Pulau Fam

Arrangements

I was staying at Koranu Fyak homestay and had dived with them already.  To be with friends that I had been hanging around with, I chose to dive with Yenkoranu Homestay next door.  I had approached them for their homestay too but their boat transfer appeared overpriced due to a mistake in their webpage.

The two dives were part of a package to Fam Island organised by the group staying at Yenkoranu and we piggy-backed on them.

Starting the day

We had cakes for breakfast at 0630 at Yenkoranu as our breakfast doesn’t start that early. Then we set off soon after 0700.

It was a wet and bumpy ride towards Fam Island. We stopped briefly at Manta Point where the crew had spotted some mantas. We jumped into the water and I saw some dark shadows in the deep. Others had a slightly better glimpse but it was fleeting.

From there we went to a high lookout at Pianemo which gave us a view described as mini Wayag. Wayag is the iconic landscape of Raja Ampat as seen in many brochures but it is rather more difficult to access.

The dive experience

• The first dive was at Fam Wall which was a very beautiful coral wall. There were plenty of reef fish but most impressive was the huge triggerfish and parrotfish. And there was a lobster too begging to come home with me  🙂
• After a lunch break on an island where a couple of monitor lizards were hanging out, we proceeded to Melissa’s Garden for our second dive. Again the coral wall was great. Quite impressive was the triggerfish, parrotfish and pufferfish, all of which were huge. I also liked the few chevron barracudas hanging out, all facing the same direction. We finished in a huge area of branchy type coral where I was surprised to see very clearly segregated zones where they had different colours (purple, yellow, green).

During the second dive, one of the diver’s regulator failed. The divemaster attempted to fix it underwater but without success. She had to sit out that dive on the boat and was given a replacement dive next morning. All the gear looked in good shape so I guess it was a freak incident.

Visibility at neither place wasn’t great at only about 15m. While the coral was good, the sea life was somewhat ho-hum for me having been spoilt by my several dives at Sipadan.

Overall, I felt the divemasters took care of us underwater. They also had some social skills to make customers happy like taking us to scenic spots and encouraging us to take playful photos amongst ourselves. That’s not often seen because of the language and cultural barrier.

Afterwards

On the way back, we stopped at Arborek Island which appears to be a base for the conservation work conducted by the Umbra research vessel (the mothership is very distinctive looking while the little offshoot is very cool looking). They are searching for and tagging mantas. Dream job for scuba junkies! Arborek was extremely well kept unlike most badly-littered Indonesian villages. I could quite easily live there!

We finished with some photos on the white sandbar near Pulau Kri.