Best places to scuba dive in November
November is Indonesia month. Raja Ampat is the best overall answer, especially when anchovies gather around the reefs and jetties. Banda Sea and Alor trade some reef certainty for a chance at hammerheads, while Wakatobi is the calm, reef-first trip. I would book Raja unless the hammerhead hunt is the whole point.
Where should you dive in November?
Raja Ampat is the first trip I would book. It ranks #7 overall at 9.2/10, and November sits inside its strict peak window of November — February. Go for highest reef diversity, mantas, wobbegongs.
Read the Raja Ampat guide →4 places clear the bar
The order stays tied to the overall ranking. The first card is the answer.
Raja Ampat
November, if you want the bait.
Raja is still the reef benchmark: anthias over soft coral, bait under the jetties, wobbegongs under ledges and mantas at the cleaning stations. A cruise director on Solitude Adventurer calls November his favourite because anchovies can be everywhere. That is a good enough reason to move the season forward a month.
- Peak window
- November — February
- Signature
- Highest reef diversity · Mantas · Wobbegongs
Banda Sea
The Indonesia trip for hammerheads.
This is a crossing rather than a loop: volcanic islands, sea-snake reefs and offshore pinnacles, with schools of hammerheads as the reason to go. They are never guaranteed. The consolation is that the dives between attempts are still far from the usual Indonesian circuit.
- Peak window
- October — November
- Signature
- Hammerheads · Volcanic seamounts · Sea snakes
Alor
Tropical diving with cold-water surprises.
Cold upwelling in the Pantar Strait can bring hammerheads within reach and occasionally push up a thresher or mola. Those dives are attempts, not appointments. Between them you get very good walls, odd macro and far fewer boats than Komodo or Raja.
- Peak window
- October — November
- Signature
- Hammerheads · Threshers · Mola
Wakatobi
For the week when the reef is enough.
Wakatobi is for long wall dives with no pressure to race to the next sighting. The coral is beautiful and dependable. It sits down at seventeen because sharks and large pelagics are cameos, not because there is anything wrong with the reef.
- Peak window
- April — May · October — November
- Signature
- Coral walls · Turtles · Macro life