DIVE TIME By Tim Grollimund
Wakatobi: Remote resort has incredible shore diving
E-Mail this story
Print this story
tool name
close
tool goes here
Posted - Friday, October 28, 2011 12:41 AM EDT
Photo by Tim Grollimund
Observing cleaning stations often allowed close encounters with many shy species, such as this coral grouper.
Last time I went on a photography trip, we traveled to the Philippines. I told you about that trip, and how nice it was to get back home. These last two weeks I had the pleasure of hanging out with my friend and mentor, Stephen Frink, in Wakatobi, Indonesia. And yes, it’s good to be on the way home.
Half way around the world is a long trip, as I am writing this from the Transit Hotel in Singapore where I have a nine-hour layover. Then after a 16-hour flight through Tokyo I get to layover in Los Angeles for seven hours and take the red-eye home. Red-eye at this point is a relative term. It won’t really matter what time that last flight is, my eyes are already red. But there is a Hard Rock Cafe at the Singapore airport, so I’m good to go.
If you have never heard of Wakatobi, check it out at www.wakatobi.com. It is everything as advertised, and then some. This little resort, accessible by private charter flight, has without question the most incredible shore diving I have experienced. A wall is a wall is a wall, except in Wakatobi. Some of our group even took a couple days and skipped the afternoon boat dives to stay on shore and dive the house wall. They call it the house reef, but it’s really the house wall. You will be hard pressed to find wallpaper like this anywhere.
I was able to do four dives a day, so the red-eye thing is my doing. I just can’t get enough of the ocean. To travel this far means I am going to max it out, and I’ll rest when I get home. I was able to do 34 dives in eight and a half diving days. I’m pooped.
I’m also pleased as punch, and the kid-in-the-candy-store feeling is stronger, if anything. Photographically, it was a very productive trip for all of us. At the end of the visit we contributed photos for the weekly photo presentation, and our group had some outstanding images.
That’s part of the aura of Stephen’s photo tours. We dive like crazy, work hard on creating significant images, and have constant feedback from him on how to improve. To me it’s a classroom with a tank and a walking, talking, working encyclopedia of photographic knowledge.
I asked Stephen how Wakatobi rates among all the shore diving-themed resorts in the world. He rates it as one of the best he’s seen. He has over 30 years of experience sampling the diving and accommodations around the world, so I for one believe he is in a great position to offer a valuable assessment.
The convenience of the shore diving is high on his list of benefits. The wall starts a few hundred feet from shore. Besides the plethora of fish, turtles and sea snakes on the wall, there is an incredible density of filter-feeding soft corals - the daily tide movements mean water always moves along the wall. The animals are also used to seeing divers, so some were more approachable than the same species on the outer dive sites.
It also means you have to be cognizant of the changes, and some days it gets quite interesting. On one of our shore dives we started out with the current as we normally did, and experienced a slack time that lasted less then 10 minuets, then were pushed back to the jetty where we entered. The divemasters got a kick watching us go back and forth, but the experience level of the divers I was with made it a lot of fun because we were able to read the changes and enjoy the return trip.
Another great benefit is the cone of local protection around the resort. They love their wall and protect it well. It’s a mini-sanctuary, respected by the islanders. Not so in other places. On one of the further sites, we heard several explosions from dynamite fishing. - quite an experience to actually hear it underwater.
The soft corals, and the critters that inhabit them, provide a color palette that seems to make our waters a bit drab in comparison. From giant puffers, tiny longsnout hawkfish, cuttlefish and many species we don’t have in the Caribbean, to the backdrop of colorful walls, ledges and dropoffs, it’s a photographers’ heaven. Butterflyfish in many instances were much larger than their Keys counterparts, with more stripes, spots and patterns. And the clown triggerfish, angelfish and groupers were mostly skittish, but not impossible to photograph. Looking for cleaning stations was the best setup for photographing the otherwise shy creatures. There are also many small crabs, shrimp and nudibranchs that complete the extended color palette of the Indonesian waters.
It’s nice to see a different set of animals, and each time I am fortunate enough to travel on one of Stephen’s tours, it makes me appreciate the Keys all the more. They have a wider color range, but we have more big animals. Turtles there were shy in most instances, not friendly like ours. We saw zero sharks that were approachable, and very few eels.
Wakatobi has some stunning underwater scenery and formations. And of course, the fish are amazingly colorful. It’s a unique and wonderful place, and if I ever get the chance, I will go back, and stay longer. It’s that special. But so are the Keys — I can’t wait to get back in the water at home.
