Dive sites of Manado/Bunaken

With more than 30 dive sites you will not be bored!

Dives Sites of Bunaken Island

The eastern side of Bunaken Island offers superb wall diving and excellent snorkeling. The vertical wall has many cracks and small caves and is covered with soft and hard corals, gorgonians and huge sponges. Fishes are abundant and you can expect to see many different butterflyfishes, surgeonfishes, parrotfishes, wrasses and a variety of anemonefishes. Possible encounters include turtles, whitetip and blacktip reef sharks and stingrays. We have also discovered a few shark caves on this side of the island which some baby white-tip reef shark call home - this is definitely our special site.

The southern side of the island has beautiful coral slopes in a deep calm bay, as well as vertical winding walls on the sides of the bay. This side of the island has a high diversity of fishes, corals and sponges, and there are many good spots for snorkeling. The Lekuan spots are frequently rated as the best sites in the park, and they certainly made Bunaken famous for diving. There are huge schools of fusiliers, pyramid butterflyfishes, bannerfishes and damselfishes - in fact on some dives there is just so much fish that you cannot see the reef wall. Frequently you will also bump into reef sharks, napoleon wrasses, hawksbill and green turtles, great barracudas, eagle rays, snappers, scorpionfishes and leaf fishes. Invertebrates include a variety of differently shaped hard corals, black corals, gorgonians, giant barrel sponges, nudibranchs and giant clams.

The dive sites on the western and northern sides of Bunaken are vertical walls abundant with reef fishes, lobsters, whip corals and giant gorgonians. You might also see large emperors, red snappers, groupers, dogtooth tuna, eagle rays, giant trevally, whitetip reef sharks, turtles and barracudas. Even manta rays and whalesharks are said to have been seen around Bunaken.

Dives Sites of Manado Tua Island

The dive sites around Manado Tua have steep vertical winding walls with many cracks, canyons and small caves. You can enjoy beautiful hard and soft corals, reef fishes, turtles and reef sharks.

Our favourite site here is called Pangalingan which has a point where there is often strong current and a large school of barracuda and bat fish at about 20m. The top of the point is a large reef flat rising to about 5m and there is frequently huge schools of snappers and fusiliers, sometimes white-tip reef shark, and many small things such as leaf fish, ribbon eels and nudibranchs.

Dives Sites of Siladen Island

The southern side of Siladen Island has a vertical wall in large steps. The reef top is spectacular with a huge variety of hard and soft corals, and it is therefore an excellent spot for snorkeling. The colours of the corals here are just amazing - it is always amazing to find up to 10 different-coloured feather stars attached to a single large sponge.

The eastern side has a reef flat with gravel and massive corals at about 10-15m. Enjoy your dive amongst reef fishes, moray eels, ribbon eels, anemonefishes, and mantis shrimp. Being a gravel bottom the corals are not so nice, but this is a real critter site, and you can find anything.

Dives Sites of Mantehage Island

There are only a few sites on the west coast of the island, and our favourite is Barracuda Point where you can expect to see a huge school of up to 200 great barracudas, and large schools of giant and big-eye trevally, and bumphead parrotfishes. The large sand slope is also a favourite of dogtooth tuna and eagle rays. Currents can be unpredictable here so it is only advisable for the experienced diver.

Dives Sites of Nain Island

The island is surrounded by huge fields of hard corals, an amazing diversity of invertebrate fauna, big fishes and deep canyons. One of our favourites is Batu Kapal which is a natural canyon formation which starts at 40m and goes down to about 70m, and is therefore only for advanced divers. Hammerheads have been spotted here, but the corals around Nain are not as beautiful as Bunaken and have suffered some destructive dynamite fishing. However it is still worth a day-trip for those who are spending more than a week in the area, and we normally combine this with a dive at Barracuda Point at Mantehage Island.

Dives Sites of Manado Coast and Manado Bay

The dive site on the coast of the mainland which is called Tanjung Pisok is a 10 minutes boat ride from our resort. It has a reef flat sloping to 15-20 meters depth, and is very rich with large tabular sponges, reef fishes, nudibranchs, ribbon eels and unusual green tree corals. We have recently found a colony of pygmy sea-horses which are a favourite for macro-photographers.

Half way to Manado on the coast of the mainland lies a 75-m long cargo-ship wreck at about 24-40 meters depth. The wreck is covered with colourful soft corals and it is a perfect hiding place for numerous schools of fishes, as well as scorpion fish, leaf fish, nudibranchs and flat worms. There is a gentle slope from the ship wreck up to the reef top, and at about 8-10m there are many coral heads and black sand where there is an amazing amount of small critters such as ghostpipe-fish, nudibranchs and pipefishes which are not found anywhere else.

We are also exploring other sites around Manado Bay for maco-photographers, and we have discovered many unusual nudibranchs, pipefish, and octopus.