Komodo National Park  is located within the Lesser Sunda Islands in the border region between the provinces of East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara.  The park includes the three larger islands Komodo, Padar and Rinca, and 26 smaller ones, with a total area of 1,733 km2 (603 km2 of it land).  The area was made a national park in 1980 to protect the Komodo dragon, the world’s largest lizard.  Later it was dedicated to protecting other species, including marine species and in 1991 the park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Komodo National Park has been selected as one of the “New 7 Wonders of Nature”, and is part of the Coral Triangle, which contains some of the richest marine biodiversity on Earth.  There are over 100 different dive sites, more than 1000 species of fish, 350 different types of coral and over 1000 individual mantas have been identified.

To get here you can fly direct to Labuan Bajo airport from either Bali or Jakarta. Mikumba Diving offers day trips and liveaboards in Komodo.

We’re planning on doing a minimum of 28 dives for this trip and are going to be searching for the schools of hammerheads that congregate there at this time of year.  There are several atolls, totally remote, that drop down to 2,000m, so they’re the perfect place to find what we’re looking for.  We’ve been lucky enough to see 100+ hammerheads at once on our previous expeditions.

We’re going to be looking around The Banda Sea visiting Nil Desperandum, Gili Manuk, Hatta Atoll and more but the exact route will be weather dependent.  If we can get further east we’ll go to the famous snake island – Gili Manuk, an active volcano where you can see hundreds of sea snakes on one dive alone.  When we start to run low on food and supplies we’ll head to Alor and visit the headhunter village followed by a night dive.

The water temperature can vary – down to 17 degrees in Alor or up to 28 in other areas, but this is why the big stuff comes in – we’ll even have the chance of seeing mola molas – the oceanic sunfish, and possibly even sperm whales – we’ve also snorkelled with false killer whales here in the past.

We’re planning on doing a minimum of 28 dives for this trip and are going to be searching for the schools of hammerheads that congregate there at this time of year.  There are several atolls, totally remote, that drop down to 2,000m, so they’re the perfect place to find what we’re looking for.  We’ve been lucky enough to see 100+ hammerheads at once on our previous expeditions.

We’re going to be looking around The Banda Sea visiting Nil Desperandum, Gili Manuk, Hatta Atoll and more but the exact route will be weather dependent.  If we can get further east we’ll go to the famous snake island – Gili Manuk, an active volcano where you can see hundreds of sea snakes on one dive alone.  When we start to run low on food and supplies we’ll head to Alor and visit the headhunter village followed by a night dive.