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.

Selatan/Song Lawah is a dive site that is about 2.4 kilometres north-east from the hotel. An approximate GPS mark for this dive is 8°19'10.456"S 115°37'40.811"E (using WGS84 as the datum).

A satellite photo from Google Earth that shows the location of the dive site Hotel Uyah is at bottom right

It only takes about 15 minutes to get there by boat, but to be honest, the boat needed its bottom scraped of barnacles and weed, so it should have been about 12 minutes.

The site is off the point north of the Hindu temple Pura Son Lawah. We started off the point and drifted north about 390 metres. There was no real current so it was a one way swim really. The dive started by dropping onto a sandy slope at about 9 metres and then it gradually got deeper to almost 30 metres.

A large gorgonia	Lots of fish in and around the coral

There were some large coral outcrops with some large gorgonias on them. Along the way there were some barrel sponges, sponges and hard corals. There was lots of fishlife around, a few juvenile sweetlips and a juvenile ribbon eel. We also saw some moray eels and a few nudibranchs too.

John and some coral	The thick rope

There was a lot of fishing net around, not big sections, but long and stretched all over the place. It would not really cause a problem for fish but it is unsightly. There was also a very thick rope running from the shallows deep (see the photo above).

Towards the end of the dive we found a grey giant anglerfish on a grey sponge. About 30 metres along was another one. Brilliant! From here worked our way shallow. A very good dive. Visibility very good.

The first giant anglerfish	The second giant anglerfish

Underwater photos from GoPro due to normal camera having problems.