The original spice islands were scattered around the Banda Sea in present day Indonesia. 500 years ago these were some of the most valuable real estate in the world. They were a part of what was called the East Indies, and Prince Henry the Navigator, Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan, among others, all tried to find new routes to them. Although the journey was treachurous, a sack full of nutmeg from these islands would put a common sailor into an early retirement if he made it back to Europe alive. The island of Run was one of the key trading points the Dutch asked for when they gave Manhattan to the British in 1667. It allowed them to lock in control of the spice trade until the early 1800s.
Today sailors in the Banda Sea board dive boats and, instead of pursuing nutmeg, they pursue hammerhead sharks. I spent over a week on a liveaboard dive boat doing up to four dives a day in these waters.
Hammerheads like strong currents and many of the dives found us locked into our reef hooks hoping they’d swim by.
Sometimes a wave of fish would pass by.
Other times we’d have highly venemous, but extremely non-aggressive and safe, sea snakes wind through our positions.
One time a turtle stumble by in the current, which was so strong when I turned to film it passing by, I almost lost my camera.
Another time I put my hook just above an octupus and got to watch it staring up at me.
When we finally saw hammerheads they were both magnificent and mysterious. Magnificent because of their wonderful shape and mysterious because we couldn’t always get the clearest glimpses of them.
My biggest siting was this large school on my second day. I swam hard out into the current to try to film them. They were large numbers of them, but I couldn’t get very close.
The cool part was they came back a second time, but I still couldn’t get much closer.
On the last day a group of divers were about 50 meters in front of us. Suddenly they started pointing and swimming fast. We immediately followed them. But by the time we got to where they were, the sharks were gone. Fortunately they got some great videos. You can hear some of them shouting into the water.
Banda was the first time I saw sea snakes in the water and at a couple of dive spots they were everywhere. I found them fascinating to watch.
At one location there was a huge dead tree lying underwater. A snake came by and provided me a nice excuse to also film the tree.
One of the prettiest fish I saw on this trip were the tiny three centimeter long mandarinfish.
At around sunset during mating season a male and female would swim together for a short bit and then suddenly separate to reveal a mass of eggs floating in the water. After a false start at the beginning of the video, they finally complete their tryst at the end of the video.
As with most of Indonesia the sea life and coral were amazing.
This is just a non-stop assembly line of fish.
Unfortunately, in a number of areas we visited large sections of coral were decimated by dynamite fishing. These were from local fishermen and it is still going on. These areas are so remote there aren’t any effective ways for the laws to be enforced. As you can see below, it’s pretty sad.
One location was just off a small, active volcanic island. In this video you can see the ash covering the area.
Here’s a nice video of a cuttlefish changing color as it moves back into a lighter background.
There was a nice selection of smaller life at some of the locations: from the strangely shaped leaf scopionfish, to a flounder, to a beautiful nudibranch, to the unique feather starfish, to a a wonderfully ugly scorpionfish.
On the larger side, I saw a couple of marble rays (a first for me) and the very distinct shape of a large Napolean wrasse.
There were 22 of us on this trip. It was a wonderful group from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and China. I was the only Westerner. The boat, the Seaisee, was large and spacious so things never felt too cramped.
Our dining and relaxation area.
My comfortable ensuite cabin
Our diving area
The fourth floor deck.
Munching down on the deck for a Korean style BBQ dinner.
One of the guests had a drone. Here’s a nice shot of the boat in one of our beautiful, remote dive locations.
Here we are leaving the boat for a dive.
And here we are entering the water.
Finally, a picture of the list of our dives during the trip.
