Diving Padangbai

diving-padangbai

Diving Padangbai. It is a small fishing village that offers easy and relaxed diving in its small and cozy bays.  We can reach it by jukung, a traditional Balinese boat, in less than 20 minutes.

Diving Padangbai. Blue lagoon

diving-padangbai
Ornate ghost pipefish

This dive site gently slopes to 15 meters and continues steeply into the depths. Here, we can find small bommies covered by hard and soft corals, typical reef fish species, and crustaceans. Depending on the conditions, we can take two different routes.

Route 1: East side of the bay. This takes us to the vertical wall, starting at around 9 meters and finishing at around 24 meters. It is beautifully covered with corals and sponges and is a shelter for moray eels, lionfish, clownfish, mantis shrimps, frogfish, nudibranchs, seahorses, and many others.

Route 2: Head west in shallow waters with the white sandy bottom covered in hard corals in which sometimes we have a chance to find sleeping white tip sharks. During the dive, we encounter huge colonies of acropora coral which are sheltered to lots of small colorful fish. In truth, it is an easy dive that we usually do as a check dive. It is also a perfect spot to do a night dive.

BIAS TUGAL

Dive-Bali-Padangbai

It is another bay on the West side of the port. In fact, in our opinion, it is the best dive site in Padangbai. Because of the currents, this dive site is a bit more demanding. However, when properly planned, this dive is very enjoyable.

Here we have a huge chance to spot amazing marine life. For example, turtles, octopuses, jacks, fusiliers, snappers, and even sometimes white tip reef sharks and rays. During the dive, we will encounter a huge pinnacle that is totally covered in corals and sponges where a school of glass fishes, clownfish, and also lobsters have found their home here.

Diving Padangbai: Jepun Wreck

Jepun Wreck, Padangbai, Bali
Jepun Wreck, Padangbai, Bali

This purposely sunken steel fishing trawler is a very easy dive. It presents no currents and a maximum depth of 20 meters. In fact, the wreck is lying almost upright, at 19 meters depth on the sandy bottom. 

Actually, from its bow until the shallows, there are stretching coral farms made of metal wires. Here, many fish and crustaceans find shelter, such as ghost pipefish, frogfish, mantis shrimp, and clownfish.

At the end of the dive, we reach a shallow reef, where we make the safety stop while we watch its usual inhabitants, such as a school of yellow snappers, butterflyfish, and turtles.

Watch this video below, diving in Padangbai.

Video credit: Ludovic Amevor

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