Mermaid II 25 April – 10 May, 2019

Biodiversity special,16 days, 1200 nautical miles across 5 different seas.

What an experience! Volcanos every day and what is more beautiful than a sun settling or rising behind a volcano? Let me answer that, nothing! Absolutely stunning.

Thanks to that Mermaid Liveaboards explores the surrounding islands on our way down Maumere, we got to see things that I could not even in my wildest dreams experience normally.

During this trip we have checked of pretty much every box of what our divers wished to see. Thanks to a bit of bad weather, it created a spike of nutrients in the water and lowering the water temperatures slightly, we got to see schooling hammerhead sharks!! so we were extremely lucky! We did not get to see them just once or twice but for a few days in every dive at some point! In one dive some of us got to experience 200+ of them swimming together just meters in front of us!

If you ever seen a Sea snake underwater you know that they are quite shy, but in the volcanic area around Banda Neira and Manuk, the way we got greeted by hundreds of sea snakes was a new and exhilarating experience.

Of course, we did not just see fish and bigger things, Alor shows its true colors and offers some excellent macro dives, how many can say that they say 4 different species of Rhinophia and ghost pipefish just minutes from each other and to top it off then a couple of frog fishes decided to come out and play! Just an amazing exploration dive that could been better than what it was!

Over all, what I can say and from all of us here at Mermaid II, we promised a Biodiversity special and I can safely say that we delivered

By Matthias Edling