Raja Ampat · Indonesia · Reef
Ot Di Ma
A 5-to-40 m reef where the blue is worth watching
Area photo: Buena Ventura · CC BY 3.0
Ot Di Ma is a reef roughly 45 minutes by boat from the Soul Scuba Divers centre, where the coral starts at 5 metres and carries on down to 40. The reef is the frame for the dive rather than the whole of it: the standing advice on this site is to keep glancing out into the blue for larger animals moving past the edge.
Where it is and how deep
0.5355° S, 130.6354° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
The reef top begins at about 5 metres and drops away to 40, so the dive is a matter of picking a depth and working the slope rather than following a fixed route. Most of a normal profile is spent on the upper reef, with the deeper ground there if gas and conditions allow. The boat run is about 45 minutes each way, which sets the shape of the day more than the site itself does.
The other half of the dive is off the reef. The advice attached to this site is simply to look into the blue for big animals passing by, so it pays to hold a little away from the coral and scan the open water instead of staying nose-down in it. Nothing else is published about the visibility here, so plan it as an ordinary Raja Ampat boat dive: brief on the tide, carry your own surface marker, and be ready to regroup on the reef. There is no published species list for the site, so treat sightings as a matter of luck rather than expectation, and let the reef profile decide the plan.
Marine life and season
The sources we used don't single out particular species here.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime |
Season follows Raja Ampat: October to April is the drier stretch and November to April the manta season at Manta Ridge; July to mid-September can bring strong winds and rough seas.
Questions divers ask
How deep is Ot Di Ma?+
The reef starts at about 5 metres and runs down to 40 metres, so the dive can be planned shallow or deep. Anything on the lower half of that range calls for experience beyond entry-level certification.
How do you get to Ot Di Ma?+
By boat, about 45 minutes each way from the Soul Scuba Divers dive centre.
Sources
- Ot Di Ma dive site — ScubaGo
More dive sites in Raja Ampat
Reef
Reef hook dive at 10-12 m in very strong current
Schooling jacks hunting silversides under the village jetty
Overhang at 28-35 m with the wall dropping past 50
Reef
Five Rocks: a repeat-request reef to around 24 m
House reef from the jetty at 2 m down to 20 m
Pinnacle
Cleaning stations on the summit, mantas on the flanks in season
Fish fill the water before your BCD is finished deflating
Wall
A drift from schooling fish on the point to macro on the slope
Similar dives elsewhere
Table corals from 3 m down to 40, and nudibranchs on all of it
Five minutes by jukung to a coral slope dropping to 40 metres
Big-fish habitat in a current that usually runs strong
Fields of big gorgonians at the 35-metre end of the slope