Situated just west of Irian Jaya in Papua, Indonesia lies a group of untouched islands called Raja Ampat or “four kings,” a pristine place where time seems to have stood still, and few people have ventured into or dived in. Gutsy Tuason was invited to board the luxury dive yacht Odyssea 1 and explore the unspoiled reefs of Raja Ampat, known in diving circles for its biodiversity and biomass of fish. What follows is a salvaged transcription of the dive log he kept during the 10 days he spent shooting black mantas and other wild forms of marine life.

It’s 2:30 a.m., and I haven’t gotten much sleep. Spent two hours trying to find an o-ring in my mess of stuff at home, and I am trying to catch a 5:00 A.M. flight to Davao. Barely make the flight, and then it’s a three-and-a-half-hour layover in Davao until I catch my Sriwijaya flight to Manado. Very few of us on the plane. You know you have arrived in Indonesia when you can smoke in the immigration line.

I get to N.D.C. and take a much needed nap. Wake up, have a beer, and settle back into that familiar afternoon mode. Meet a Scotsman who sounds like Fat Bastard. We start talking and I mention Anilao. He says there is a book, he has it, and I go—well that’s my book—and in that Scottish accent, says, “You’re Scott Tuason. Great!” After a couple more beers and dinner, crash out, but first tried to watch some TV. You know you’re in Indonesia when there is fuck all to watch on TV.

It’s 2:30 A.M., and I am getting that familiar feeling again. It starts pissing down with rain, and I start wondering, hmm . . . “I wonder what kind of plane we are taking to Sorong.” On the drive over to the airport it’s still pissing with rain and I ask someone, “How big is the plane we are taking?”—and after some laughter, someone says it’s one of those barns with wings. (A maxi pad???)

We get to the airport and all seems well, and after a long, tense wait, I finally see—oh it’s a 737. And I’m thinking, those plains drop out of the sky in Indonesia practically every month! On the flight I just keep thinking to myself, well, I was on a 1944 DC-3 last year, this plane is at least 30 years younger!

After a lot of talk in the car about air safety in Indonesia (or lack of), I hesitantly boarded the Merpati flight to Sorong. The hour flight went fine, of course, and sooner than I could say “blueberry pancakes,” the plane was descending above the islands of Raja Ampat. We arrive, and the baggage handlers are fighting over the luggage. Now I can soak in the fact that I was going on a great boat with only seven divers for 13 days to one of the best coral reef diving spots in the world.  We get on a boat, it’s nice, real nice, especially with only seven people. Sweet! We sort out our gear and sail off. An hour later, we grab some lunch—pan-fried tuna, chicken curry, swamp weed (yum yum).

Day 1

Mantan Island. Visibility is not so good. First shot taken: lizardfish with a jawfish in its mouth! Too big—it had to spit it out, then other fish started taking “potshots” at the poor thing.

(Batanta) Posi-posi. Nice coral/school pygmy devil rays, soft-coral crab. Easy night, dinner fish fingers, pork Irian Jaya style, and greens. Woke up at 4:15. Indo names are funny—today we dive Fac-Fac, then go to Gag Island and then finish off at Solo Reef.

Day 2

Kri Island. Schooling rabbit fish, batfish, fussiliers, and sweetlips. Nice reef at shallow area. Strong current.

Kri Island, Sardine Reef. Loads of fish and current. Schooling batfish, fussiliers, Spanish mackerel, and Wobbegong shark! Lazy bugger.

Chicken Reef. Schooling Sweetlips at sandy bottom, school of batfish, surgeonfish. Blacktip sharks, giant trevally, school mackerel, and huge manta!

Kri Island, Saunek Jetty. We get there and Pedro (a five-year-old) is running the yard at the dock. Lots of kids getting excited for us to dive. Octopus and other muck critters.

Day 3

The Passage. Very unique dive spot. Sea fans and coral growing right on the edge of a narrow channel between two islands, plus a nice cavern. Raging current that goes both ways. Stunning underwater vista. Trees in the background, shafts of light shining on coral. Dream-like place, mixed with coral, milky water, dead trees, leaves.

The Passage. Macro and wide-angle. You just have to see the pictures. Pictures like no other. Unfortunately, Bob saw my pics and decided to stay. Lunch was good—salad, pasta. Simple food, but good.

Day 4

Pretty nice coral/fans. Love it when a plan comes together. Went there for Wobbegong and got the fucker with yellow jacks on him. I think he had just mated. His claspers looked like they had been through the wringer.

Straight off the back of the boat. Pretty uneventful until a school of large barracuda scared the shit out of me. Few cuttlefish and the highlight must be the Saron shrimp at the end of the dive. Very difficult to shoot.

Day 5
Woke up to a gorgeous morning. Pulled anchor for our first dive of the day.

Mios Kon. Slight current, nice change from the usual ripping waters. Good fish life. Schooling Bengal snapper and two Wobis—one free-swimming. Bumped into Bob, literally, underwater. Finished off the dive with Glassy Sweepers on a coral bommie.

Cape Kri. Lots of dives in the spot. Tons of fish, raging current, jacks, barracudas, snappers, fusilliers, black tips, white tip, turtle. Huge batfish school, but no real defined school. Fish just all over the place. Again, finished off the dive with Glassy Sweepers.

Aerborek Jetty. George and I decided to go off the back of the boat. Against the current. Got the bommie with lots of fusilliers. After shooting them, George was underneath the bommie when, out of nowhere, a huge jewfish showed up. Massive beast. I think it was looking at George as a potential meal.

Day 6

Jetty again. No fish this time, but there were a bunch of villagers at the pier and a nice lionfish. After another great meal, the crew went to the back of the boat and went fishing for large squid.

Another stunning morning. Calm sea and anticipation for Manta Point.

8:00 A.M. Manta Point (feeding station). Chris (my dive guide) had gone to check the surface for mantas. I guess that’s the style here, yet no mantas—so, those who wanted to gamble went for mantas anyway, and some went to the jetty. Not much here, really. Gradual slope with lots of dead coral. Only thing that saved the dive was a patch of cabbage coral with tons of Glassy Sweepers on it.

11:30 A.M. Manta Point (cleaning station). After a zero manta sighting on the first dive, Bob joked with us about it being a manta-less point. But my gut feeling was that there was going to be a lot of mantas. I don’t get very many of these gut feelings, much less share them with others on the dive. It just makes you look like a know-it-all, and if they don’t show up—you end up looking kinda like a fuck-up. Anyway, I kept telling everybody that mantas would show up. 

I was a bit skeptical about changing dive sites to the cleaning station. I figured that if they hadn’t fed, then why would they show up at the cleaning station, right? I guess I don’t think like a manta since I only brush my teeth after I have eaten—and that’s on a good day. So, fifteen minutes into the dive, we haven’t seen shit, and then a metal ringer goes off—but none of the dive masters are ringing it. It’s our faithful boatman, Jun, who is banging the ladder. Mik (our Japanese divemaster) goes up to check it out, and gives the signal to go up. Okay, I am thinking—wild goose chase—at this point. We are not going to see shit if we keep driving around the reef looking for mantas. But Jun assures us that he saw a manta playing on the surface. It was at the feeding station and another boat was there. Oh fucken great! Two groups of divers with one manta. Even if it was there, I figured it would be scared out of its wits with all the people. After about a minute in the water, swimming towards the general direction of the fin we saw, out of the blue comes a massive all-black manta. Dive bombs, each of us. I then look left and see the other group of divers, hooked on the reef at about thirty feet, and on top of the reef in about twenty-five feet of water are three giant mantas being cleaned.

As they leave the cleaning area, three more come in for a cleaning. I look up and there are about six more on the surface. I look right and there is a black one on top of George’s head. I look back into the blue and there are several more—and one on top of my head as well. We had hit the mother lode. At any given time there must have been at least fifteen mantas within sight, and most of them were huge. No matter where you were and what you did, they were just there, checking you out, being cleaned, or just waiting for their turn to be cleaned. After about twenty minutes of this, the action died down and I decided to check out the interior of the reef which was only about twenty feet, but was against the current. In the shallows were more mantas, gently gliding in the current. No way, more mantas . . . to the left there was one, in front several more, and to the right even more. Once in a while, a manta would come in and check me out. Then, out of the corner of my eye, a flash of yellow caught my attention. It’s a huge black manta accompanied by a school of juvenile golden trevally. So I’m swimming, trying to keep up with it, and then turn my head left—and I am eyeball to wingtip with another black manta. Took a few shots of the manta with the yellow golden trevally, but could not quite get in front of it. After swimming against the current, I decided to get back to the cleaning station. As I swam back, I had two or three mantas do a close fly-by. After settling back at the feeding station, four mantas came sweeping in like dive-bombers. Fucken sensory overload. Missed the money shot because of my fucken dome scratch. At this point, I switch to jpeg from raw because I am running out of memory space. I really should get that dome scratched out. At this point, my air is down to 400 psi, but there is a black manta just doing a circling pattern on the reef. One of those magic manta moments. Just, in your face, passes over and over again. The air was starting to feel hard every time I took a breath. I even considered finishing my air and going up to Miki to get her octopus and finish off the last seven frames in the camera. But it had been 62 minutes of just pure manta magic, and I figured I’d just enjoy the last couple of breaths on the way up while watching the manta still hanging around below. This has got to be one of my best dives ever! On the way back to the boat, I was able to finish all the frames while snorkeling with a group of about five mantas on the surface. Un-fucken-believable!

Day 7

Aerborek Jetty. Decided to take it easy after such a spectacular dive. Shot with the magic filter—which turned out to be a shit filter. For Dive 22, shot with a macro. Blind jawfish out of hole, gobies, nice nudi. The dive lasted 122 minutes.

Well, as expected, everybody was raring to go for the mantas. Chris checked the sight, and there were a bunch playing on the surface of the cleaning station.

Manta Point (cleaning station). We had three mantas—two regular and one black one—but never really got in too close for a good shot. Just ended up shooting people shooting mantas.

Jetty. Nice visibility at high tide. The highlight was the Captain snorkeling in his yellow socks and fins. When I got up, the Captain said, “Scott, you’re lucky ‘cos I am in action today!” Hilarious.

Day 8

Manta Point (feeding area). After fighting the current for what seemed like ages, I went to the old spot. Had several passes by a friendly black one, but nothing compared to the previous days.

Gam Island. Nice coral and lots of fusilliers

Gam Island. Looked like it would be a nice muck spot, but not much really. Nice crocodile fish and some sleeping cardinals, few crabs about. Checked out the village of nomadic squid fishermen from Komodo. They tried to sell me a wooden dragon for 200,000 rupiah (or roughly about $22.60).

Day 9
Well, all good weather must come to an end. Woke up to rain and low clouds.

Api Box. Gam Island. Loads of fish and nice coral.

Api Box. Gam Island. Same sort of stuff, but as we got up, the waters were raging, and so the big boat had to run back into the bay for shelter. Went for a snorkel in the mangroves. Nice vistas. Took some wide angle.

Nice reef, lots of soft coral and fusilliers just everywhere.

Dusk dive near mangrove area, half beak, archer fish, and undescribed cuttlefish.

Day 10
Weather back on track.

Api box II. Gam Island. Sea mount. Lots of good macro. School of tunas and surgeon fish. Nudis and pygmy seahorse.

Penemu Island. Andy’s Reef. Strong ass current. Lots of Cabbage coral and loads of Wobis. Ran out of air pretty quickly.

Penemu Island. Melissa’s Garden. Shitload of fusilliers, giant clams, and big, huge table coral. Some overturned from the last earthquake.

Penemu Island, East Fam Wall. First pontohi (pygmy seahorse), picta nudibranch, yellow blenny, and cardinal with isopod, as well as a cardinal on giant clam.

Penemu Island, East Fam Wall. Great macro spot. Few nice nudis, shot the pontohi again. Juvenile bi-color parrot fish. Nice, big lionfish and a few blennies again.

Barracuda Reef. Penemu Sea Mount. Large school of Sweetlip, but deep. Ended up with an eight-minute deco stop. At one point, while shooting the Sweetlips at 125 feet, Chris got a Wobi by the tail. Handed it to me! Lazy bastard swam for about three seconds, then settled down on the bottom.

Barracuda Reef. Penemu Sea Mount. Back to 125 feet for the Sweetlips. Shot the shit out of them. Nice eared blenny, school jacks, barracuda, and a large Black-tip shark chasing a school of fusilliers. Few large grouper as well. Great dive. Just as well—I ran out of memory, could have been a really long deco stop. Between dives we took the dinghy to the lagoon. Spectacular. Similar to El Nido lagoon—but much larger—and the rock formations are not as high. Lots of small islands inside the lagoon.

Day 11

Blue Lagoon. Night dive, so-so. Hard to shoot, lots of coral. Nice crab on sea fan.
After the night dive, we had a barbecue dinner with the crew and were treated to the Captain’s singing live music with the rest as back-up.

Woke up at 3:00 A.M. Want to enjoy the whole day since we only get two dives today. Pissing with rain as I write in this journal at 4:46 A.M.

P47D Plane Wreck. Wai Island deep wreck at 33 meters (116 feet). Seems like these guides have an easier time finding pontohi seahorses as opposed to a fucken plane. After a good swim back and forth, we found it. Apparently, it ran out of fuel. It’s intact, but upside down. Well worth it.

Wai Island Lagoon. Here it is, the last dive. I am not coming up until I shoot the Epaulette shark! Or run out of air. Well, got tricked by Bob to shoot wide-angle. Vis is shit, but massive school of Ox-eye scad and small school of sardines. The macro looked much better. Sea moth, big anemone shrimp, thorny seahorse, big Dragonet. It also started to piss down with rain—all the way back to Sorong (five hours). On the way back, saw a group of many mantas thrashing in the water. Maybe mating or just playing. Wingtips up, doing somersaults, etc. I wish I could have just jumped in. Through the trip, we saw mantas jump, some marlin/sailfish, plus what looked like some bait balls with plenty of action. As we say goodbye to everybody on the boat, Pedro starts crying. I guess he will miss all the torment I gave him over the last two weeks. (I was always joking that I was going to circumcise him with my Swiss army knife.)

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