The team of the multi-award winning Scuba Junkie are proud to introduce the KLM Eliya. Eliya is our newest liveaboard that will be sailing in the waters of Komodo National Park starting in April of this year. Are you ready to experience a new type of scuba diving with Scuba Junkie?!
As many of you know Scuba Junkie has a long history of scuba diving in Komodo and our award winning resort is a popular choice for people wanting to come and dive in one of the world’s best diving destinations! Many of our guests return again and again to dive with us and the decision to launch our first liveaboard in this incredible destination was an easy one!!
The National Park is home to incredible dive sites! We might be a little bias, but the stunning coral reefs offer a variety and diversity of marine life that is hard to beat!! Diving here offers something for everyone – Stunning coral reefscapes, a resident population of mantas, reef sharks, turtles, schools of fish & much more.
KLM Eliya’s design and build has been directly overseen by the Scuba Junkie Team to ensure that Komodo’s newest liveaboard will deliver comfort and safety while offering the same world class diving you have become accustomed to with Scuba Junkie.
KLM Eliya will depart on her maiden voyage at the end of April. This trip is already fully booked, but rest assured we have a fantastic opening offer for the month of May to really get you excited! Eliya can cater for 14 guests and has twin / double and triple share cabins.
Be one of the first guests to step foot on our Komodo liveaboard and grab the chance to get 30% off our published prices. This offer is available for all trips departing in May 2024. If May is a little soon for you we are also offering 20% off all of our trips departing in June 2024.
Our 6 Day / 5 Night trips will depart every Wednesday from the main harbour in Labuan Bajo and will include 20 dives in the National Park as well as land based tours to see the infamous Komodo Dragons and give you the opportunity to enjoy some of the stunning scenery that this region has to offer. You can take a closer look at our trip itinerary here.
For many travelers it is great to be able to spend a little time on land as well as onboard a liveaboard. We are also offering a very special Komodo Combo Deal if you would like to combine some time on our liveaboard with a couple of nights at our oceanside resort which is nestled right on the edge of the National Park.
As our valued guests we can help create a bespoke package – if you book a trip onboard Eliya and a diving package at our resort we will offer you 5% off your Eliya package & 10% off your resort package. (This offer applies to all Komodo Resort packages including the 4 Day / 3 Night options). Should you book a package in the resort that is 5 Nights or longer this will increase your Eliya discount to 10%!!
We also have really amazing Combo Deals with all of our other locations too – Scuba Junkie Penida, Scuba Junkie Sangalaki & Scuba Junkie Sipadan. The more locations you add the greater the savings! (Terms & Conditions Apply to all Combo Deals)
The crew of Scuba Junkie Eliya are ready and waiting to take you on the adventure of a lifetime. So what are you waiting for?! Get in touch now to find out more
It is often the case that the Manta Rays get all the attention, and whilst we love them and their graceful ways, there are many other marine species that are equally as fascinating to look at and that we see regularly in the Komodo National Park.
Take for example…THE TURTLE!! Known by many as the chilled out surfer type from Finding Nemo, these guys were perfectly cast in the role. What else do we know about this amazing marine creature?
All species of turtles are endangered or critically endangered – you can check out the IUCN red list for more information about this.
We are lucky enough to see three species of turtle in the Komodo National Park – Green Turtles, Hawksbill Turtles and Loggerhead turtles. With the area being protected we hope that numbers of turtles in the area, and across the globe, will start to increase.
Thank you to google for some of the photos!
The PADI Advanced course – the next step in your journey of recreational diving. Some people like to go straight into it, whilst others wait until they feel more comfortable. Whatever the reason you are interested in doing the course, here we will give you some more information on what it entails and why you should do it in the Komodo National Park!
The PADI Advanced Open Water course is made up of 5 dives. There are two that are compulsory.
This dive focuses on developing your skills at navigating. You will increase your confidence in recognising natural features during a dive that will assist in your underwater orientation. You will fine tune your compass skills and strengthen your ability to work alone and as a buddy team in navigation.
This dive will give you the knowledge and skills to dive deeper than 18m safely and confidently. Your instructor will talk about the effects on the increased pressure, colour changes and much more. It may seem a little daunting, but 25m doesn’t feel any different to 18m – just a little darker!
You then have three other adventure dives you can choose from. We highly recommend the Peak Performance Buoyancy dive. This dive focuses on your breathing and underwater control. This is a dive that no matter how many or for few dives you have – your confidence underwater will greatly benefit from it.
Drift Diving – In Komodo…makes sense to us! What better place to learn about current?!
A.W.A.R.E Fish ID – Want to know the difference between surgeonfish & butterflyfish? What about different types of sharks? Octopus? Rays? This dive will open up a whole world of knowledge! You will also learn about how we can protect the underwater world.
Night Dive – Learn new skills and see the underwater world in a whole new (lack of) light.
Underwater Naturalist – Not only do you learn about different fish species, but also corals, shrimp, crabs and all that you can see in the underwater world!
Multi -level and Computer diving – Learn more about how to structure the profile (how deep you are) for your dive. Take a more in depth look at planning your dives and how to use a dive computer.
And much more!
Not for this course! There is a little theory to complete, but this can be done between dives or in the evening as you enjoy the sunset. For each adventure dive you do there is a chapter in the Adventures in Diving book. Each chapter is about 30 pages long and has a knowledge review at the end. Once completed your instructor will go through each one with you, making sure everything is clear.
Komodo has such a breathtaking array of marine life and such interesting currents that you are sure to learn so much! Our experienced instructors will be impart all their wisdom and knowledge, whilst keeping the course fun and professional.
The diving in the park has a variety of conditions: stronger drift dives, pinnacles where you must shelter from the current, flat sandy sites and sloping coral reefs. The area is somewhere that can challenge you and ensure you’ll end up a more confident and skilled diver, but also has relaxing dives where you can practice and build on your skills.
Our spacious and comfortable boats are a great place to complete the knowledge review section of the course, big comfy bean bags to sit on, passionate crew to discuss the course with and epic views to take in.
We are always asked what our favourite dive sites are and it is one of the hardest questions to answer! There are so many fantastic places to dive and due to the changing seasons our favourite spots will change throughout the year.
No matter the time of year, Mawan is always high on our crews list of favourite places to dive. In January – March we can see upwards of 30 manta rays on a dive here, then as the water warms up and the visibility get’s clearer we are drawn to the stunning endless coral garden and the chance of seeing reef sharks, turtles, manta rays and fascinating corals.
Mawan is in the centre of the Komodo National Park, meaning we can dive there all year round! From the resort it takes just over an hour to get there and it is close to Siaba Besar and Siaba Kecil.
‘Mawan’ translates from the local language of Maggarrai to ‘pretty’, and the site as well as the island certainly lives up to its name. The reef is filled with stunning pink soft corals, and is home to all kinds of interesting critters. We can start the dive around a sandy patch which has a manta cleaning station next to it. It’s a great spot to sit and watch the mantas interact with each other. If there are no mantas there, we’ll drop down a little deeper and look for white tip and black tip reef sharks. As you head left shoulder the reef flattens out and is covered in gorgeous corals – starting with predominantly soft corals, the landscape changes and you see more hard corals.
The dive site is huge and can be dived in a few different ways, each time feeling like a completely new dive site! One dive can be focused on mantas, on time as a macro dive and another to just enjoying the beautiful reef.
The ideal conditions for this site is during slack or when the tide is rising. It is possible to dive it on a falling tide, but the currents can be a little trickier. Mantas seem to be there no matter what the currents are doing!
Manta Rays tend to be seen in higher numbers around New moon and Full moon, likely due to increased levels of plankton in the water.
The conditions of this dive site mean that it is suitable for all levels of diver, whether it’s your first dive or you’re a seasoned pro – we’re yet to meet someone who doesn’t love diving here!
The dive site is a favourite among many because of the incredible manta ray interactions you can have there. While Karang Makassar (Manta Point) may have the most mantas (it’s possible to see over 50 in one dive!), it’s not uncommon to have the entire hour-long dive with mantas swimming over your head at Mawan. It seems to be a site where they enjoy being sociable, and will spend hours at the cleaning stations. But there is much more to this dive site than just mantas. If they’re feeling a little shy and don’t fancy putting on a show, then it’s a great site for sharks, sting rays, and big schools of fusiliers. It’s also a fantastic spot for macro – we regularly see hairy shrimp and leaf scorpion fish at this fantastic site!
