Komodo Park Underwater

We had a number of really good snorkels in the Komodo National Park. The park is primarily in place to protect the Komodo Dragons, but it also attempts to protect the reef areas around the park. The reefs support a huge and not so disciplined tour boat and dive boat infrastructure.

Snorkeling off the Pink Beach offered some of the best fish sighting and clear water we've seen in Indonesia.

From our vantage point in the dinghy h e Pink Beach didn't look pink at all. So I decided to take a picture of it for my loyal reader with the red lens cap still on my underwater camera. Thought this might give you  a better feel for it.

Lots of varied types and colors of coral with fish to mach.

Saw some nice underwater macrame. 

A shy puffer fish.

I've always had a hard time photographing the Moorish Idol fish. They are plentiful on the reefs, but very skittish and often camera shy.

Now you can't have too many turtle pictures, even in a non-turtle blog. These turtles clearly knew they were in a park, as they were just fine with me coming up close and clicking away. Turtles outside the park are fully aware that humans up close are a precursor to them becoming turtle soup.

We also dove the Makassar Reef. Lots of interesting corals. But, we didn't get to see the Manta Rays that come by to feed in the area.

While the park has lots of rules for wildlife protection, the enforcement isn't all that strict. The Pink Beach is a No Anchoring Zone on the park maps as well as on the bleached out signs on shore. But the local tour boat drop these anchors in the coral everyday.

This picture helps to give you a sense of the size of  some of these corals. No, I didn't say this coral makes your butt look big.

Hiding in the Cabbage Coral

This coral always make me thing of cauliflower when I see it underwater. Probably chewier.

This is a really pristine garden of multi-colored corals near the Makassar Reef that a local boat has decided to come up close to and throw his anchor on top of. Argh.

Just so you don't think this is a paradise, look at the trash on this beach, most of it is plastic. The upper picture is looking one way down the beach and the lower the other. In the lower you can just see Chris earnestly looking for shells among the debris. Many of the beaches here have been this bad or almost as bad.  Not so long ago, Indonesian fishermen, most of them subsistence fishers, fished with cyanide or dynamite on their reefs. Now that those practices are slowly being dealt with, the advancing avalanche of plastic in the ocean is drowning their beaches. We haven't seen beaches this inundated with plastic and left-foot sandals since the Caribbean side of Panama.

Cruisers Notes:
After we left Rinca ranger station we headed down the west side of Rinca to Ginnggo.

I know seas and currents never look anything like real in a picture. Here  is a pic of the 5 knot current taking us south toward Ginggo. Randomly timed for a flood tide. The next day we went back up in a carefully timed ebb tide. The only problem was that the current was still 5 kts heading south, meaning we were motoring directly into it. As they say, the currents around Komodo are fickle and difficult to predict. It seems that they tend to run southward.

The anchorage in near the ranger station on Komodo, around the corner from Pink Beach, is peaceful. You are away from the village and the ranger's pier. Far enough that you only get a few boats coming by to ask for things and sell bowls and carved dragons. 08* 35.08, 119* 31.35 42ft good holding, good wind protection, pigs on the beach

Local kids who got new school books and pens.

There is a reef just north of Makassar Reef that is a small atoll. Just outside the narrow cut in is  08 31.862 119 35.013. Head NW from there inside the atoll (we had about 20 feet going in). Inside the reef are 4 mooring balls. Who they exactly belong to is not clear. We stayed on one (08*31.613,119*35.226) for a day and night. Other boats stayed for a few days. Great place if it isn't windy. Good coral around the atoll. The SE outside had some good coral and fish. A long dinghy ride south is where the Mantas come in. Watch the tour boats to figure where they are.

On our way out of Komodo we stopped at Gilli Banta. We stayed two nights in C and A anchorage listed in the Scott guide. Los of room in A and room for quite a few boats in C. Calm and well proected. The boats that stayed at he anchorage on th top of Gilli Banta generally had a terrible, rolly night, including cat. 08*25.642,119*19.568 35ft in coral ruble. and 08*25.974,119*18.169 in 40ft sand and ruble.

Paul