Wind will also affect your diving season in different areas in many ways. First, increased wind will cause the surface of the ocean to get choppy and increase wave size. This makes getting in and out of dive boats or tenders harder and more dangerous. This can also decrease your comfort day and night when on a liveaboard. Waves and wind are also a factor that cause underwater currents, and both factors stir up sediment via turbulence and decrease visibility. Though it’s true for some sites you do want current, as it brings in the big interesting marine animals that feed on the smaller fish which are feeding on the increased plankton numbers, you also do not want too much current as this can make some sites too dangerous to dive. 

Temperature is another dynamic factor that must be considered in multiple ways in how it will affect your diving. The first obvious one is how it effects your comfort both in and out of water. Because our bodies lose heat 25 times faster underwater compared to in air via conduction to a denser medium (water molecules are closer together than air), we often want to wear a wetsuit even in warm tropical climates. Unfortunately putting these on when you are on the boat before your dive can mean that we overheat a bit before we hit the water. Likewise, the in-water temperature will affect your choice in exposure protection, say opting for a 3mm shortie over the normal 5mm long wetsuit you normally dive with at home in more temperate regions. As mentioned earlier, temperature also plays a part in marine plant life blooms, therefore effecting visibility. Temperature changes also effect currents underwater, as water moves from one place to another to try and equal out temperatures. 

Crowds will be based on 2 things, everyone wanting to dive the best location at the best time, and when most people in the world can get time away from work for a dive vacation. As a general rule of thumb, more people live in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. And as a second rule of thumb, most people get their vacation dates during the summer months. This means that worldwide the peak for travel and vacations is between June and August each year. There is also another mini peak each year between October to November as people are trying to fit in a second vacation before the end of the year. Shorter stints of popular religious holidays around the world can also cause increased travel numbers due to people utilising the time off to slip away for a quick vacation. These normally consist of Easter, Christmas, Eid al-Fitr, Chinese New Year, Gregorian New Year and Diwali. So, if you want to avoid the crowds and have a dive site with less diver interaction, then September and January to April may be the months for you.

Next, we will drill down deeper into the best diving season for Komodo. As stated above it is start of June to end of September, but why? So technically you can dive Komodo year-round, but these months fall in the dry season, so visibility will be at its best. Also, currents will be just right at a point when they are not too strong to prevent diving, and they are not too weak to deter blooms in life chasing the nutrient rich waters and subsequent plants and animals that pass this energy up the food chain. Outside of the dry season not only does the rain increase, but the wind picks up too, causing all the negative diving effects previously discussed. In these periods of calm seas, visibility can often exceed 30 meters. 

Now we understand what causes good or bad diving conditions, lets talk about the best seasons for diving in Indonesia and Komodo. The good news is the dive season for Indonesia is all year round. This is because within Indonesia there is so many places to dive that you can always find an area that is in season. Based off rain, wind and temperature, these are the best times of year to dive the following popular dive locations.