Diving around Bali is probably the most awesome thing you can do if you travel to this beautiful place! Dive sites are beautiful, marine life is teeming with life, a few shipwrecks to see – from 130m ship to a small boat and most of the dive centers are really professional so you will have no problem with that! I had a pleasure to dive with a friend of mine called Branko from Bali Aqua.

Diving around Bali is probably the most awesome thing you can do if you travel to this beautiful place!

As an underwater photographer I will try to show you how it’s like when you submerge yourself under the Indian Ocean and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. If you are a fellow diver and you have already did some diving around Bali, then just enjoy these cool photos of the most amazing creatures you can find in these waters.
Let’s start this with the most popular diving spots you can find here…

 

USS Liberty Shipwreck

USS Liberty boat was hit by a Japanese torpedo. After the hit it was able to float so they navigated towards Bali in order to save all the cargo on boat. It was stranded on the beach, but after the earthquakes and volcano eruptions it went down to deeper waters. A long time ago people lived and fought on this boat and now it’s surrounded by corals and rich marine life. The shipwreck is about 130m long but a good part of it is under the sand by now.

A long time ago people lived and fought on this boat and now it’s surrounded by corals and rich marine life

Just before the shipwreck there is a garden of eels. Make sure to stay as lower to the bottom as possible, so you can approach them without scaring them. If you don’t do that, they will just hide in the sand.
This dive spot is very popular among divers, so make sure to reach it as early as possible.

Manta Point – Nusa Penida

Do not miss this one! If you ever go there and don’t see some manta rays then you really have bad luck! The chance of missing mantas is an equivalent to winning the lottery, really slim! I had two dives there and both times it was really wavy with powerful surges but it was worth it – for the second dive there were probably about 20 manta rays!

The chance of missing mantas is an equivalent to winning the lottery, really slim

When you jump off the boat and dive to that spot, there is absolutely nothing special, you reach a big rock and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a huge manta ray swims above your head! That’s just a beautiful sight to see. Just a friendly reminder: while you watch that amazing creature check out around a bit to see if a surge didn’t take near the rocks like it happened to me. A wave surge smashed me to a big rock, but luckily my tank took the hit and I recovered with no problem.

Why do mantas come here if they can swim really deep and why do they hang around these rocks? Well, the answer is simple: the rocks are cleaning stations for them. A cleaning station is a section of the reef which is home to reef-dwelling marine life which, as you can guess from the name, clean large fish like mantas, sharks and larger bony fish. Cleaning helps mantas maintain healthier life since the ‘cleaners’ eat all the dirt, bacteria and other harmful things that mantas pick up during their swimming.
This is a ‘must go’ diving spot if you plan to dive around Bali!

Gili Tepekong

Want to see some sharks? This is the place to search for them! Gili Tepekong is the biggest offshore island in Amuk Bay. The safest way to approach the dive spot is to take a boat from Padang Bay.

Marine life is good here and visibility was cool, though currents can be strong. Usually you can see white tip sharks at around 20-30m, but the ones we have seen were far away and scared of us. There are lots of reef sharks under the boulders sleeping since they are nocturnal animals. You can also expect to see a lot of eels, turtles, mantis shrimp, etc…

Free-diving around Bali

Do you love free-diving? Going deep with no tanks, regulators, BCD’s – just relying on your breath? Probably the best places for that are in north-east of Bali. Many free-diving centers are located around Amed and Tulamben as this area is probably the most awesome for free-diving. I haven’t done any free-diving courses, but my friends are crazy about it and many of them have become free-diving instructors by now. Checkout Apnea Bali for more information and find out what it’s like to depend only on your breath and your mind skills to achieve great depths!

Find out what it’s like to depend only on your breath and your mind skills to achieve great depths!

Conclusion

Whether you are an experienced diver or just a beginner, Bali is perfect for you to plunge yourself into the world of diving or free-diving and see animals that most of the people miss out when they travel to exotic places.

Of course, there are many more awesome dive spots in Bali but these are my favourite ones.
Did you dive in Bali? What is your favourite dive spot and how did you like it? Write it down in the comments!

Bonus photos so you know what to expect when you go diving around Bali