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.

Lipah Bay is a dive site that is about six kilometres east-south-east of the hotel, about 12 minutes run. An approximate GPS mark for this dive is 8°21'00.022"S 115°41'00.571"E (using WGS84 as the datum).

A satellite photo from Google Earth that shows the location of the dive site Hotel Uyah is way off to the top left out of view

As mentioned, takes about 12 minutes to get there by boat The boat moors off the middle of Lipah Bay at the eastern end of the beach. We started here and went east and south, following the steep sandy slope for the first half or so then some coral and then mostly coral, at least at the depth we were. The sand seems to drop to 40 metres or so. After this we cut back to the boat on a direct route.

Some of the artificial reefs we saw, growing coral on them	A different type of artificial reef structures growing coral

There are some artificial reefs at the start, I think they were actually growing coral on them, perhaps to later transplant elsewhere. Then there are little patches of coral. I saw a yellow-lined triggerfish on the way out and another shallower after we turned around. Luckily neither decided to attack me like the one did a week or so before at Tulamben.

The very large and calm turtle	Huge cabbage corals

We also see a very large and calm turtle which was feeding. I could get as close as I wanted, see the attached photograph. There were also a few large moray eels and one blind shark or similar under some coral. There were lots of sponges and gorgonias on the larger coral bits and a few barrel sponges. The gorgonias were the fine ones, less rigid that the normal ones seen.

Coral and gorgonias	A nice large barrel sponge

There are plenty of reef fish and tropicals for the whole dive. At 50 minutes we turned around and came back in a direct line to the mooring at 8 to 12 metres. It only takes 25 minutes to return to the boat. There are some very large coral bommies with huge amounts of gorgonia on them. Near the boat there were more artificial reefs, all had lots of fishlife.

After 75 minutes we ended up back under the boat. Visibility was very good, at least 20 metres and a warm 29C. It is not the most exciting dive at Amed, but it was okay.

Underwater photos from GoPro due to normal camera having problems.