Michael McFadyen's Scuba Diving - Marina, Indonesia
In May 2024 I spent a bit over two weeks diving in Tulamben before moving south to Amed for another week's diving. Both these places are on the north-eastern coast of Bali. While at Tulamben you virtually only do shore dives, most of the dives at Amed are boat dives. Some of these were back up towards Tulamben and some were even to the wreck of the USAT Liberty (which we declined to go on).
The main Amed dive sites are very close to the town and its nearby villages, just off the shore in reality. I stayed at the Hotel Uyah and used their associated dive shop Amed Dive Center which is on the premises.
Marina is a dive site that is very close to the hotel, only two minutes to the north-east. An approximate GPS mark for this dive is 8°19'57.418"S 115°38'29.684"E (using WGS84 as the datum).
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A satellite photo from Google Earth that shows the location of the dive site Hotel Uyah is at bottom right |
As mentioned, only takes about two minutes to get there by boat The site is at the western end of the main Amed beach and immediately north of the Warung Green Lemon and Beach Bare where we had lunch a few times. We tied up to a mooring. Once we descended, we went north to the wreck of a large speed boat/passenger ferry. This does not have any apparent damage, so must have just been sunk as an artificial reef.
The wreck is lying at almost 30 metres and is a decent size, over 10 metres and is sitting upright. It has a front door which is open and permits entry into a somewhat cramped interior. We swam around the wreck a few times. There are two white leaf fish on the stern. The stern also had a lot of fish around it, see the photos below.
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The bow of the boat | The starboard side of the boat |
From the wreck we went shallower towards the south-east. There are lots of ropes and mooring blocks on the sandy bottom. There are plenty of nudibranchs including Shaun the Sheep on the green leaves of the weed. We see some shrimp and three ornate ghost pipefish on a rope. Further along we see another 10 (9 small ones and 1 large) on a bunch of rope. Unfortunately I only have my GoPro camera so I cannot get any photos of them as they are too small. Others also saw one ornate ghost pipefish.
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The stern with lots of small fish around | The stern clear of the fish |
The bottom is mostly sand but here and there are some bits of coral with things on them. We see a few species of small crabs, some squat lobsters on featherstars. We continue getting shallower and see some anemones. At one of them I get attacked by the clownfish, thank heavens they are not the size of a groper or even a shark, then you would be in trouble. We also come across a timber structure that is (I presume) an artificial reef. See the photograph below.
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A very small batfish The divers coming along the wall | Some sort of artificial reef (I think) |
When we got to five metres there was another reef made from rocks. It had lots of fishlife on it. Our dive was 65 minutes and we ended up back in front of the hotel and exited via the beach. Visibility was excellent, at least 25 metres and a warm 29C. A very good dive.
Underwater photos from GoPro due to normal camera having problems.
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