Day 9

Monday, April 18, 2016
Raja Ampat, West Papua, Indonesia
The first dive of the day was at Cape Kri and again we were instructed that it was to be a big current dive and we were even issued with reef hooks. Once again it proved to be unfounded and although there was a bit of a current we just turned around and drifted with it.
There was supposed to be big schools of large fish species but they weren't around so it was a bit disappointing in that respect . However Gun found a couple of interesting little critters and I got a great shot of a tiny black decorater crab.

The sun is shining today and we have blue skies so hopefully there will be some good photographic opportunities on the next couple of dives. The last dive will be at a manta cleaning station so I hope the mantas are there.

Not long after we got back to the boat we saw a school of dolphins hunting not far away so all the girls (and Mike) piled into the tender and Daniel took us over to snorkel with them.
I was lucky enough to have them swim under me as I slipped into the water and I heard them clicking and whistling, but they were busy hunting fish and didn't want to play with us. It was a pleasant swim in the warm water anyway.

After my pancake breakfast we went to a site called Mikes point where there was a long ridge which we dived under and along. There was a little cuttlefish resting on the ridge top and Nudibranchs on the sandy bottom . I saw one black tip shark circling around near the bottom and a large Bumphead parrotfish munching on the coral. The cave under the ledge went in quite a way and it was covered in tiny orange soft corals. It was too deep to go to the bottom though as we were already at around 20 metres and the bottom had to be more than 30 metres down.
There was a massive rockslide where a large part of the reef had broken away in a storm and it was quite desolate. It made me wonder how stable the rest of the reef top was.

The top of the reef was very pretty with lots of plate corals and reef fish darting among them and where the reef turned into rock face you could see the swell crashing into it.

The last dive of the day sort of turned into two dives as we went in search of mantas. The first was spent at the manta cleaning station, where no mantas turned up. We did however find a few tiny Dragon moth fish and Gun pointed out a minute Hairy shrimp which was almost impossible to see. I spent the last few minutes circling a very nice little coral covered bommie which had a myriad of sea life on it.
Since we couldn't find any mantas we motored off to a place called Manta rock where Gun dived overboard and then ushered us down to a reef covered in staghorn coral. He had seen two mantas there but I only saw one pass by in the murk so I didn't stay long.

Tomorrow will be our last day diving and the morning dive will be at the manta cleaning station, so I hope we see mantas this time as it will be my last dive. Then its back to Bali for two nights.

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2025-02-06

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