In 2024 I travelled to Tulamben for the fourth time and spent just over two weeks diving the north-eastern coast of Bali. I used Liberty Dive Resort, click here to read about the town and dive operations. In addition, I also went to Amed and spent eight days diving from there. This was one of a number of new dive sites I had not visited on previous trips. It is actually at Tulamben but we travelled by boat from Amed to dive it. It could be done by shore.

Noisy Reef is located between the better known dive sites Agung and Seraya Secrets. It is located about 150 metres to the north-west of Seraya Secrets and just under three kilometres to the south-east of Tulamben (in a straight line) and is one of the more distant local dive sites. It is almost strait off the Scuba Seraya Resort. An approximate GPS mark for the dive spot is S8° 17.64" E115° 39.66" (using WGS84 as the datum). I am not sure if you can dive this site from the shore unless you are staying at the resort.

A satellite photo from Google Earth that shows the location of the dive site

As mentioned, I did this dive when diving with Amed Dive Center from their boat (it was about 25 minutes by boat from Amed). We drifted from a mooring at the spot in the map and went to the north-west, ending near Agung dive site. This was about 200 metres.

You drop down the mooring line and then head north-east and getting a bit deeper to about 24 metres. Down here there are some artificial reefs. They are made from steel, tyres, bottles and even a safe. There are a few different parts to the reef, see the photographs below.

This is the safe with dozens of bottles. The bottles are home to lots of creatures.	One of the steel structures

There is a lot of marine life on, in, around and over the artificial reefs. The reef with a safe on it also has dozens, if not hundreds, of bottles as part of it. We have seen this before, in Sabang in the Philippines especially. They are a particularly effect way to create a reef.

One of the things I found was a tiny lionfish. We saw one of these earlier in the trip. They are almost translucent and green coloured. Unfortunately I only had my GoPro (due to a leaky housing problem), so could not get close enough to take a reasonable photograph.

We jumped from one reef to another and then headed off a bit deeper to 26 metres and head north-west and zig-zag as we go, eventually getting shallower.

Another of the reefs	Another photograph of a reef

Away from the structures the bottom is mostly black sand but then becomes covered with stringy coral with "flowers" (well, that's how I describe it). There are lots of nudibranchs and some crabs and shrimps on various marine life. There are plenty of shrimp on the starfish, one had a dozen!

After 45 minutes we are around 10 metres and the bottom changes again too have some boulders. There are lots of fish in between them. There are more lionfish and moray eels here (there were also quite a few in the artificial reefs).

This is the bottom in the second half of the dive.	A couple of nice barrel sponges

Eventually we spend the last 20 minutes of the dive in the safety stop area. One of the people on the boat was frantically searching for something and I figured out she was missing her GoPro. It was on a handle. After a quick look on the bottom, I decided to look up and there it was, floating. The handle made it buoyant.

Anyway, this was a very good dive, with lots seen. Visibility in May was around 20 metres and the water temperature 29C. If you can do it, I recommend the effort.