Diving Ambon, the Spice Islands | Indonesia

In the ever-expanding scuba diving realm that is Indonesia, the island of Ambon is slowly but steadily growing in popularity. It's reputation builds on the growing realisation that there is some outstanding muck diving right beside Ambon city as well as many other spectacular diving sites close by.

Small Nusa Tiga island has exciting wall dives and Nusa Laut has an underwater promontory that hosts enormous schools of resident jacks along with larger animals like bumphead parrotfish, eagle rays and small reef sharks. Ambon also has a great wreck dive, the Pertamina Wreck, which is covered in healthy corals.

However, the biggest attractions for most divers are the famous critter dives in the channel that leads to Ambon. The diving is not dissimilar to the Lembeh Straits – there may be slightly fewer critters by number, but there are as many species with everything from rhinopias to seahorses.