DIVING BALI - THE NORTH WEST COAST

Although we have dived Bali frequently over the years, until recently we had seen little of the north-west corner, location of the Menjangan Marine Park and the now famous, Secret Bay.

Menjangan is a tiny, unpopulated island and national park. The island is ringed by steep coral walls in fine condition. Large fans and whips smother the deeper areas while the shallower landscape is hard corals with swarms of fish. There's also the Anker Wreck, said the be an old slave boat. The wooden hull sits on a gentle sandy slope at around 40 metres.

Secret Bay, or Gilimanuk as it is properly known, is adjacent to the ferries terminal for Java. The broad bay is very shallow, under 12 metres deep but protected by an offshore reef. The currents that sweep up the Bali Straight are funnelled into the shallow cove and bring all sorts of small and strange animals into it. Seahorses, octopus and the Ambon scorpionfish are just a few of the more unusual creatures we encountered.

Puri Jati Bay is a new site that gives Secret Bay a run for it's money. The flat sea floor extends quite some way offshore with a maximum depth of ten metres until you hit a sudden drop to about 30 metres. The bay is covered in patches of seagrass and some large leaved halameda algae. The barren landscape is misleading - this is a very prolific marine environment. We saw adult and juvenile seahorses, baby lionfish and just-born filefish. There are cockatoo waspfish the size of a fingernail and slipper lobsters just an inch long. A split branch of bamboo harboured newly laid squid eggs and frogfish the size of a pea. And to top it all off, we even spotted a mimic octopus... being a flounder, and a snake and who knows what?