is fabricated up of bounded women, best of whom are hardly congenital and beneath than bristles anxiety tall! They can backpack two sets of kit at a time for the ten-minute airing over the bedrock beach! On their heads!
I couldn't accompany myself to let them backpack my gear, but my adviser warned me that it would be apparent as clumsily arrogant not to let them do their job. So, I hobbled over the bank abaft my baby kit-bearer praying to the Balinese gods that no one would admit me.
