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World famous for good reason, this action-packed dive site gets its name from the castle-like peak of the seamount just below the water’s surface.
Mawan is located in central Komodo National Park to the west of Siaba Besar Island. It’s a small island with some stunning beaches that lead down the water into a sandy slope covered in rubble and some Manta cleaning station bommies at the south end, and reef in the north end.
This is another popular dive site due to its convenient central location, and the name of the dive site literally translates to pretty in the local dialect. It’s not hard to see why once you dive this site.
This site can be dived by both new divers as well as experienced divers by adjusting the dive plan. It’s not advised for inexperienced divers to try this site close to the full moon or new moon though, as currents can pick up pretty strong. But these currents also bring in plenty of Mantas to feed in the plankton rich water!
Marine life in Mawan of course consists of the Manta Rays, but it also includes other Rays such as Eagle Rays and Marble Rays. What’s cool about the Manta Rays at this site though is that they will normally stick around for the whole hour of the dive at the cleaning stations rather than just passing on by.
But there is more to this site than just Rays. Schooling Fusiliers, Unicorn Fish, Reef Sharks, Bamboo Sharks, Frogfish and some pretty unique Leaf Scorpion Fish are often seen here. There’s also a bunch of cool small stuff, this site is known as a top macro site. These include Mantis Boxing Shrimp, Hairy Shrimp and Orangutang Crabs as well as plenty of Nudibranchs.
Diving this site can be done in a bunch of different ways as it’s such a big site. You want to dive here though either during slack tide or rising tide. On a typical day we want to dive this site to about 20m max where we hit the lip of the steeper reef, and actually spend a lot of time around 12m when we drift over the plateau, but it is possible to go down to about 30m. We will normally try to drop into the water on the north end of the eastern side of the island.
From here we let the current take us and drift along the 8m line. After a few minutes we will drop down to the next level of the ridge filled reef and cruise the 12m mark looking for Reef Sharks and Schooling Fusiliers. From here we continue drifting south till we hit the 15 to 20m slope. Here is our first chance to encounter Mantas so we will circle around exploring this area for a while.
If we don’t have any Manta luck here, our next chance is to continue south to the sandy rubble slope up around 10m where we could have some more Manta action and also some cool macro. Finally, we will head back up the slope at this point once our dive time starts to run out, to the 5m mark where there is some cool critter spotting on the slope for our safety stop.
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Topography: Sloping reef with areas of drift dive
Max Depth: 20 meters
Typical Current: Medium
Best For: Mantas and a complete experience of Macro to big stuff
Snorkeller friendly, and a chance for snorkellers to see Mantas!
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