Pillarsteen

Off Padar’s wave-beaten southern tip, Pillarsteen is South Komodo’s architecture dive: a maze of huge rock pillars, canyons, arches and tunnels, including a vertical chimney divers can ascend, carved by Indian Ocean surge. A wall on the west side drips with yellow-orange soft corals and gorgonians before easing into a sloping reef, while caves and swim-throughs shelter clouds of small fish. Fire urchins, bright-yellow sea cucumbers and sea squirts thrive in the cool upwelled water, with fusiliers, snappers, angelfish, turtles and the odd reef shark out in the blue. Topography, not megafauna, is the headline here.