Komodo National Park is an exciting, rewarding, and sometimes very challenging place to dive. From Bali and almost 1,000 miles east to Alor, there is a chain of islands that were formed by undersea volcanoes, which over millions of years created a natural land barrier that divides the cooler Indian Ocean on the southern coasts from the warmer Banda Sea on the Northern coasts. Komodo sits directly in the middle of this chain. As the tides change, great amounts of water are exchanged and funneled through the narrow straits between these islands where nutrient rich waters are brought up from the depths, providing a constant supply of food for the reefs and fishes here. Huge schools of plankton feeders like Anthias, Fusiliers, and Surgeonfish are patrolled by larger hunters like Jacks, Mackerels, Tunas, and Sharks. Of course Mantas can be found here in large numbers too, playing, being cleaned, or feeding on the surface in many places.

And all this action can bring in more agile hunters like pods of Dolphins or the occasional Orcas and Whales. This ‘flow’ of water also functions as a temperature regulator, ensuring that corals are pristine and un-affected by ‘bleaching’ caused by above normal sea temperatures in other areas of the world.
Komodo National Park is home to not only the famous Komodo Dragons, but also to one of most diverse and rich marine environments in the world, where over 1,000 species of fish and 250 different types of reef-building corals can be found. Komodo offers a wide range of diving experiences: high-voltage current dives, gentle drift dives, cliff dives along walls of color, dives around monumental boulders, cave dives and swim-throughs, colorful reefs, seamounts and pinnacles, and sandy slopes composed of both black and white sand.

The reefs in the North of the park tend to have more varieties and larger numbers of hard corals and sponges than in the South, where you will find more colorful varieties of soft and branching corals. The South tends to be cooler during the dry season, between May and October, with better visibility in the north. While in the opposite season, January to March, the northern areas get cooler with lower visibility and the south warms up with good visibility. Because Komodo sits in an arid micro-climate region compared to the surrounding islands, rainfall here is much less than other areas in the tropics. Therefore, Komodo can make a great diving destination year round.