Dive amongst a kaleidoscope of life in Raja Ampat

There are few places on Earth as colourful as Raja Ampat – where towering neon-green islands give way to an aquatic realm teeming with kaleidoscopic life, writes Deborah Dickson-Smith.

As I glide through Melissa’s Garden, a technicoloured underwater landscape, I understand what it’s like to dive the epicentre of our planet’s marine biodiversity. Drifting over an endless meadow of staghorn coral, I can barely see through the thick clouds of fish – orange and purple anthias, damsels of all colours, and bright blue, green and teal chromis. It’s like swimming in the world’s best aquarium.

The garden’s namesake, Melissa, is the daughter of Max Ammer, who pioneered dive tourism in this remote Indonesian outpost, surveying and naming many of the dive sites, and establishing Raja Ampat’s first diving resort in 1990. Ammer was so taken with the multi-faceted beauty of this dive site that he named it after his beloved newborn daughter. It’s just one of many standout dive sites we explore on a 10-night ‘All of Raja Ampat’ cruise that takes us from Sorong on mainland West Papua, northeast to Wayag, then south to the islands and reefs of Misool

Take in breathtaking scenes both above and below the water

The view above the water is almost as striking. We sail through a landscape of soaring, vivid green limestone karst islands. Some meet the water vertically, jagged black volcanic rocks plunging into turquoise waters. Others are skirted by thick mangrove forests, meeting the water in a tangle of roots.

Underwater, the scenes are more varied, much more colourful and far less peaceful. Here, there are tall pinnacles surrounded by schooling fish; vast meadows of cabbage, staghorn and bushy corals harbouring myriad species of reef fish; and busy cleaning stations where teams of cleaner fish eagerly hover, waiting to serve their larger clients – groupers, wrasse, manta rays and sweetlips.

In the shallows under the mangrove roots you’ll see a vastly different range of critters to those found 10 metres deeper on the coral gardens below – hunting angler fish and tiny schools of dart fish, which hover vertically over the sea grass. Deeper down, clouds of baby blue chromis, black and white striped humbugs and orange anthias form bursts of colour over outcrops of bushy acropora coral, expanding and contracting their formation as I breathe in and out watching them.

In deeper waters still, there are dramatic pinnacles, sometimes piercing the surface, and dropping down 20 to 30 metres, their walls covered in vibrant coral and enormous gorgonian sea fans

One such site in Misool, Puri Pinnacle, is particularly action-packed. ‘Puri’ means ‘little fish’, and as soon as we descend, we see why this site was given its name. Enormous schools of sardines move in formation around the pinnacle like flocks of starlings, their silver bodies catching the sunlight with a flash as they turn. There’s a different mood entirely at cleaning stations such as Nudi Rock. Here, as we hover at the edge of the reef wall surrounded by rainbow-hued reef fish, we watch a large reef manta ray circle us before sweeping in and parking herself above a large table coral to welcome her little fleet of cleaner wrasse.

Sail on the traditionally built Dewi Nusantara

I’m exploring Raja Ampat on the Dewi Nusantara, Indonesia’s largest and most luxurious dive liveaboard boat. This three-masted schooner was built in 2007 in the jungles of Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Dewi’s owners based their designs on American schooners from the late 1800s, then passed on their blueprints to a master boat builder from Sumbawa. The residents of Sumbawa in Eastern Nusa Tenggara are famous for their sea-faring and boat-building; skills passed down from generation to generation. The ironwood timber was felled and fashioned into shape in the jungle before being transported to a coastal construction site.

The timber decking and eastern colonial decor create an ambience of a bygone era of luxury travel. But the decor isn’t the only thing creating that feeling. The dive service is second to none. All I need to remember to take with me is my mask; everything else is carried to our dive tender by the crew. Someone helps me into my dive gear, puts fins on my feet and hands me a glass of chilled water as we head to each dive site. After every dive, I step under a rain shower to rinse off, and I’m handed a warm towel before being seated for a neck and shoulder massage.

Evenings, we enjoy a three-course meal under the stars, ordered according to our taste and dietary requirements earlier that day. We get to compare dive stories with new-found friends over a glass or two of fine wine before retiring to our enormous beds, ready to dive, eat, sleep, repeat, all over again the next day.