Adelaar Itinerary

Banda Sea and Alor (MOF - AMQ) 8N

Day 1: Maumere
After boarding Adelaar in Maumere in the north of Flores, you will enjoy your first day on board whilst cruising eastwards along the Flores coast.

Day 2: Adonara
The submerged seamounts off Adonara are covered by a diverse mix of hard and soft corals. They provide shelter for a variety of reef fish and attract bigger predators such as jacks, tuna, and blacktip and grey reef sharks. Juvenile silvertip sharks are often seen patrolling the typically clear blue water.

Day 3: Pantar
We start the day with an adrenaline-filled dive with the objective to see schooling hammerhead sharks, followed by a second morning dive on a stunning wall that is covered so completely in soft corals that we might get a sensory overload. The afternoon and night dives take place on a patch reef that is well known for harboring rhinopoids. After the afternoon dive, we let the locals show us around their picturesque village.

Day 4: Wetar
After a night's crossing, we arrive in the morning in the Moluccas! We are diving in the walls and slopes of Reong and Wetar. Depending on the prevailing current, they can be very rich in fish. Grey reef sharks, bamboo sharks, giant trevally, schooling big-eyed jacks, rainbow runners, and tunas are often seen here. On the quieter dives there are areas completely covered in zebra anemones. With a bit of luck, we may spot the beautiful but rare leopard shrimp that lives in symbiosis with them.

We will set the sails as we start our journey into the heart of the Banda Sea. With a bit of luck, we may see some of the whales that migrate through these waters during this time of the year.

Day 5: Gunung Api
Gunung Api means "volcano" in Indonesian. It is an old, lonely volcano that arises from the depths of the Banda Sea. It attracts a huge colony of resident seabirds above the waves, while underwater the island is home to schools of jacks, surgeonfish, tunas, barracudas, and other pelagic fish species—as well as a lot of sea snakes. These venomous but unaggressive reptiles can be encountered on each dive around Gunung Api, sometimes in great numbers, which makes these dives absolutely unique.

Day 6: Lucipara Maisel Archipelago
The Lucipara archipelago consists of several uninhabited low-profile sandy islands with lush tropical vegetation. The islands themselves are inaccessible, protected by very shallow fringing reefs that extend several hundred meters from the islands themselves. At the edge these huge coral shallows plunge steeply into the typically crystal-clear abyss of the Banda Sea. Diving these remote locations has by definition an exploratory character—their location in the middle of the deep sea with no other islands around is very inviting for passing pelagics to hang around, thus increasing chances of close encounters between divers and bigger species such as tunas, rainbow runners, thresher sharks, silky sharks, or hammerhead sharks.

Day 7: South Ambon
After two morning dives on the exposed south coast of Ambon Island that are both stunning from a topographical and coral cover point of view, we enter Ambon Bay, where we will go hunting for critters. Thorny seahorses, ornate ghost pipefish, rhinopias, frogfish, and ribbon eels are just a few examples to illustrate the extraordinarily rich muck diving of Ambon Bay.

Day 8: Laha
Laha's mud diving sites are world-renowned. Apart from a plethora of nudibranchs, cephalopods, ambon scorpionfish, and different species of leaf scorpionfish, Laha is also famously the only place in the world where— with some luck! - The beautifully weird psychedelic frogfish may be spotted.

Day 9: Ambon
After a last delicious breakfast, it is time to say goodbye and disembark—until the next time.

Sample itineraries are for guidance only. Actual itineraries may differ slightly due to factors such as weather, wildlife, logistics, and local regulations.