Diving Wakatobi

Dive Area information

WaKaToBi actually stands for Wanci, Kaledupa, Tomia, Binongko, these are the key main islands that make up the National Park.

Diving Wakatobi & Beyond by Dive Liveaboard
With over 2 years of dive guiding, managing Wakatobi Diving Resort and volunteering with marine life studies at Operation Wallacea. Diving 4 Images is able to show the very best of what this whole area has to offer and much more…. Wakatobi Dive Resort offer great wall diving, imagine this combined with the some great critter diving, fishy pinnacles & ridges and the crystal clear water of the outer islands.

When is it best to dive Wakatobi?
It is possible to dive the Wakatobi island group most of the year. The roughest seas come from the west. These come in from the end of December through to the beginning of March. Both Wakatobi Dive Resort and Operation Wallacea close down operations during this time of the year. June through to August brings with it the east winds, often visibility will drop dramatically during these months. With a live aboard it is better to avoid the months with winds in order to be able to dive the very best sites on the east and west of this island group while avoiding heavy waves, wind and swell.

Kaledupa and Hoga region
Here we have some of the best fish packed dive sites are located within this region. The area is the home base of Operation Wallacea. Staff here are always very welcoming to any visiting live aboard vessels and welcome tourists. Hoga has one of the best beaches in the whole island group for relaxing on. This makes an evening with no night diving here is such a pleasure. Make a barbeque on this pristine white sand beach and relax in the cabanas where students would normally be preparing their papers…. Dive sites here vary a lot, with amazing topographically intricate coral packed wall dives and even more dramatic kind of site awaits us within Hoga island. This area has many pinnacles some of which make up long ridges that can be dived when currents allow. Scenery along this ridge and on the pinnacles ranges from excellent to downright outstanding, with swim through reefs to take you from one side of the ridge to the other, giant sea fans lie vertically along the ridge crest creating the most wonderful wide angle images be it in your mind or on film. There is a great variety of coral life here including lots of hanging soft corals and hard corals towards the top of the pinnacles which all come to within a good safety stop of 5m from the surface. Fish life on these pinnacles also ranges from great to fish soup at times, with resident giant and blue fin trevallies that feed and come in to get cleaned in the shallows, huge schools of swirling neon fusiliers, unicorns and others are to be seen just off reef. For the smaller marine life, there usually lots of different types of scorpion and lion fish feeding here, different species of anemone and many other reef fish which congregate here. Looking really close there are also some surprise tiny critters too, wait and see! There are sea mounts with amazing reef scenery, vast hard coral gardens in the shallows, fish life come in large quantities with schooling barracuda, jacks, vast amounts of fusiliers and sometimes sharks and eagle rays. Coral gardens here make great dive sites as it is easy to settle down on the sandy bottom and just watch the fish and critters go about their usual business amongst some great coral formations.

Tomia region
Home base of Wakatobi Dive Resort, in the past they have not been very welcoming to visiting dive live aboard vessels. Hence if you plan to dive within this region be sure to check in to the National Park authorities who will give you the right paperwork and authority to dive around this region! Many of the diving from the resort is along the northern facing reefs of Lintea & Tokobau islands, and around the resort west and southern facing reefs on Tolandano island, these reefs are pristine steep sloping walls, with OK to minimal fish life. The resort house reef has some of the strongest currents within this island group, divers should be very cautious during certain tides. The island of Tomia is home to one of the best fishy dives in this region called Roma and Mari Mabuk. Located south of Waha village, in front of the old jetty on western Tomia. This large sea mount is home to large schools of snappers and other schooling fish, the main feature is a giant lettuce coral formation at around 15m depth on the south eastern side of this reef system. Sadly the the Mari Mabuk side of this reef system has been damaged so severely that this site is now not really worth diving. This came as a result of no mooring installations in the area, local cargo boats continued to anchor on this reef resulting in very extensive coral damage. Of the most unique dive sites in this region is a site called Blade, this is actually part of the Kaledupa island group and consists of a long undulating ridge on the eastern side of Karang Kaledupa, Blade has excellent dramatic reef scenery. The channel on the western side of the Tokobau atoll is often home to eagle rays, schooling jacks, barracuda, huge schools of yellow back fusiliers, after the channel comes a drop off with whip corals, fans and soft corals. The shallow area along this huge reef system has areas where pigmy sea horses can be seen in depths as shallow as 10m, along with many other rare and much sought after critters living amongst colourful reefs and wonderful reef crests to make safety stops pleasurable.

Binongko Island
The Wakatobi island group is actually called “Tukang Besi” in local Indonesian language this means steel worker. This is the only island where steel is forged and knives are still made as they were many years ago, a trips be arranged to go see this process in action.
Dive sites here are dramatic shear wall dives with giant black coral bushes, predominantly white in one area that gives a feeling of snowfall in winter ahh! There are dramatic caverns; overhangs and areas where lots of fish hang in the mild currents. For deeper dives this region has some amazing deep fish packed, coral bommies. The reef tops are rockier with some small look through reefs covered in brilliantly colourful soft corals. Of the smaller marine life, often sea spiders are seen here; blennies hide their cute little faces in the holes in the rocks, many different species of dottyback, goby, triplefin and often a few real nice surprises can be seen if we look hard enough.
Buton Island – a very special little bay here is home to a great macro site. In an average depth of 6m you can see the most amazing creatures. Here is a direct sample from logbook of a second dive on this site : – Straight down from boat, 2 ornate ghost pipe fish black with orange and red colouration. Frogfish (dark brown), pipe fish galore, cow fish, a pair of flying gurnards, frogfish (green/yellowy), frogfish (very dark with spots) all this in only 2 square meter area. Lots of weird crabs, anemones, opistobranchs another pair of ghost pipe fish, an area with octopus galore, bobtail squid, 12 ringed pipe fish together, juvenile black snappers and other cool juvenile fish, marbled snake eel, dead fish being devoured by come shell oooh! All this and a maximum depth of 7m.
Doing a whole day here you will see many other wonders maybe mimic and blue ringed octopus, cockatoo wasp fish, leaf scorpion fish, inimicus (devil scorpion fish), stonefish and the ever so cool disco clam. There is one more site if you ever needed to try elsewhere, you may see the Bobbit worm on a different site in this area as well.

Western Islands
Heading out into the open ocean out of the Wakatobi National Park. The western islands offer virgin diving on walls that are filled with beds of sea fans and gigantic sponges. Overhangs and huge cracks in the reefs, some making excellent swim through reefs, these I know will bring photographers, videograpahers and us viewing storing these images in our mind, such a delight. Delicate hanging soft corals and invertebrate life are to be found around the crevices, in amongst these corals are many different crustaceans. At night there is one wall that really does stand out as a most amazing night dive for its brilliant colourful corals and small marine life that hide within them. There are reef corners here that attract great amounts of fish and have amazing coral gardens with large bommies, tubastraea corals (green coral trees) and large table corals with stingrays hiding beneath.

Eastern Islands
These are the most remote islands that are still part of the Wakatobi island group. Being the most remote also makes them the least dived here. All islands on the eastern side are all very low lying and many are full of palm trees. A few of these islands have very traditional Bajo (sea gipsy) style villages on stilts. Sites here are dramatic drop off’s, giant canyons, huge overhanging reefs, ravines, some great reef crests, crystal clear water make these islands just delightful to dive.

Conclusion
This region is home to one of Indonesia’s best marketed resorts. This region is perfect for divers new to Indonesia who will be blown away by the mind drift dives and endless walls.  With only really one great critter site, this region is not really one for big critter lovers. For those who are more interested in macro life best look for another destination.

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