Diving Bali

Dive Area information

A sample of what Bali has to offer, lots of critters with excellent photography and video opportunities.

Many people coming to Bali often overlook this as a dive destination, missing out on some of Indonesia’s prime diving and go on to dive other areas further a field. A huge variety of dive sites await us here in the land of the Gods. Mixing your Bali diving tour with some incredible land tours taking you to some amazing viewpoints, temples, rice terraces, all this can make your trip much more of a thorough experience. Diving around Bali is like going out on a live aboard cruise if you compare its range of site and diversity of marine life.

Within one Bali dive tour you can dive in clear, calm waters with great rugged wall dives with huge gorgonians, soft corals, whip corals, sponges, many caverns, crevasses and overhangs at Menjangan Island. Dive on a world-class shipwreck with excellent coral cover and outstanding marine diversity. You can go muck diving in Tulamben, Secret Bay and, even though it doesn’t really have muck, or black sand, Candi Dasa has amazing critter action too. While in Candidasa or Padang Bai you may be interested in some of the other sites too, these are best dived at slack tides to avoid the strong currents that can rip through this area. There are wicked drift dives for those wanting to cover distance and see the long stretches of pristine reef that span across the coast of Nusa Penida, where in season you can see some of the larger marine animals that like to frequent Balinese waters like Mola Mola, Manta rays and sharks which are nearly always seen here.

Diving 4 Critters
Bali has been regularly visited over the past by most of the worlds underwater photographers, ichthyologists and marine life enthusiasts for it’s easy access shore diving. It is possible to come across very rare and often new species that have not been sighted before. This is what attracts me to some of these very special sites, a few very interesting areas are now being dived by a few operators specialising for those who are keen to see new marine life.

One particular site has now proceeded to take over from the old Secret Bay with excellent marine life…. again all from the shore. This is purely for those who are really mad into critter diving as there is no reef what so ever here and less fish than the old Secret Bay too, it is just that lovely critter rich black sand. This new place is being called PJ. One other thing that makes this place great is an excellent spa hotel located a few minutes away from this site. Other operators are taking day tours though this really is an area where it is best seen at certain different times of the day. Of the dives I made here, I have seen lots of unique marine life. Night dives here are also special with even more unique creatures coming out from their sandy habitats. Serious divers keen to see new marine life will soon be wanting to flock here to see these unique critters, as of now there rarely other divers here. Even if there were there is a bit enough area to dive that it would not be a problem anyway.

Click Bali News to see what Diving 4 Images has been seeing on recent dives here!

Other Dive Areas
Tulamben – just a few kilometers west of Tulamben lies another new treasure with more of that special critter rich black sand. The old river and house reefs of Tulamben have not really been as rich since a large storm back in February 2003. Though a new area has taken over with many rare species being seen here all the time!

Amed – more rich black sand here attracts great marine life and one operator has took it one step further and made a few artificial structures on his house reef to attract marine life to stay put for longer periods of time. The reef structures have attracted lots of small fish, on one night dive here we saw 7 true stonefish, a ghost pipefish, lots of very weird and wonderful decorator crabs. Recent trips here have been very interesting with sightings of a rare and unusual bottletail squid, not meant to be seen in Indonesian waters.

Candidasa – an excellent site with regular sightings of 2 different species of rhinopias (weedy scorpionfish), frogfish, often inimicus (devil scorpionfish), ribbon eels, marbled dragonets, different species of pipefish including ghost pipefish small flatheads, snake eels and more.

Secret Bay – recently it hasn’t been as hot as it used to be. The sea bed is now covered with lots of green lettuce algae making it very difficult for the critters to find good feeding grounds. The new site PJ has taken over were this site left off, though it is still worth while going back every now and then as there area some very interesting marine life that is worth going in search of here, like the handfish which has only been seen twice to my knowledge.

Conclusion
Even if you are only planning a few days on your Bali trip it is well worth checking out the diving, those that do often come back to dive the same area’s again or go in search of places they haven’t yet checked out. Try it – sure you’ll like it!

More on Bali diving
For divers wanting more information on diving Bali, the conditions, best times of the year for certain marine life, see excellent maps of all the best area’s and read about a great diving philosophy too.

Check out Diving Bali by Wally Siagian and David Pickell on Periplus Action Guides, ISBN-962-593-323-9

Interested? Mail us for more information about this region!