Indonesia - Maluku

This page brings together Anderson Mayfield's own dives in the Maluku and North Maluku provinces of eastern Indonesia: the Banda Islands and Ambon in April 2018, and a liveaboard crossing around Halmahera, Ternate and Tidore in August 2026 aboard the Ambai (Wallacea Dive Cruises). They are not part of the Global Reef Expedition. Spalding et al. (2001) place the Moluccas in a deep-water sub-region of complex bathymetry where islands only tens of kilometers apart can be separated by more than 1,000 m of mostly clear, oceanic water, in a country that spans the region with the highest reef biodiversity on Earth. The Banda Islands include the young volcano Gunung Api, whose 1988 lava flow now carries reef, and two protected areas, the Taman Laut Banda and Gunung Api Banda recreation parks.

The area has 41 members. Ambon has four: three muck dives near Laha on 22 April 2018 (Air Manis, Rhino City and Laha-2) and an Ambon / Seram marker with no survey of its own. Banda has seven, dived from 25 to 28 April 2018 at Batu Kapal, Lava Flow (Gunung Api), Lighthouse, Airport (Banda Ara), Tanjung Pisang (Banana Island), and Shark Point and Goat Hall on Pulau Ai. Halmahera has 30, dived from 8 to 16 August 2026: night dives off the Ternate waterfront, reefs in the Ternate-Tidore strait such as Maitara North and Failonga, current-swept points and drifts such as Pulau Sebatang, Kusu Drift, Tower Corner, Proco, and Jerot, and offshore seamounts and boulder fields such as Batu Mandi, Batu Balong, Siko Pinnacle, and Reene's Rock, plus three area markers. Recorded maximum depths exist only for the 2018 dives, from 13.7 m at Lava Flow and Lighthouse to 30.5 m at Airport; the 2.4 m logged at Tanjung Pisang is a snorkel over the flat. The typical profile, in both Banda and Halmahera, is a steep wall or slope held by sponges, sea fans and soft corals, rising to a shallow crest of near-continuous staghorn and tabular Acropora.

Cover here is a photo-derived index from computer vision (CoralSCOP), not a transect survey, and it counts soft coral as well as hard coral. It averaged 31.3% across the 36 members with an index: 36.2% at Banda (n = 7), 30.2% at Halmahera (n = 26) and 29.2% at Ambon (n = 3). The highest was 44.8% at Airport (Banda Ara), and on Halmahera 41.4% at Jerot, where Anderson logged 22-25°C and thermoclines, the coldest water of the crossing. The lowest was 8.4% at Mugia, a Halmahera night dive scored from only six frames, which Anderson's own field note calls "amazing coral cover"; among Halmahera's daytime reef dives the index ran from 22.9% at Reene's Rock, a boulder community rather than a true reef, to 41.4% at Jerot. Anderson ranked Pulau Sebatang among the best coral dives he has done, and at Lava Flow the 1988 lava channel now carries essentially complete plate-coral cover beside unbroken staghorn thickets. Ambon's muck sites are largely sand, silt and rubble, with coral in patches on bommies and ridges.

Condition differed between the two trips. In Banda in April 2018, localized bleaching was photographed at Tanjung Pisang, Lighthouse, Lava Flow, and Airport, where one table also carried a sharply bounded bare patch consistent with white syndrome or a healed predation scar; no crown-of-thorns starfish were seen on any Banda or Ambon dive. On Halmahera in August 2026, most dives recorded no bleaching, disease or crown-of-thorns, but crown-of-thorns were photographed at Merida Cavern, beside fresh feeding scars, and at Mugia, Lelay Utara showed active partial bleaching on part of its shallow plateau, and single white colonies turned up at several other sites. Old, coralline-bound mortality, standing dead staghorn, and rubble aprons are common on Halmahera. Human impacts were photographed at Ambon, where a gillnet with trapped fish was draped over bommies at Air Manis and bottles, fishing line and PVC were woven into the rubble at Laha-2. No Coral Health Index has been scored for these sites.

What stands out is the life beyond the coral. Night dives off Ternate produced walking sharks (Hemiscyllium halmahera) at Pantai Falajawa and ornate ghost pipefish at Cimitero, Tanjung Naraka had the biggest school of devil rays Anderson has seen, Rhino City at Ambon had a Rhinopias and a ribbon eel, Laha-2 had harlequin shrimp, frogfish and seahorses, and hawksbill turtles were photographed at Shark Point and Goat Hall on Pulau Ai.