Karang Makassar (Manta Point)

Komodo’s signature manta dive is an immense, gently sloping rubble plateau — nearly 3km long — where reef manta rays queue at cleaning stations like aircraft on approach. Divers drop onto the drift, hover low over the coral rubble, and let the tide carry them from station to station as mantas barrel-roll, feed and hover overhead, sometimes dozens in a single dive. Eagle rays, turtles, reef sharks and the odd blue-ringed octopus fill the gaps between fly-bys on this shallow, exhilarating conveyor-belt of a site.