My take on Diving at Maratua
Written by Roy Kittrell, May 2024
In May of 2024, Flow Dive Center organised a trip to Maratua in the Derawan Islands, East of Kalimantan and West of Sulawesi.
These stunning and beautiful islands are relatively untouched, having less attention than other more famous areas such as Raja Ampat or Sipadan to the north. It’s easy to see why; flying into Berau airport, our group had a fair amount of trouble with airline delays and cancellations from Malaysia, and we had to take a day before and after the trip to stay overnight. Once the morning of our departure arrived, we went to the jetty and had a very long 3.5 hours boat ride to our resort.
Once you have arrived at Noah Dive Center on Maratua Island however, you look around and suddenly find yourself in paradise. The strikingly blue water, combined with the long horseshoe shaped islands make for a strikingly picturesque landscape.
The horseshoe shapes of the islands are indicative of how they were formed, they are large carbonate reef atolls that were uplifted above sea level, and one side collapsed to form the U shape. One of these islands, Kakaban island, became an isolated lake and filled with rainwater to form a very unique environment. Inside this lake, there are 4 species of jellyfish that were trapped, and without their usual predators in the open ocean, they eventually lost the ability to sting. They are one of the biggest draws of the Derawan islands, and one of the reasons we went, but sadly at the beginning of this year they began to die off in large numbers, and where you could once see the entire lake teeming with them there are now only a few swimming around, and they have begun to turn white instead of their usual brown. There are many theories about why this is happening, from climate change to diseases introduced by tourists, but for now the Indonesian government has declared swimming in the lake off limits to tourists.
Luckily our guide at Noah knew of another isolated lake on Maratua itself, and after a long jungle hike through the rainforest using my extremely long selfie pole we used my insta360 x4 to grab some shots from that equally amazing lake.
The jellyfish are not the only draw for Kakaban island; the Blue Light Cave, one of the most spectacular dive sites I have ever been to, is located along its coast. On the surface of the reef it appears as a simple hole in the ground, but when you dive down into its depths it goes as deep as 60m and opens into a wide cavern big enough for our group to swim through. At around 25m there is a small exit hole that looks directly at the sky hence the name. I had my camera filming through the entire dive, and for anyone interested the 360 video can be found on my YouTube channel via the link here.
Another utterly spectacular dive site, certainly our group’s favorite, was The Channel. Located in an area with strong currents, we performed a negative entry directly down to around 25m and let the current take us along a wall. From there we eventually reach a junction where we can attach our reef hooks to the rock, and enjoy one of the most amazing displays of schooling fish I can remember seeing. From thousands of the smaller and colorful reef fish, we were also lucky enough to see huge barracuda come in to take a look at us, and at one point we even saw a school of Big Eye Trevally. The males and females were pairing off and darting away from the school, with the males turning black to ward off any rivals. Amazingly some of them appeared to only turn black on the side facing away from the female, showing her a friendly silver color instead! This is something I had previously only read about and it was utterly incredible to see it in real life.
Many of the dive sites we visited had strong currents, but with our intrepid dive leader Mel these were no problem to navigate,
even for the oldest member of our group who is diving at the age of 60! Some of our group opted to do night dives, taking macro cameras and lights and visited the fascinating macro of the underwater world. Hermit crabs, nudibranchs, alligator fish, and many other reef inhabitants were seen, such as the curious snail poking it’s eyes out of the shell to get a better look at me seen in the photo opposite!
Overall, the Derawan Islands proved to be a more than an exceptional dive site, one that is largely undisturbed and uncrowded for the time being. Despite some of the challenges we faced getting to Maratua Island, the dives were well worth it and I cannot wait for my next chance to go back.
Join Flow’s upcoming dive trips to paradise that are just as amazing as Maratua. If you have been out of water for a while now, they’ll help you remember what it’s like being underwater, and if you haven’t ventured into diving, no time like the present to get started! Anything you need to know about diving, just email or speak to Flow!
Roy Kittrell is an avid naturalist and underwater photographer, his work can be found on instagram @roythedivebro