Komodo, Indonesia

Our next adventure took us on a liveaboard dive boat for 10 days around the myriad islands of Komodo National Park.

our boat is the one with the wooden top level and white hull

We had a morning excursion to visit the namesake Dragons, and got to see several -

(you’ll have to forgive the slight blurriness of the pictures because I forgot to change my camera settings to account for the low light)

To see the next video, be sure and use the link at the bottom of the post to open the page in your browser -

We also saw some of their prey -

… and learned that they can go a month between feedings, although probably not if they just eat one or two of these monkeys!

They are ambush predators, and can take down agile or large prey by blending into their surroundings and lying in wait. For the bigger animals, like these water buffalo…

… they either get a calf away from the herd, or bite an adult — infusing venom, and then trailing the victim until it collapses.

Enough of land stuff, on to diving!

We saw many similar fish and creatures to the ones in Raja Ampat…

… but I was especially proud of this Thorn Seahorse that I found on a night dive, while everyone else was looking in other areas.

The dive guide found this tiny (only an inch long!) Bobtail Squid -

The nudibranchs, or sea slugs, were quite varied here -

(this picture is blown up so you can see the detail)

… ranging in size from an inch or two, to the Spanish Dancer, which is commonly about a foot long!

See how they dance -

(you may want to replay that video a time or two to catch the actual dancing in the first few seconds)

This Banded Pipehorse was posing beautifully -

Steve captured these Schooling Bannerfish (as well as several other schools you can see in the background) on one of our deep (90 ft) “epic” current dives -

This eel was one we’d never seen before - a White Ribbon Eel:

(you may want to enlarge the face to see some interesting detail)

I know this post has been a little hodge-podge, but I wanted to share the highlights of our diving.

I’ll let this blue Ribbon Eel say goodbye for me -