Always wondered what the best places are to dive? That’s usually very personal, do you like reefs and fish, are you on the lookout for pelagics or are you sniffing the bottom looking for the small stuff? I can tell you what my 3 favourite dive sites are in Padang Bai, maybe that helps you in choosing the dive site you’d like to visit next time!
Jetty
Home to the most amazing macro life you’ll find around Bali. With a depth of around 15 meters the dive site is accessible for every diver from Open Water certification. The pilars of the jetty are full of corals and super colourful, while the bottom is literally muck, it’s a big mess! Because of the big mess on the bottom it’s a nice hunt for the colourful nudibranch, well camouflaged frogfish, cute pygmy seahorses, pipefish and many more. But not only can we find macro stuff, we also see many porcupine fish, trumpetfish, schooling mackerels and lots more!
Jepun
Sandy sloping bottom with many artificial coral reefs and a small shipwreck! Ideal for beginner divers, but the site can also be very interesting for macro enthusiasts. Depth is from very shallow snorkel areas (± 2 m depth, very colourful!) to about 22 meters at the bottom of the wreck. You can find pufferfish, batfish, lionfish, unicornfish, turtles and lots of nudibranch, crabs, shrimps etc. Jepun is a very relaxed dive site and we don’t often experience currents here. When I started diving Padang Bai I was not a big Jepun enthusiast but it has grown on me and I like it more every time I dive it. Last time I found a flying gurnard and multiple super colourful nudies that are not bigger than 1 cm, that was great!
Bias Tugal
Reef with alternating coral bombies, coral covered areas and sandy areas. It’s a colourful dive site with lots of variety. Depth from 5 to >40 meters, accessible for every dive level. The conditions are funny sometimes, but it’s quite well to predict from the surface and the boat captains know everything about the water conditions in the area, so we always assess before we dive. At Bias Tugal we often spot pygmy seahorses, crocodile fish, lots of reef fish, humphead wrasse, reef sharks, and nudibranch.
I am fond of nudibranch and cute fish and critters, so I prefer macro dive sites. But I love pelagics and pretty coral reef dives as well. But I guess as a dive professional you have to like it all because we dive it all, and that’s a beautiful luxury!