Diving The Reefs of Alor, East Nusa Tenggara - Indonesia
In the five days of diving Alor proved to be able to deliver on all the expectancies to me. Around Alor there were no dives I did not enjoy, or did not find interesting at all. The visibility on the dives was absolutely incredible and nothing like I had seen before (apart from the muck dives of course). The variety between the dives in species to find, underwater scenery and current was very welcome, since we had done a lot of dives already in the Phillipines.
On the first dive we saw two very big nurse sharks lying together in a big crack on the current swept reefwall. Also, we saw a very thick moray eel, many mantis shrimps and a big amount of different nudibranchs.
I was impressed by the amount of fish on the reef edges.. Every square inch of the reef was swarmed with anthias in different sizes and colors. I thought back to my diving days in the caribbean and comparing this abundance of life to the variety of life on the carribbean reefs is like trying to match day and night.
All of the dives were fun and full of surprises, but the biggest surprise for me was the muck dive I did. Muck diving was new to me, although I had seen some great footage from underwater photographers who had had the opportunity of diving the murky, nutrient rich waters of the coral triangle. During conversations with other divers in the homestay, who had done muck dives before, my interest rose more and more, but I could not really grasp what surprise I was in for.
After the dive I realized that I would have never been able to comprehend in advance what muckdiving was exactly, because you simple have to experience it. The dive simply felt like a rollercoaster ride, where the weirdest and coolest creatures seemed to be piled up in the bay of Kalabahi. This dive was one of the most exciting dives I had done in the past year and I thought that muck diving would not get any better, but at Lembeh later in the trip I still got blown away, even when I knew what muck diving was like.
This first dive I saw a variety of weird stuff and this dive never seemed to end, and I didn't want it to end..
Among the animals we encountered we also saw an ornate Ghostpipefish, a wonderpus, an orange frogfish, a zebra crab and a devil scorpionfish. In between I saw various moray eels, lionfishes and other nice stuff, but I had to keep focused on the more interesting critters! This was a fairly shallow dive, but I had gone into a slight deco since me and one of the guides had chased after the big octopus. During the extended safety stop we still saw some wicked animals among the rubble and even though the no-deco line had been crossed slightly, this was easily one of the coolest dives ever.
Source: jcp-intotheblue.blogspot.com
