I’ve scuba dived a lot around Indonesia – Manado and Lembeh were great for strange macro creatures, while the colourful coral of Komodo have left me wanting to see more of its beautiful waters. On this dive trip, I spent a week scuba diving in Alor, a pretty remote Indonesian island on the far eastern end of the archipelago and I was blown away by the pristine coral and rich marine life on display. Here are my Alor scuba diving logs and some of my favourite pix of the things that I saw underwater.
How to get to Alor
Located in East Nusa Tenggara on the far eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, getting to Alor from Singapore requires a fair amount of travel. There are no direct international flights to Alor, not even from Indonesia’s major transit cities like Jakarta and Bali – you have to fly to Alor’s capital of Kupang, and then take a smaller propeller plane to Alor.
It took me 3 flights to get from Singapore to Alor and back again and pretty much a day of travel if you include all the transit and check in times.
- Singapore > Jakarta (2 hours) > Kupang (3 hours) > Alor (1 hour)
- Alor > Kupang (1 hour) > Bali (2 hours) > Singapore (3 hours)
Tips on scuba diving in Alor
While not the easiest place to get to, scuba diving in Alor was a pretty cool experience. Here are some overall thoughts if you are planning your own trip there.
Varied dive sites: There was a pretty wide variety of dive sites in Alor, from strong current drift dives and picturesque walls of coral to murky sandy sites filled with strange macro creatures.
Water temperature is colder: Most of our dives had water temperatures around 27-28ºC, but there are thermoclines underwater, and particularly if you’re diving in the south of Alor, it tends to be colder. We did one dive where the temperature dropped to maybe 24-25ºC for a fairly long stretch and boy that was like a real cold plunge.
I recommend layers and/or fleece if you get cold easily!
Unpredictable currents: We usually did our dive briefings before going in, but currents in Alor seem to be pretty unpredictable so be prepared for lots of change when you’re on site. Definitely bring a SMB just in case you end up separated from your group.
Pick the right season: The waters around the Pantar Strait can get quite deep and cold, if you visit at the right time of the year, you might see some really cool stuff! Between dives, we spotted pilot whales, melon head whales and spinner dolphins from the boat. If you go during whale migration season from June to November, there’s a chance you can spot blue whales, sperm whales and even lots of mola mola sunfish! We were hoping for hammerhead sharks this time but alas, no luck for us.
Alor dive sites
If you’re curious about my photography set up, I’m using the Sony RX100 III in a Fantasea dive casing. I really am kinda lazy so I shoot on auto mode with no strobes or lenses, though I really should get a proper dive torch at least!
You can see the dive sites via Moka Alor Dive Resort’s map
Check out dive
Moka House Reef
The only shore dive that we did on this trip was our check out dive right in front of the Moka Resort. It was afternoon so the waters were getting shallow, and unfortunately we had to trek out a fair bit to get to the deeper drop off area both at the start and the end of the dive, but despite it being a house reef, there were still a lot of interesting critters in the water!
While we didn’t have the chance to night dive here, we did grab our torches and pull on our booties and saw a number of equally cool things just by walking around the water, like a very patient wonderpus that spent a long time letting us snap shots of it, to snake eels slithering around the shallows, cute little pipefish and nudibranches camouflaging along the seabed.
Day 1
Abila
Abila is named for a nearby village and was a bit of a drift dive + wall dive and lots of colourful coral and fishes throughout. Highlights here were the cute little ribbon eels as well as patch of coral near the end where we found both a Leaf Scorpionfish and a white frogfish!
Babylon
Babylon was a wall dive with lots of interesting little critters along the nooks and crannies of the wall, from orangutan crabs and squat lobsters to peacock mantis shirmps and moray eels. The great thing about Alor dive sites is the beautiful lighting you get in the shallower areas towards the end of the dives with lots of colourful coral and fish to cap off your dive. We spotted white nudibranches mating and another leaf scorpionfish.
Sulambali
Another beautiful wall diving site – the coral variety and colours in Alor are really quite something. Lots of traditional fishing traps found in the waters around here as well. Yet another leaf scorpionfish and ribbon eel for the photo collection.
Day 2
Red Sand / Pantai Merah
Named for the reddish sand base, Pantai Merah was probably one of my favourite dive sites for the sheer beauty of the coral around here. Pantai Merah starts out as a wall dive but towards the end at the shallows is where the red sand is located – you can also spot some bubbles escaping the sea bed.
We saw some pretty interesting things here in pairs! Like a pair of different moray eels poking out of the same hole, as well as 2 ribbon eels in the same hole.
Bama Wall – Beautiful coral gardens
Bama Wall is another of Alor’s more famous dive sites and it was COLD – maybe about 24C? It started out as a sloping wall and drift dive and the water was notably colder here! My favourite part was a little cove of pink and green corals in the shallower bits where we found lots of furry purple nudibranches as well as a pair of robust ghost pipefish floating along like seaweed.
Bama Wall also features very large school of butterfly fish that apparently wait for the damselfish to lay their eggs on the rock walls and then proceed to swarm the walls eating the eggs!
Lobang – Macro black sand muck diving
Our first macro site in Alor features a mucky black sandy bottom with trash that reminds me a lot of Lembeh. Not very deep, kinda murky and the moment you kick too hard it’s a flurry of black sand you have to let settle or your photos will all turn our grainy.
There is a particular portion of this dive site that I call the ‘fantasy cauliflower forest’, a little field of white ghostly cauliflower-shaped corals atop the black sand that looks like some sort of haunted fairytale woodland. Amidst this surreal looking patch is the home of the resident Rhinopias, a striking large red specimen whose neighbour is an equally large lionfish – apparently the dive torches attract smaller fish which the lionfish feeds on, so it’s learned to hang around the Rhinopias because that’s where all the divers head to!
Our guide also found us some harlequin shrimp, spider crabs and even a moray eel or two on the move. Of note was a very large nudibranch that was home to two emperor shrimp on it.
Day 3
We headed towards the south of Alor Island where the waters from the Savu Sea are generally a little colder.
Wolang Cave
All prepped for colder waters! Wolang Cave consists of a bunch of coral covered walls, but also an interesting cave where 2 giant sharks like to nap in. It’s a very narrow cave, so we had to take turns wriggling through the opening, and then backing out so that we wouldn’t disturb the sleeping sharks. We did get to see the sharks from the other side where there was a little ‘window’ of sorts as well.
School’s Out
School’s Out got its rather fun name from being situated near a school in a village. Plenty of coral all around – this was a flatter site. There was a field of garden eels poking out the sandy bottom, and we spotted a fish with a parasite over its eye – I had no idea what the guide was gesturing, but it turns out I somehow managed a picture of the parasite anyway!
I enjoyed the ending bit where we had a bit of a drift dive over long fields of staghorn coral swarming with little green-blue fish. Very relaxing and chill way to enjoy the dive site.
Ampera / Mucky Mosque – Macro black sand muck diving
We were supposed to dive here the day before, but because there were 2 LOBs on site already, we swapped over to lobang instead which was a good idea, because we had this site all to ourselves this time around. Located in Kalabahi Bay, this volcanic black sand muck diving site also had a whole range of interesting creatures.
Highlights here for me included the friendly school of razorfish darting around me like blades of grass, as well as the very elusive mandarin fish crawling around the rocks which were covered with sea urchins, making photographing them quite a challenge.
We found a total of 3 seahorses here, including 1 that looked a bit pregnant. They were mostly just curled up on the seabed. Also I think I saw the most different types of moray and snake eels here on this site, some of which I’ve not encountered like the golden spotted snake eel – big ones, little ones – so plentiful!
Day 4
Umapura
Kicking off our 4th full day of diving with yet another pretty wall off the little Ternate island just opposite Alor. Named for the Umapura Village, this dive site had some interesting walls and overhang sections with tons of fish. Spotted some favourites like an orangutan crab, as well as the only stingray that we saw on this entire trip sleeping under a rock. The drift at the end was also fairly strong.
Hula
At some point, yet another wall dive becomes quite repetitive! We were on the hunt for pygmy seahorses which are typically found on sea fans around the 20+m mark, but alas this doesn’t seem to be the season for them. Still lots of interesting critters and more beautiful walls of coral and fish.
Seborebo
Last site for the day, Seborebo also has a couple more walls and again, sadly no pygmy seahorses either. We have the usual beautiful coral and fish, and the highlights perhaps an interesting warty aka clown frogfish and managing a shot of a pair of dartfish aka fire gobies. The end part had us drifting along in the blue like we were flying!
Day 5
Munaseli / Yellow Corner – Deep currents for pelagics
Munaseli is another iconic dive site in Alor particularly for the large pelagic creatures – hammerhead sharks, mobula rays and schools of big fish. This was one of the sites everyone was quite pumped up for.
Some tips: This dive requires a reef hook as the currents here are very strong and you will want to hang around without finning to death. Go Nitrox on this dive if you have the option and make sure you’re kitted out to fin hard because those currents are like woah.
The boat dropped us along the wall, and we had to do a fair amount of swimming to get to the optimum spot, which is about 20-30m deep depending on where you go at the corner of the wall where you hook in and look for creatures swimming past in the blue like you’re watching TV.
If you are lucky? Schools of hammerhead sharks and other more common black tip sharks will greet you here. I was not so lucky, we dived here twice and I and only caught sights of 1-2 shy sharks that zipped past fairly quickly, though there was a lone giant barracuda and another larger school of smaller barracuda nearby.
It really is a matter of luck and timing – one guy in our group caught a glimpse of 2-3 hammerhead sharks as his group departed, another diver I talked to on the plane ride out said their dive mates spotted eagle rays here, but just be prepared that this is a pretty hectic dive that turns into a drift dive after you unhook.
The Arch
More walls and a particularly cool depression into the wall which I guess is how this place got its name. The waters here on the southwest of Ternate Island are incredibly clear, even on the surface.
Interesting variety of sealife here, I enjoyed the two sea snakes we saw here, some nudibranches and the orangutan crab, and some cool fishes like the bluefin trevally and a pair of harlequin filefish which i first got a glimpse of in Umapura.
Bakalang Jetty – Macro heaven under a pier
I didn’t expect too much from a dive site under a jetty – these tend to be kinda dirty because of the litter that comes from the nearby village – but Bakalang Jetty turned out to be one of my favourite dive sites in Alor, with an amazing colourful collection of coral on the tall pillars that extend under the jetty, and the macro life hiding amidst them, quite different from the other 2 muck diving sites which were generally quite murky and you had to go hunting in the black sand.
The bulk of things we saw were on the pillars, so it can feel a bit hectic when you have 20 divers swarming around, taking turns to photograph things, but the variety of things! And also because it was well lit, the colours were amazing without me having to do very much. The photographs don’t really do justice to what it looks like in person.
This macro heaven had ghost pipefish, frogfish, scorpionfish, lots of neon nudibranches and even an octopus squished in a nearby rock.
We did spend a 6th day diving, returning to Munaseli in the morning for one last dive – our flight was in the following morning so we needed a 24 hours of surface interval for that.
Where to stay: Moko Alor Dive Resort
We spent our week in Alor with Moko Alor Dive Resort.
I was lucky to be in an ocean view two bedroom villa, sharing the room with my sister on the first floor, while another couple in our group had the second floor. There are other villas with a garden view, basically a little further inland. Overall the little house was very cute and had aircon so we were pretty comfortable throughout. Could probably do with more proper lighting – lots of mood lighting meant it was a bit hard to do camera set ups at night.
There was a mini plunge pool and hose in front of the house which was useful for post-dive washing up, and they even installed a drying line for us halfway through when we said we needed more places to dry gear. The bathroom at the back had an open concept and was very nice, even had its own door to the outside so you could pop in without trekking water through the house. The water was heated, though the pressure gets very weak when everyone is showering at the same time.
There was a proper swimming pool by the beach with some deckchairs for lounging, as well as a main dining area where we had our 3 meals provided. The cooking was pretty good, lots of Indonesian style fare with a rotating variety of 5-6 dishes in a buffet spread everyday, and even different types of sambal and dessert.
Diving facilities wise there is a dive centre and camera room located outside the main area where we hung out – I never really went there much though. The resort has only recently expanded and we were one of their first large groups they had to deal with (18 of us!) so there definitely were some organisational/teething things to figure out, but overall I had a great time!
Our dive guide was Samsuddin aka Sam, son of the local water tribe chief and practically an aquatic creature himself with his wild curly hair and uncanny ability to remain stock still in the water even when the currents are going strong. He also has a knack of unearthing the tiniest nudibranches which my poor camera could barely capture without a macro lens.
Have you ever been scuba diving in Alor? Tell me what I missed! In the meantime, some other Indonesia scuba diving posts:
