Padang Bai Bali Dive Sites

Padang Bai Bali Dive Sites

This bay is one of the busiest bays in Bali, where the public ferry crosses from Bali to Lombok, white sandy beach. There are several diving points that worth to explore Blue lagoon, Padang Bay channel, Tanjung Bungsil (Bias a Putih), and Jepun.

Blue Lagoon

This lagoon is just north of Tanjung Silayukti, takes 6 minutes to get here by outrigger fishing boat with the outboard vessel or even shorter by speed boat from Padang bay. Actually this is a very small bay, in the bay grows dense sea grasses and boulder rocks covered with soft corals and Hydroids, the reef extends.

towards Turtle’s Neck (Baong Penyu). It is steep slope reef exposed to the channel, table shaped coral and a variety of Crinoids major structure of the slope. At the hook of the slope stands hard Dome corals at 15 meters, with its huge floppy sponges, swarm number of cleaning Shrimps, Black frogfishes, Leaf scorpion fishes and others unusual animals. The reef runs toward Tanjung Silayukti, lying at 10 meters gradually down the sandy slope at 15 meters. The drab bottom with scattered rocks descend down the sloping to about 18 meters, there sits dome hard corals where the unusual animals like variety of Scorpion fishes, and Crocodile fishes are commonly encountered. The scattered rocks and boulder rocks in the bay make an interesting colourful reef with variety of prolific fishes. The surge sometime is quite strong pushing toward the bay into the shallow reef and it easily causes disorientation. The water temperature is damn cold sometimes and it has ever reached 18 degrees C, good to wear long exposure suit to dive here.

Jepun

Its location is about 50 meters offshore, where stands a small temple at the rocky cliff on the coastline, this temple is -Pura Jepun-. Jepun stands for Frangipani flower in Balinese language. The descending reef is started up current offshore from where the temple sits, first 2 to 3 meters reef then continues a wide sloping terrace falling off significantly where giant Anemones, Crinoids of varying colour and many other reef fishes. Chevron Barracuda, Pencil thin-keeled Needlefish are common here. While drift diving you will end up finding the rockier reef wall before Blue Lagoon. It is better put ourselves at the shallow outcrop to see a swarm of reef fish. If big waves occur the bottom will swirl up, makes the visibility a bit of a blur, better shift the diving to another reef. The water temperature is rather cold (roughly 24 degrees C) due the thermocline that often occurs.

Tanjung Bungsil

A small outboard motor boat cruises south side of Padang Bai harbour about 15 minutes to pass the peninsula south of the harbour, the boat will anchor to get the divers prepared dive gear, don them and hit the water. Descending to the slope bottom up to 20 meters spur into the bay, soft corals, rocky boulders shaped covering with coral reef are rich with sea life, Reef sharks often spotted. By the end of the dive, when you surface watching out the ferry passing into the bay, if the sound of it is heard better delay a moment before a direct ascent, because it’s hard to determine the ferry’s position underwater. Best time to dive at this location is if the current flows into the bay or on the slack high tide. Water temperature is relative warm and sometimes-even drop as to 25 degrees C.

Padang Bai Channel

To dive here we start descending from the buoy close to the ferry dock; the channel runs further east to the hook of Tanjung Silayukti. At the beginning of the dive the reef is not interesting, much more interesting around the hook of Tanjung Silayukti with scattered boulder rocks, bommies, colourful hard corals, soft corals, number of Crinoids and a variety of tropical reef fishes. Turtles are frequently seen on this steeply slope reef that runs to 30 meters deep, the current is sometimes unpredictable changing its strength and direction that pushes into deep water. Don’t let us sucked into blue water and always ascend safely from the shallow reef of Tanjung Silayukti so the boat skipper can easily provide the pick up service by the end of the diving. Water temperature is frequently fallen roughly 26 degrees C.