Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia

**Gill Envy** · 1st August 2007, 16:30

Myself, my wife and our friend Andy Spent 2 1/2 weeks diving with Maluku divers in Ambon Indonesia back in March of this year (07) and I’m finally getting around to putting up a report about this awesome trip.

Mario and Ika run the place and do a very nice job. The area is safe now. The period of sectarian violence has long past but tourists still stay away, so there is only one dive operation and virtually no other tourist facilities… no cattle boats here!

The people are very pleasant and helpful. The accommodations range from minimalist to decent but by no means 5 star luxury. That said, we’ve found that the more remote the place and more simple the accommodations, the better the diving… Ambon was no exception: beautiful reefs, slow economy, not that many amenities…it’s a trade off we were glad to make.

The diving consists of gently sloping reefs and some nice arches, Chimneys and swim throughs and craggy steep drop offs. In general we found the diving to be spectacular, some of the best we’ve ever done. This is not, however, the place for wreck lovers. There is only one scuttled boat in the bay that is not much to look at.

The swift current that helped make the reefs so lush did pose challenges at times but we gradually got used to it. We did resort to carefully selecting patches of common coralline algea as finger holds in order to rest from the current without damaging the reef.

Diving with rebreathers we had the time to gradually make our way against the current out and down along the outcroppings and hang for long periods observing the massive schools of fish and occasional pelagics that like to hang out in the convergence zones. I can’t imagine what our air consumption would have been had we been on OC fighting that current all the way. Instead of short, rushed dives, as we used to do on OC, we were able to stay down for upwards of two hours per dive, spending as long as we wanted in our favorite locations. Shark sightings were made on nearly every dive!

Pulau Tiga (three islands) was by far our favorite place for diving. It’s a bit of a trek from the dive center but well worth it. There are even some lush hard coral reefs still in full glory with giant heads of healthy brain corrals. There are a mix of soft and hard corals and lots of inverts. The most common fish is the blue trigger, a small trigger that schools in the thousands in this area.

Muck diving in the bay is both spectacular and depressing. Plastic is everywhere, but little critters galore. Flamboyant cuttle fish, Devil's finger, various bat fish, lots of different kinds of frog fish, leafy scorpion fish, Rock fish and on and on. Some say it rivals Lembeh straight but I have not been there yet so I can’t concur.

we did not make it out to the Banda islands, but got to see lots of fresh pictures from there when a group returned from a trip. the hard coral looks more extensive, Banda is more remote, which appears to mean even more fish and healtheir reefs from what we could tell from the pictures. We are hoping to do a trip to Banda in the spring of 08 by livaboard.

In general, the diving in Ambon was more spectacular than the diving we’ve done in Fiji and rivals much of the diving I’ve done in the red sea. It seemed that the spells of hot water had not taken the heavy toll on the corals in Ambon as it has in fiji. Over fishing and pollution seem to be having some effect but the area still offers some world class diving.

We think of trips like this more as expeditions than vacations with all the gear lugging and extensive preparation. We made it clear early on that we preferred traditional local food rather than insisting on some uninspired rendition of what they think is “American” and we were pleasantly surprised. The local food is simple but very tasty... and they know how to cook it up right! We ate hardly any fish while there, a relatively new change for us. We ate mostly tropical fruits, veggies and chicken and laid off the fish to ease the growing pressures on the reefs. We’ve begun to take the attitude that you can’t simultaneously complain about the lack of fish on the reef and then insist on having them served up for dinner every night… something we commonly see tourist divers do. We didn't feel bad about not supporting the fishermen, we added plenty of green backs to the economy in other ways.

All in all, the trip was awesome.

The planning was extensive, given that they had never had rebreather divers there and we had to supply nearly all of our own consumables. Maria and Ika were very helpful in finding a source of O2 for us and supplying bail out bottles. They were also very helpful when one of us had an electronics malfunction and had to resort to OC, going out of their way to provide us with the extra gear we needed. Rather than get into the dry details here, I am working on an article on the logistics of recreational rebreather diving in remote locations that will go into the details of how we managed to dive rebreathers in an area that does not have the facilities normally required and some of the helpful lessons we have learned… coming soon!

If you love lush reefs with lots of bio-diversity, you'll love Ambon...and it's very reasonably priced. Maluku divers gets three thumbs up from us!

pattimegdiver · 1st August 2007, 19:35

great report George. It makes you just want to pack your bags and go.

When you say a reasonal price what range are we talking about. Did you guys take any pictures? Post please. Sounds like a wonderful trip, thanks for sharing

jmhardingjr · 1st August 2007, 19:41

For future reference, the Blue Marlin Diving guys on Lombok helped me source some sorb when I was living in Indonesia. They put me in touch with a local medical supply company in Surabaya that sold 4-8 mesh Sofnolime. It was reasonably priced and the company uses a relatively cheap expediting service to ship it anywhere in Indonesia (I was on Borneo). It might be possible to get them in touch with your dive guides in Ambon so that the sorb doesn't need to be brought in. I seem to remember it costing me just around $100 US to buy four 9 lb jugs of Sofnolime, including delivery to my office in Balikpapan.

Cheers,

Jay

silent running · 1st August 2007, 20:57

Quote: (Originally Posted by pattimegdiver)

great report Gill. It makes you just want to pack your bags and go.

When you say a reasonal price what range are we talking about. Did you guys take any pictures? Post please. Sounds like a wonderful trip, thanks for sharing

Hi Patti, I was on the trip with Gil and his wife. The daily expenses, including food, lodging, O2 and our own boat for most of the trip was around US $120 a day, if my memory is correct. It was about the same as what I paid in the Philippines, but with much better diving. Gil and his wife took all the pictures, I just spotted, hopping to see the photos soon...

Oh, and BTW, I enjoyed the wreck-large Dutch freighter scuttled at the start of WW2. It was covered in soft coral and had lots of fish, looked like it would be plenty interesting for those confident of their penetration skills... -Andy

**Gill Envy** · 1st August 2007, 22:48

glad you liked it. I see Andy took care of the pricing details...something like $1500 pp for everything but the air. we baught new 4 gig chips for our cameras and one of them seemed to cause some kind of corruption issue...I think we have recovered most of them but it's still going to take a some hours to sort through them and clean them up a bit...i'd be happy to post once I find the time to sort. We have some surprisingly good video too, considering it came from our SD 900's. I might just figure out how to post those too.

Quote: (Originally Posted by pattimegdiver)

great report Gill. It makes you just want to pack your bags and go.

When you say a reasonal price what range are we talking about. Did you guys take any pictures? Post please. Sounds like a wonderful trip, thanks for sharing

**Gill Envy** · 1st August 2007, 23:08

As you'll see in my upcomming report on logistics, we flew our sorb with us without issue. my wife and I coupled full kegs of sodasorb with a half kegs of safnolime each in one of our stowed pachages..., I full keg and one half keg came in under the per piece 70 lb luggage allowence. We took luggage that had some protective rigidness but as Andy has proved a cloth duffle with a good zipper is all you need for the zorb...and the prizm's very efficient radial scrubber seems to be worth it's weight in gold! Andy braught %40 less sorb than we had to.

As long as the kegs are sealed they don't seam to bat an eye. I included a sheet on regulations and compliance, maybe that helped.

I get full 37 lb kegs of sodasor 6-12 for $75. I have not found what I feel is a reasonable price for safnolime and the performance does not seem to warrent the extra price, accept that it comes in smaller, half kegs, which I found quite useful in this scenario.

All that said, I am looking forward to diving at a facility that actually has everything we need, at some point. for now, there are just not very many places equiped to deal, so we pretty much take complete responsibility on our trips.

Quote: (Originally Posted by jmhardingjr)

For future reference, the Blue Marlin Diving guys on Lombok helped me source some sorb when I was living in Indonesia. They put me in touch with a local medical supply company in Surabaya that sold 4-8 mesh Sofnolime. It was reasonably priced and the company uses a relatively cheap expediting service to ship it anywhere in Indonesia (I was on Borneo). It might be possible to get them in touch with your dive guides in Ambon so that the sorb doesn't need to be brought in. I seem to remember it costing me just around $100 US to buy four 9 lb jugs of Sofnolime, including delivery to my office in Balikpapan.

Cheers,

Jay

**Gill Envy** · 8th September 2007, 01:07

ok, finally sorted throught the photos. you can view them here, Enjoy! http://www.flickr.com/photos/1143950...7601900242914/

wannabe · 25th September 2007, 17:07

Hi Gill,

Great pictures! How much did you pay for the diving/accomodation per day?

Regards,

***ScubaDadMiami*** · 25th September 2007, 19:08

Nice report. Have some green.

**Gill Envy** · 26th September 2007, 00:49

I'm think the whole trip cost something like $1500 USD pp, all included + plane ticket. $100 and some change per day.

Quote: (Originally Posted by wannabe)

Hi Gill,

Great pictures! How much did you pay for the diving/accomodation per day?

Regards,

1st August 2007, 16:30	#1 (permalink)
Gill Envy Shearwater Copis Diver Current Rebreather/s: Other CCR Other Rebreather/s: Evolution Other CCR Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: seattle Posts: 1,302	Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia Myself, my wife and our friend Andy Spent 2 1/2 weeks diving with Maluku divers in Ambon Indonesia back in March of this year (07) and I’m finally getting around to putting up a report about this awesome trip. Mario and Ika run the place and do a very nice job. The area is safe now. The period of sectarian violence has long past but tourists still stay away, so there is only one dive operation and virtually no other tourist facilities… no cattle boats here! The people are very pleasant and helpful. The accommodations range from minimalist to decent but by no means 5 star luxury. That said, we’ve found that the more remote the place and more simple the accommodations, the better the diving… Ambon was no exception: beautiful reefs, slow economy, not that many amenities…it’s a trade off we were glad to make. The diving consists of gently sloping reefs and some nice arches, Chimneys and swim throughs and craggy steep drop offs. In general we found the diving to be spectacular, some of the best we’ve ever done. This is not, however, the place for wreck lovers. There is only one scuttled boat in the bay that is not much to look at. The swift current that helped make the reefs so lush did pose challenges at times but we gradually got used to it. We did resort to carefully selecting patches of common coralline algea as finger holds in order to rest from the current without damaging the reef. Diving with rebreathers we had the time to gradually make our way against the current out and down along the outcroppings and hang for long periods observing the massive schools of fish and occasional pelagics that like to hang out in the convergence zones. I can’t imagine what our air consumption would have been had we been on OC fighting that current all the way. Instead of short, rushed dives, as we used to do on OC, we were able to stay down for upwards of two hours per dive, spending as long as we wanted in our favorite locations. Shark sightings were made on nearly every dive! Pulau Tiga (three islands) was by far our favorite place for diving. It’s a bit of a trek from the dive center but well worth it. There are even some lush hard coral reefs still in full glory with giant heads of healthy brain corrals. There are a mix of soft and hard corals and lots of inverts. The most common fish is the blue trigger, a small trigger that schools in the thousands in this area. Muck diving in the bay is both spectacular and depressing. Plastic is everywhere, but little critters galore. Flamboyant cuttle fish, Devil's finger, various bat fish, lots of different kinds of frog fish, leafy scorpion fish, Rock fish and on and on. Some say it rivals Lembeh straight but I have not been there yet so I can’t concur. we did not make it out to the Banda islands, but got to see lots of fresh pictures from there when a group returned from a trip. the hard coral looks more extensive, Banda is more remote, which appears to mean even more fish and healtheir reefs from what we could tell from the pictures. We are hoping to do a trip to Banda in the spring of 08 by livaboard. In general, the diving in Ambon was more spectacular than the diving we’ve done in Fiji and rivals much of the diving I’ve done in the red sea. It seemed that the spells of hot water had not taken the heavy toll on the corals in Ambon as it has in fiji. Over fishing and pollution seem to be having some effect but the area still offers some world class diving. We think of trips like this more as expeditions than vacations with all the gear lugging and extensive preparation. We made it clear early on that we preferred traditional local food rather than insisting on some uninspired rendition of what they think is “American” and we were pleasantly surprised. The local food is simple but very tasty... and they know how to cook it up right! We ate hardly any fish while there, a relatively new change for us. We ate mostly tropical fruits, veggies and chicken and laid off the fish to ease the growing pressures on the reefs. We’ve begun to take the attitude that you can’t simultaneously complain about the lack of fish on the reef and then insist on having them served up for dinner every night… something we commonly see tourist divers do. We didn't feel bad about not supporting the fishermen, we added plenty of green backs to the economy in other ways. All in all, the trip was awesome. The planning was extensive, given that they had never had rebreather divers there and we had to supply nearly all of our own consumables. Maria and Ika were very helpful in finding a source of O2 for us and supplying bail out bottles. They were also very helpful when one of us had an electronics malfunction and had to resort to OC, going out of their way to provide us with the extra gear we needed. Rather than get into the dry details here, I am working on an article on the logistics of recreational rebreather diving in remote locations that will go into the details of how we managed to dive rebreathers in an area that does not have the facilities normally required and some of the helpful lessons we have learned… coming soon! If you love lush reefs with lots of bio-diversity, you'll love Ambon...and it's very reasonably priced. Maluku divers gets three thumbs up from us! __________________ Gill Envy ...Because I wasn't born with gills! ><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°> Last edited by Gill Envy : 2nd August 2007 at 06:41.
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1st August 2007, 19:35	#2 (permalink)
pattimegdiver #1 COPIS Mini Meg Girl Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Sport Kiss Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Portland Oregon Posts: 305	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia great report George. It makes you just want to pack your bags and go. When you say a reasonal price what range are we talking about. Did you guys take any pictures? Post please. Sounds like a wonderful trip, thanks for sharing __________________ Patti Meg Diver Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk Last edited by pattimegdiver : 3rd August 2007 at 06:20.
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1st August 2007, 19:41	#3 (permalink)
jmhardingjr Son of a Sailor Current Rebreather/s: Other CCR Home Build Other Rebreather/s: Other CCR Home Build Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: . . . this one particular harbor . . . Posts: 196	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia For future reference, the Blue Marlin Diving guys on Lombok helped me source some sorb when I was living in Indonesia. They put me in touch with a local medical supply company in Surabaya that sold 4-8 mesh Sofnolime. It was reasonably priced and the company uses a relatively cheap expediting service to ship it anywhere in Indonesia (I was on Borneo). It might be possible to get them in touch with your dive guides in Ambon so that the sorb doesn't need to be brought in. I seem to remember it costing me just around $100 US to buy four 9 lb jugs of Sofnolime, including delivery to my office in Balikpapan. Cheers, Jay __________________ ". . . the sea's in my veins, my tradition remains, I'm just glad I don't live in a trailer . . ."
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1st August 2007, 20:57	#4 (permalink)
silent running Mature mouth breather Current Rebreather/s: Prism Topaz Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: U.S.A. Brooklyn, New York Posts: 1,813	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia Quote: (Originally Posted by pattimegdiver) great report Gill. It makes you just want to pack your bags and go. When you say a reasonal price what range are we talking about. Did you guys take any pictures? Post please. Sounds like a wonderful trip, thanks for sharing Hi Patti, I was on the trip with Gil and his wife. The daily expenses, including food, lodging, O2 and our own boat for most of the trip was around US $120 a day, if my memory is correct. It was about the same as what I paid in the Philippines, but with much better diving. Gil and his wife took all the pictures, I just spotted, hopping to see the photos soon... Oh, and BTW, I enjoyed the wreck-large Dutch freighter scuttled at the start of WW2. It was covered in soft coral and had lots of fish, looked like it would be plenty interesting for those confident of their penetration skills... -Andy
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1st August 2007, 22:48	#5 (permalink)
Gill Envy Shearwater Copis Diver Current Rebreather/s: Other CCR Other Rebreather/s: Evolution Other CCR Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: seattle Posts: 1,302	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia glad you liked it. I see Andy took care of the pricing details...something like $1500 pp for everything but the air. we baught new 4 gig chips for our cameras and one of them seemed to cause some kind of corruption issue...I think we have recovered most of them but it's still going to take a some hours to sort through them and clean them up a bit...i'd be happy to post once I find the time to sort. We have some surprisingly good video too, considering it came from our SD 900's. I might just figure out how to post those too. Quote: (Originally Posted by pattimegdiver) great report Gill. It makes you just want to pack your bags and go. When you say a reasonal price what range are we talking about. Did you guys take any pictures? Post please. Sounds like a wonderful trip, thanks for sharing __________________ Gill Envy ...Because I wasn't born with gills! ><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>
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1st August 2007, 23:08	#6 (permalink)
Gill Envy Shearwater Copis Diver Current Rebreather/s: Other CCR Other Rebreather/s: Evolution Other CCR Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: seattle Posts: 1,302	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia As you'll see in my upcomming report on logistics, we flew our sorb with us without issue. my wife and I coupled full kegs of sodasorb with a half kegs of safnolime each in one of our stowed pachages..., I full keg and one half keg came in under the per piece 70 lb luggage allowence. We took luggage that had some protective rigidness but as Andy has proved a cloth duffle with a good zipper is all you need for the zorb...and the prizm's very efficient radial scrubber seems to be worth it's weight in gold! Andy braught %40 less sorb than we had to. As long as the kegs are sealed they don't seam to bat an eye. I included a sheet on regulations and compliance, maybe that helped. I get full 37 lb kegs of sodasor 6-12 for $75. I have not found what I feel is a reasonable price for safnolime and the performance does not seem to warrent the extra price, accept that it comes in smaller, half kegs, which I found quite useful in this scenario. All that said, I am looking forward to diving at a facility that actually has everything we need, at some point. for now, there are just not very many places equiped to deal, so we pretty much take complete responsibility on our trips. Quote: (Originally Posted by jmhardingjr) For future reference, the Blue Marlin Diving guys on Lombok helped me source some sorb when I was living in Indonesia. They put me in touch with a local medical supply company in Surabaya that sold 4-8 mesh Sofnolime. It was reasonably priced and the company uses a relatively cheap expediting service to ship it anywhere in Indonesia (I was on Borneo). It might be possible to get them in touch with your dive guides in Ambon so that the sorb doesn't need to be brought in. I seem to remember it costing me just around $100 US to buy four 9 lb jugs of Sofnolime, including delivery to my office in Balikpapan. Cheers, Jay __________________ Gill Envy ...Because I wasn't born with gills! ><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>
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8th September 2007, 01:07	#7 (permalink)
Gill Envy Shearwater Copis Diver Current Rebreather/s: Other CCR Other Rebreather/s: Evolution Other CCR Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: seattle Posts: 1,302	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia ok, finally sorted throught the photos. you can view them here, Enjoy! http://www.flickr.com/photos/1143950...7601900242914/ __________________ Gill Envy ...Because I wasn't born with gills! ><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>
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25th September 2007, 17:07	#8 (permalink)
wannabe New Member Current Rebreather/s: Megalodon Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: May 2005 Location: Singapore Posts: 44	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia Hi Gill, Great pictures! How much did you pay for the diving/accomodation per day? Regards,
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25th September 2007, 19:08	#9 (permalink)
*ScubaDadMiami* Moderator Current Rebreather/s: Optima Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Florida, USA Posts: 2,066	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia Nice report. Have some green. __________________ Howard Packer IANTD CCR Instructor Miami Beach, Florida CCRDiveTraining.com
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26th September 2007, 00:49	#10 (permalink)
Gill Envy Shearwater Copis Diver Current Rebreather/s: Other CCR Other Rebreather/s: Evolution Other CCR Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: seattle Posts: 1,302	Re: Trip Report, Rebreather Diving in Ambon, Indonesia I'm think the whole trip cost something like $1500 USD pp, all included + plane ticket. $100 and some change per day. Quote: (Originally Posted by wannabe) Hi Gill, Great pictures! How much did you pay for the diving/accomodation per day? Regards, __________________ Gill Envy ...Because I wasn't born with gills! ><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>><(°>
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