Mermaid II 18 – 26 Janyary 2019 – What did the Supermoon Bring Us ?

On this trip we planned to visit the South and the Central areas of Raja Ampat Marine Protected Area.We first headed south to Misool and the first thing we noticed was that we have started to have a bit more intense underwater current.

The supermoon phase was going to happen during the course of this trip and as result we had bigger tides in the region. Because of the bigger tides we ended up having more current but the current brought to favorable things to us.Number one was that lots of sediment and particles in the water were swept away from most dive sites resulting in a very good visibility. Number two, the fish love current so we had great amounts of schooling fish practically in every dive site we went.

In Misool all the soft corals were open feeding on the nutriments brought by the current.

When we reached the Pyanemu area in central Raja we had some incredible dives at Melissa’s Garden. At some stage it almost looked like we had vortex of small fish like damsels and fusiliers. It was incredible.

The weather was nice and sunny and we could adventure ourselves, once again, further up north in the Kawe region. That turned out to be a great choice. Unlike Misool, where we had quite few boats in the area, here by Kawe we were the only ones. We first went to Black Rock where we had a great dive where we could see a beautiful big marble stingray but the real highlight and jackpot of the trip happened when we dived at Eagle Rock where we had about 10 reef manta close by the top reef circling back and forward while getting cleaned by the small fish. The show lasted for the entire dive and everyone could appreciate the beautiful and elegant swim of the manta.

It was on this very same day that the suoermoon was going to appear in the sky, so at around 6:30 pm we all patiently waited for the beautiful moon to appear and admire all of its splendor.

The next day we dived in Yangefo Blue water mangroves and had perfect conditions, clear water, lots of juvenile fish and quite few archer fish in the shallow area of the mangroves.

The trip was also very good for spotting wobbegong sharks, as we could spot them in several dive sites.