Meet the team: Wakatobi's Dive Experience Managers

As part of Wakatobi Dive Resort's 30-year anniversary, we meet three of the team that make every stay a bucket list experience.

To be considered for a place on Wakatobi’s dive team, a candidate must have logged a minimum of 1,000 dives. Do the math, and you’ll find that some of Wakatobi’s Dive Experience Managers – DEMs, as they’re known on the island – have surpassed 15,000.

To understand how, one must consider the role. Most guides spend roughly nine months of the year on site, working five to six days per week and complete three or four dives per day. For a passionate diver, a day spent almost entirely at sea is the whole point.

Dive times at Wakatobi are notably generous, with many guests regularly reaching seventy minutes. At a conservative average of sixty minutes per dive, a Wakatobi guide who has logged 15,000 dives has spent the equivalent of nearly two years continuously beneath the surface.

Nobody here counts it. It’s just the shape of the work.

Two of them, Yono and Muji, have given the better part of their careers to Wakatobi. Yono has been with the resort for over fifteen years. Muji recently marked his eighteenth year, though his path to the water was not so linear. He began working for Wakatobi in the dining room, until his curiosity for the water grew strong. He decided one day to try out diving for himself. That was that.

Alongside fellow DEM Ketut, Yono and Muji are part of the dive team many guests come to know by name.

Their longevity has not gone unnoticed. At dive shows and travel gatherings around the world, I tend to hear a particular kind of conversation that resurfaces over and over. “Next time I visit, I’d love to dive with Yono again.” Or, with a mix of nostalgia and hope: “Muji was my guide fifteen years ago! Is he still there?”

He is. They both are. And for many returning guests, these characters play a significant part of why they come back.

For Muji, his role carries a responsibility that extends beyond the dive briefing.

"All the guides at Wakatobi play a role, not only as reef spotters, but as guardians," says Muji. "We help keep our ocean clean and our reefs healthy. Wakatobi isn't purely a business; it cares for the local elders, and in return, the communities help us protect the reef."

"Wakatobi is more than a place to work," agrees Yono. "It has given me the opportunity to learn about marine life, conservation, and the underwater world, every single day."

That learning has brought with it moments of rare beauty. One memory that sticks with Yono: a large school of roughly twenty eagle rays gliding in formation through Turkey Beach – a recollection of what three decades of marine protection can produce.