The deep reef at Bunaken is what makes this area an ideal location for technical diving. A question that really puzzles me, but I get asked over and over, why do you tech dive here, there is so much to see? Does that not really answer itself? Perhaps people’s perception of tech diving is groping about in zero visibility on the end of a reel, and yes sometimes it is like that. However other than training dives where the object is just to accomplish the dive and put skills learnt into practise, and location and environment will dictate whether there is anything to see or not; a technical recreational dive, (we are paying for the privilege of these dives after all) should have an objective worth the time and expense of the gear and training that it took to get you there.

Here at Bunaken we are fortunate to have clear enough water that coral certainly extends deeper than I have ventured so far. Yes it is different down there; but that is the draw, different coral and fish species. Certainly less diver traffic and damage, fish (especially sharks) seem to approach closer as they are much less used to divers.

It is darker down there, but we bring our own light and it certainly is not less colourful; some of the deeper corals make up for the darkness by covering the reef in a rainbow. One final advantage of going that extra bit deeper; we find all the stuff that the recreational divers drop- score one torch for this week!

Kyra and Pim are visiting us from Australia, where they study the deeper coral species found on the Barrier reef. They have been delighted with the coral density and biodiversity found here in particular at the 50-55m range. Above you see them both during one of our shallow stops enjoying the easy drift through the coral gardens in the shallows. So it isn’t even that we are opting to go deep instead of enjoying the beautiful coral- we get to do both. Why tech dive here? Why not?