Wakatobi House Reef
Body of Water:
Banda Sea
Max Depth: 40m
Altitude: Sea Level
Difficulty: Easy
GPS Coordinates
Lat: -5.776097
Lon: 123.893772
House Reef: Actually six different sites, one accessible directly off the beach in front of the resort, including a seagrass bed and healthy reef top right of the beach. It’s only 80 yards from the shoreline to the drop-off. With well protected schooling fishes and the jetty full of resident fish, the snorkelers find here plenty of attractions without the need for taking a boat. Highlights include a great variety of fishes, invertebrates, macro subjects, beautiful soft corals, gorgonians, tunicates, whips, sponges, overhangs-all totalling a spectacular rainbow of colour. Frequently there are strong and changing currents.
Appropriately dubbed one of the best house reefs in the world, the Wakatobi House Reef is indeed a special place to dive. It is unusual to find guests skipping out on boat dives so that they can dive a house reef all day long, but that is often the case here.
The reef consists of a colourful wall with a shallow drop off that can begin in water less than two meters deep during low tide and as deep as four meters during high tide. In the short distance between the drop off and the resort lies a vast ecosystem of turtle grass and isolated coral heads, a rich environment for odd and beautiful creatures such as frogfish, stonefish, blue ring octopus, moray eels, blue spotted stingrays, ghost pipefish, jawfish, shrimp and goby pairs. It also provides a safe haven for a wide variety of juvenile reef fish. The bright blue mantles of juvenile giant clams seem to be wedged between some of the coral formations and rocks, most likely due to the shallow reef top and strong sunlight in this habitat.
Beyond the reef top, you will cruise over the edge of the drop off, where a sheer wall face is covered with hard and soft corals, sea fans, sponges, tunicates and over hangs that have become a favourite resting place for large resident turtles. The other residents on the reef include a sizable school of jacks that can be regularly found in front of the jetty bar at the end of the pier, which protrudes from the island to the edge of the drop off. At night, while enjoying a drink at the jetty bar after your house reef night dive (equally as rewarding as the daytime experience), you can hear the jacks hunting and splashing. The current on the house reef can range from mild to fairly wild, and there is always a small taxi boat available to drop divers off up current so that you can drift right back to the resort for a quick surface interval before a repeat performance. This is definitely a reef that you can dive all day long. By varying your depth and drop off points, each dive is a unique.