Sulawesi is the huge “K” shaped Island in the Maluku Sea and the fourth largest Island of Indonesia. With thousands of bays and many kilometers of coastline of white sandy beaches, it has the backdrop of rising mists and mountainous terrain in the centre. Travelling by sea is the best way to explore the unknown underwater nature of Togian & Banggai, the “Hidden Sulawesi”.
This cruise offers the most diverse dive sites apart from the Black sand dives around the Lembeh Straits, most of the dives on this cruise are on different kinds of reefs, from large barrier reefs stretching from one end of the archipelago in the north to smaller fringing reefs. In addition, there are a few atolls in the south and off shore reefs with vertical drop-offs down to several hundred meters, steep slopes with a lot of gorgonians and black coral bushes, small caves, overhangs and lots of swim – throughs. The reefs and large coastal mangrove areas are habitat and breeding areas for the hawksbill turtle, the green turtle and the dugong.
On the inner islands there are fringing reefs with coral gardens populated by reef fish and also special animals like frogfish, ribbon eels, bobtail squid and more. From the rich volcanic black sand up in the North of Sulawesi to the turquoise crystal clear waters surrounding the Togian Islands and the white sandy atolls around Banggai and Ganggai, Hidden Sulawesi is an all in one destination – not only because of unspoiled dive sites but also due to the diversity of life, from funny critters crawling over black sand to weird shaped sponges to at least 3 difference kinds of Pygmy seahorses, huge green turtles to the endemic – Banggai cardinal fish.
For us as adventurous divers, probably one of the best things about diving in Sulawesi is that it largely remains unexplored. This is one of the cruises that offers an adventure route that opens up the beauty of Sulawesi, from the north to the south, in a way that not many people have heard of or seen yet – the “Hidden Sulawesi”.