Crossing Trip
Reports & Reviews

My goal was macro photography in pristine conditions. What I got was better. The moment we left Sorong and headed into Triton Bay the water changed — from murky coastal water to transparent. Visibility climbed to 35 metres by day two. I could see the seafloor from 25 metres up.

Day one anchorage was a shallow muck site called Birie. Within two minutes a coconut octopus was hunting crabs eight feet away. Within five, a flamboyant cuttlefish drifted past. Six dives over four days yielded three octopus species, 22 nudibranch species, six pipefish species, mantis shrimp on every dive and juvenile squid hunting at night.

What struck me most was the crew’s expertise. Budi, the dive guide, had twelve years in Triton Bay. He did not just point out the famous creatures — he explained hunting behaviour, mating season timing and symbiotic relationships. His knowledge made the diving transcendent rather than merely good.

We had two crossing nights. Both calm; the motion was gentle and I barely noticed it. The common areas were comfortable enough to edit photos during downtime.

I joined a 12-day Banda Sea crossing with a team of four scientists and six recreational divers. Our mission was to observe shark and manta behaviour in a deep-water pelagic system.

The Banda Sea in August is serious diving. Currents run two to three knots, visibility varies between 20 and 50 metres, and the animals are big. On day three at Batu Bolong a strong current pushed us toward a rocky pinnacle; our guide positioned us behind a coral block to break it. Within minutes hammerheads appeared — a school of more than thirty, circling the cleaning station. We watched for forty minutes.

It is not a resort dive. You work in strong current and you accept that five to ten per cent of planned dives get scrubbed for safety. One deep pinnacle dive was cancelled for a four-knot current. We dove a nearby protected reef instead and found ourselves in a night-time shark aggregation we had not planned but will now study.

We had four crossing nights. August swells mean one and a half to two and a half metres and noticeable motion. Two of ten divers felt mild nausea despite medication — and the diver in the bow cabin later wished they had requested midship. Cabin location matters on rough routes.

We had never done a liveaboard. We are swimmers and snorkellers, not certified divers, so a part-land, part-ocean crossing looked like our way in.

On Rinca Island we hiked with a ranger and a guide. The landscape is alien and the dragons are real — eight to ten feet long, prehistoric, moving slowly across the dirt. A female was nesting near our path and the ranger kept us at a safe distance. Seeing a dragon in its actual habitat rather than a zoo hit differently.

The crossing night was the rough one. The captain warned us plainly: three-metre swells heading east, and we were heading east. Jennifer barely slept; Tom slept through the whole thing. By breakfast the swells had subsided and we felt slightly silly about the worry.

On the snorkelling days a guide took us down to twenty or twenty-five feet. Jennifer was nervous about depth, but the guide stayed alongside the whole time. We saw turtles, a small reef shark and coral formations like brain mazes. When we wanted longer at a site, the guide simply added fifteen minutes.

Sixty dives logged, Advanced Open Water, and I had never done a liveaboard or crossed open water overnight. I was nervous. Here is what actually happened.

The boat was smaller than I expected and my cabin was a small double with barely space to turn around. But the crew made me welcome immediately — where to stow gear, when meals were served, dinner at six.

The first crossing night, I took a tablet and lay in my cabin. The motion was noticeable, not violent; the cabin swayed like a hammock. I put on a podcast, closed my eyes and fell asleep. Woke at two, felt mildly queasy, slept again. By day three the motion felt normal and I stopped thinking about it.

What I wish I had known: bring your own underwater housing if you are serious about photography — renting is possible but your own is better. And a motion-sickness patch beats pills; I could have avoided the tablet hangover.