Sheila and I came here primarily to dive the famous Liberty Wreck. Though we had visited Bali previously these were not diving holidays and so we dived only briefly at Secret Bay in the North West. On this occasion the trip was all about diving and in the three available diving days we would be doing five dives per day. We chose to stay at Scuba Seraya in Tulamben. This is a lovely small and secluded operation just off the coast road next to the sea.
The compound is about 1 acre in size and comprises an open central grassy area with the dive buildings and office at one end and the small restaurant and accommodation at the other end. The grounds are planted with plenty of orange, white and red bougainvillea and there are palm trees and mango trees interspersed throughout. Accommodation comprises four maisonettes, two bungalows and four villas. We stayed in a maisonette which comprises an entrance porch with day bed, main room with four poster double bed and mosquito nets (more for show) and then out back is the wet area – Balinese style – open air shower with wc and sink, a good area for dealing with camera equipment. Very hot water showers in the open air are lovely at the end of a long dive. The bungalows and villas are designed on similar principles but larger with extra features. The villas have TV and video, plunge pool and super sized day bed. For a dive operation the accommodation here is quite luxurious. We are here in late September and the place is very quiet with only two other divers here. Consequently the place has a very tranquil calm feel to it and of course we are enjoying excellent service in which staff outnumber the guests at least three to one. Had we come in August the place would have been buzzing with guests but we seem to have got it just right because the weather is beautiful, there are not too many guests and the diving is great. Should you fancy a massage this too is available from a freelance lady who visits everyday. The brochure is accurate when it states “The resort has been carefully designed with a sense of style. A picturesque peaceful haven, with thatched roofs, teak wood finishing, marble and natural stones from across the Indonesian archipelago, it conveys the serenity of a traditional village, yet it features all modern amenities”. Situated between two villas is the beautiful swimming pool and sunbathing area.
There is a purpose built office and training room complex where dive gear can be stored overnight. The kitting up area is open plan with a considerately positioned thatched roof to protect divers from the sun. Each diver is allocated a large basket into which all your dive gear will easily fit when not in use. The centrepiece of this area are three large freshwater tanks, one for cameras, one for BCDs and one for wet suits and fins. It’s just a short walk across the beach to the sea and the waiting dive boats which could conveniently handle six divers but with only two plus a guide felt really spacious with plenty of room to place camera on the floor of the boat. And an important point for some ladies, there is a ladder that can be hooked on the side of the boat making exit from the water almost as easy as the backward roll in. The two boats are relatively small but adequate given that the sites are mostly within 5 – 10 mins reach. When leaving for a dive you just carry your mask and fins and camera – the staff deal with all the heavy stuff, same when you return.
I would say this is one of the best laid out and best organized dive operations that I’ve seen making for stress free preparations before a dive and comfortable de-kitting after the dive.
There is a small simple facility and basic menu which nevertheless met our needs adequately during our short stay. When trying to cram in five dives a day the service could be a little faster but all in all no complaints in this department. If you can survive on omelettes, Indonesian curries, huge sandwiches with french fries, spaghetti bolognaise and a host of other staples then you’ll not go hungry at Scuba Seraya. TIP – try the pancakes and vanilla ice cream after your fourth dive around 3.00 pm – yummy!
I have to say that we were very pleasantly surprised by the diving here. There are about ten sites that are dived regularly and are within easy reach of Scuba Seraya. The visibility was very good as much as 30 metres and whilst there was occasionally a milky haze partly due to the lighting conditions the diving gave excellent opportunities for videography and the still photographers would be very happy here also. The temperatures were fine for a 3mm wetsuit and most of the time there was almost no current. So diving conditions were perfect.
KUBU****
Approx 15 minutes north of the resort lies this fabulous site. Dropping in close to the shore in five metres of water on to the black sand bottom below. Heading deeper you descend through a valley with a coral reef on either side. We turn left and descended to 30m. As we hit the reef we are met by a multitude of fish. Schools of humphead snapper, midnight and yellow snapper merge and drift apart. As you work you way up the reef you encounter one group of fish after another – blue stripped fusiliers, even schooling butterfly fish and red tooth triggerfish. Half way up the reef is a large red gorgonian fan which advertises a cleaning station populated by half a dozen large orbicular bat fish. Wherever you turn there are multitudes of fish. An hour into the dive and we are on the top of the reef in 5m of water with no need for a red filter as sunlight bathes the reef and all its natural colours explode. There I just turn the “on” switch and let the camera roll as schools of surrounding butterfly fish graze across the reef occasionally sent on their way by defensive sergeant majors and damselfish.
This is one of the best dives here and worth the extra effort to reach the site. Cameramen will be more than happy.
LIBERTY WRECK****
Most dive books and articles covering the Tulamben area contain detailed background, diagrams etc of this site. So I’ll not repeat this detail here. Basically though The US Liberty was built in 1918 and used as a cargo vessel by the US Army during WWII. At 120m and 6211 tons the vessel was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine while delivering cargo from Australia to the Philippines on Jan 11 1942. Nearby allied ships came to its rescue and assisted the ship into the Lombok Strait where it was beached in Tulamben Bay. The vessel lay stranded on the beach until 1963 when the Gunung Agung volcano erupted killing thousands of Balinese people and pushing The Liberty off the beach into its present location.
This dive site is unique in that it is a house reef, with a large wreck lying from 10m to 30m with many pieces of the wreck still intact providing an easy dive for all levels of diver and numerous photo and video opportunities. One visit to this site is really not enough but it pays to be here at 7.30 am before the bus loads of divers from Kuta and Sanur arrive. At early morning you may encounter just a couple of other groups of divers from the nearby Tauch Terminal dive operation for whom The Liberty is the house reef. We started our dive at the stern where the rudder is clearly visible and slowly worked our way to the bow taking in various interests in the contorted metal work en route.
Page 84/85 of “Diving Bali – The Underwater Jewel of South East Asia” by David Pickell and Wally Siagian gives a detailed drawing of the wreck layout. But as time passes pieces will further corrode and fall apart. This is a wreck to be enjoyed now.
Marine life abounds from nudibranchs, pink leaf scorpionfish, lionfish, pufferfish, titan triggerfish, trevally, tuna, surgeonfish, and moorish idols to sergeant majors, orbicular batfish, and various types of sweetlips. Visit the boom hanging to the beach side of the wreck in about 5 metres of water. Nearby are two types of garden eels but under the boom you will find many large sweetlips and midnight snapper waiting for their photos to be taken. With the early morning sunlight playing over the wreck this site offers great videography possibilities and you’ll want to visit more than once.
DROP OFF***
Down at 45m we encountered a fat white tip reef shark resting on the black sand bottom. Later in the dive we saw another shark coasting the reef in about 8m of water so shark sightings are possible almost anywhere on this dive. The wall plunges almost vertically and is encrusted with large sea fans, healthy sponges and black corals. At about 25m is a large purple sea fan. Also patrolling this reef were large bumphead wrasse. Several passed by in quite shallow waters grazing on the coral and quite unconcerned by the presence of divers which enabled me to get very close and video them munching on coral.
ALAMANDA***
Located between Emerald and Batu Kelebit this popular and picturesque dive site is only a short boat ride away. The fringing reef is incredibly colourful and has many interesting outcroppings and pinnacles which house a wide variety of colourful reef fish. We found mantis shrimp, a black ribbon eel, oriental sweetlips, moorish idols, palette surgeonfish, titan triggerfish, and scorpionfish, all colours of boxfish, coris, jawfish and gobies with their resident shrimp.
BATU KELEBIT***
Between Seraya Resort and Tulamben Bay is a small volcanic beach with a rocky outcrop at its northern end. This outcrop which is visible from the surface marks this dive site. Batu Kelebit – the Kelebit Rocks are two large underwater boulders lying just offshore. For greater details see P49 – 104 “Diving Bali”. ‘The Underwater Jewel of South East Asia’. There are three coral ridges with sand between. The ridges are a mass of life – hard corals, sponges, black corals, sea fans and teaming with fish life. We logged many bumphead wrasse, giant trevally and tuna as well as the usual selection of reef fish. Apparently this site also attracts sharks and mantas from time to time.
EMERALD***
This site is quite nearby up the coast at the next resort – though it does not appear to be a dive resort. Down at 26m you find a Toyota taxi that has seen better days but now provides an interesting metal carcass that offers home to many small reef fish and creates an interesting video opportunity.
Across the sloping reef one encounters the, by now, usually abundant selection of reef fish including schooling surgeonfish and we also saw a large Napoleon wrasse, bumphead wrasse, lionfish and giant moray.
BATU NITI**
Facing out to sea from the resort just a short distance to the right is a rocky outcrop that marks the top of this dive site. This site can be dived from 5 to 40 metres and has the usual abundant selection of marine life. The coral reef is interspersed with patches of black sand which makes for interesting topography. We saw a relatively uncommon juvenile batfish with its elongated black fins and orange tinted margin. Trevally passed by and there were a number of nudibranchs to photograph.
SERAYA SECRETS*****
This is the house reef. You just step 20 metres across the beach in front of the dive operation and enter the water. We dived this site six times out of fifteen dives, two of them as night dives and two of the dives were each just over two hours duration when on each occasion I used up almost a full 60 minute videotape. This is a macro paradise and even though I may have already filmed the pregnant seahorse or the dragonfish the chance to film again and again in different natural light and less current made multiple return visits to this site a must. We saw three different coloured large seahorses – yellow, orange (pregnant) and a tawny coloured thorny sea horse. There are young morays everywhere almost under every boulder. I should explain that this site is characterized as a sloping black sand bottom with patches of boulders of varying density which stretch down to greater depths to the left and right of the site. To the right we descend to 16m where we find a large and beautiful honeycomb moray. On the way we were very lucky to encounter two 4” long dragonfish or sea moths crawling around on the bottom. They never seem to keep still and are constantly running away from the camera lens. Finding a pair together is quite unusual suggesting spawning is imminent. On another dive here we found a single dragonfish poking around in the black shingle at about 5m and this one displayed its ‘wings’ from time to time – a beautiful blue hue of webbing. Then racing past comes a group of about twenty sea mullet in a feeding frenzy scraping a meal from the algae covered rocks. As mentioned earlier there are several types of baby moray no more than about 15” in length and they are often found huddled in groups of three under boulders and also frequently free swimming whilst hunting for food. White eyed, yellow margin, undulating, honeycomb and cloudy were amongst the moray types that we filmed. Lionfish abound - common and zebra and there are scorpionfish from dark brown to red to yellow all over the place. You really must be careful where you place a hand or rest a leg whilst filming that perfect shot. Past swims a young great barracuda about two feet long, a resident here that for some time suffered from a fishing hook lodged in its mouth but now appears to be rid of the problem. (I’ll have to double check my tape to be certain). Two large and very pretty harlequin shrimp live at the foot of the artificial reef that is slowly encrusting with coral. It reminds me of the metal dome in the ‘Thunderdome’ movie but here serves a much more useful purpose. There are nudibranchs everywhere – some common like the nembrotha and chromodoris families but others that I had never seen before and could not identify even from the Helmut Debelius Nudibranch book. On a night dive we saw a beautiful Spanish Dancer nudibranch and frequently encountered rosettes of reddish purple Spanish Dancer eggs waving in the mild surge. This site has numerous different colour crinoids/featherstars which carried their own secrets including crinoid clingfish, a small black and white crab and even baby scorpion fish less than 1 inch long.
This site seems to be a home to many juvenile fish – some most unlike the adult versions like sweetlips but many just tiny versions of their mums and dads including tiny butterflyfish and pufferfish of which there are several types. There is a particular spot which is home to an octopus that also offers refuge to several ornate ghost pipefish. Lying in prey in its hole with pivoting eyes protruding upwards is a large mantis shrimp ready to strike at any unsuspecting fish that strays by.
Is there anything else to see you may be asking? Well I didn’t give this five stars for no reason did I?
There are two yellow/orange frogfish always in the same spot and easy to find. Baby rays, gobies abound, banded shrimp, baby soles perfectly blend in with the sand of the sea floor, until they move. All sorts of grouper sit on the rocks, filefish and hawkfish are everywhere. Next we see two lionfish having a fight. Hinge beak shrimps live with the large honeycomb moray and at night there are many kinds of crabs from hermits and decorator, which I can identify, to many that I cannot.
The marine life on this site is so prolific that I will be producing a separate DVD on this site alone.
The only thing that I could say was missing on this site was cuttlefish which I did not see, but I heard another group return from this site claiming a cuttlefish sighting so there we have it – 100%.
Our thanks go first to Michael Cortenbach who we met at ‘Celebrate The Sea’ in April 2005 in Singapore. His organization was impeccable and everything worked just at the time it was supposed to. Thanks also to Renault and Marie who run the Scuba Seraya dive operation. Always friendly and accommodating they made us feel very welcome and nothing was too much trouble. Lastly our thanks to our dive guides Smut and for night dives critter spotting in Seraya Secrets thanks to Cheat and all the diving staff who drive the boats, fetch and carry cylinders and dive gear, wash your kit etc.
Come to Scuba Seraya for a week and you will not be disappointed.
September 2005
www.scubaseraya.com
www.balihaicruises.com
www.scubali.com
www.starfish.ch/dive/bali-east.html
Electricity: 220v, Twin round pin sockets
Mobile Phone Coverage: Yes
Best Time to visit: Late Sept/Oct but this is an all year resort.
Dry Season: May to November
Rating Guide for Videographers
***** Has everything
**** Many photographic subjects
*** Good site, lots to photograph
** Some photographic material
* Little to photograph
