Dive Raja Ampat

Jef Fam Group

The Jef Fam is a picturesque group of a dozen or so limestone islands and islets, lying directly west of Batanta Island. There are many channels with shallow, aquamarine inlets, bays, lagoons, beaches, cliffs and coves. They are a perfect setting from which to explore Raja Ampat's premiere hard coral dive sites.

The 3 small islets lying in a triangle that make up Batu Burung, or Bird Rocks, (aka Melissa's Garden) is the best dive site in the Raja Ampat area with regular sightings of the weird and wonderful tasselled wobbegong, as well as one huge great barracuda and occasional manta rays. The tasselled wobbegong is rarely seen outside New Guinea and Australia, so it's worth diving here to see this member of the shark family alone. With its 2 metre flattened body and very broad head with skin flaps along its lips, it's difficult to imagine misidentifying this creature. Look out for them curled up inside large cabbage corals or under ledges.

The south side of the site is the deepest, so it's a good idea to start your dive here. You can drop 35 metres down a short walled section covered in short pastel soft corals. Then you can head east along and up a steep banked slope. The slope is covered in sheet corals and mushroom corals, small green sea pens, spiky blue-jade tube sponges, and brown hydrozoans. Bigeye bream keep a wary eye on divers as they swim past, and blue-sided wrasse form small colonies here.

This site is fantastic for angelfish as they seem to be here in all their glorious colours and forms. Bicolour angelfish (yellow and blue halves), keyhole (navy with a white 'keyhole'), Lamarck's (black and white stripes), 3-spot (bright yellow with blue lips) and 6-banded are all easily spotted. Purple and threadfin anthias add to the spectrum of colour as you make your way up the slope.

If you headed along the western gentle-sloping side of the site then you'd come round until you were 15 metres deep or so, then head up the reef slope. Pairs of masked rabbitfish are common here and black and white banded sea snakes hunt over the green cabbage patch corals.

On the reef flat there is large field of porites and acropora hard corals in 5-8 metres. Small table corals, staghorn patches, green and brown elkhorn and finger corals cover the substrate along with brown soft coral bushes and hydrozoans. Titan triggerfish are at home feeding on hard coral chunks, and there are masses of slender fusiliers, and green and blue damsels. One of the most interesting features here are the giant tridachna clams at 6 metres depth - some over a metre long - with intricate brown, green and purple patterns. They are probably over 100 years old and so are quite a rarity!

To the north of the dive site is a long finger ridge, running from the northernmost islet, slowly down to 22 metres. Clown triggerfish, one of the most beautiful fish in the seas, go about their work in the depths and red-breasted wrasse are nice to spot here too. Be sure to look carefully in the anemones to find porcelain crabs, filtering the water for food.

Dinding Warna Banyak is the north-south channel that runs between the 2 islands of Keruo. Try to dive the west side of the steep banked wall as it allows more sunlight during the daytime. The channel runs for about 300 metres to a depth of 30 metres. The shallows start with yellow and orange soft corals then brown as you make your way along.

In the deeper sections gorgonians and black corals take over. The gorgonian fans are a great place to search for pygmy seahorses. Raja Ampat is known to be a great spot for these beautiful little fish and Keruo Island is among the best. The most common seahorses you will find in these area will be the hippocampus Bargibanti, hippocampus Denise and the latest discovery - hippocampus Pantohe, a rarity around the world.

Watch out for the yellowtail coris, Jansen's wrasse, brown-banded butterflyfish and sweetlips. On the sandy bottom, take a good luck through the rubble as you may be lucky to find red octopus, mantis shrimps, or, more rarely, the rather cryptic mimic octopus.

There is also lot of healthy hard coral in the crevices in which lurk giant and white-eyed morays, gaping ominously. In the blue, big schools of yellow fin fusiliers swirl back and forth amongst the hunting Spanish mackerel and round batfish. At night, you will be fascinated by the fact that there is a different type of crab around every corner: decorator crabs, hermit crabs, spider crabs and countless coral crabs and lobsters.

Towards the end of the dive, in the shallow area, you can marvel at the pristine brain corals and table corals, as healthy as you will ever see. As you finish your safety stop you can scour the many anemones for spine-cheek anemonefish.

Jef Fam Group of Islands Reef Basics: Hard corals and wobbegongs
Depth: 5 - >35m
Visibility: 5 - 25m
Currents: Moderate
Surface conditions: Calm
Water temperature: 28 - 30°C
Experience level: Beginner - advanced
Number of dive sites: 3
Diving season: All year round
Distance: ~110 km west of Sorong (7 hours)
Access: Raja Ampat liveaboards

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