The dramatic volcanic landscape of this area of North Sulawesi has created some amazing walls for diving in the Bunaken Marine Park. Nearby there is also the mainand slopes of Manado that offer some great altrernative muck diving.

The marine park is made up of Bunaken Island and four other islands, and these islands are in fact a submerged mountain range that was flooded with the sea many eons ago. Read more about Bunaken Marine Park.

Fringing Reef - the steep walls of each island have formed a fringing reef that totally surrounds each island. The top of the reef wall starts 3-5m deep and drops to more than 800m, and its good for beginners and experienced divers as we find that most of the reef-life is between 10m and 15m.

Long dive times - to take advantage of the reef-life at shallow depths we encourage our guests to dive to no deeper than 25m, and to spend a long time at shallower depths - this means that dives are frequently more than 60 minutes. Obviously, we respect the experience and wishes of our guests, and have no problem in accommodating those who wish to dive deeper - we just ask that you plan this with us before-hand.

Slopes and muck - the coastline of Manado bay and the mainland offer sandy slopes as alternatives to the walls. Some of these sandy slopes offer some great muck diving where you can see unusual creatures such as sea horses and giant frog fish. There is even a ship wreck that is being taken over by schools of fish and hard and soft coral.

Its official - "Best walls in Asia" - the Bunaken walls were voted the best walls in Asia by Asian Diver magazine in 2004 because they offer:

• dramatic drop-offs with a huge variety of soft and hard corals

• amazing amount of reef fish: fusiliers, butterfly fish, sweetlips, cardinal fish, damsel fish, you name it.

• many critters camouflaged on the walls: scorpion fish, nudibranchs, lion fish, sea horses, etc.

• regular sightings of turtles, barracuda and reef shark

• visibility of 30m plus

Easy and lazy with day-trips - since we are based on Bunaken Island, most of the dive sites are within 10 minutes of us. However, for some of the further sites we like to arrange day-trips on our dive boat with picnic lunches, and you can spend time between dives exploring the other islands, snorkeling or just sun-bathing.

Entrance Fee into Bunaken Marine Park
When you arrive, we will provide you with an entrance tag that represents the entrance fee into the marine park, and we will add the price to your invoice.
More on the Entrance Fee

Dive Courses in Bunaken

If you are here, why not take advantage of our instructors and take a course. If you are not yet a diver, many sites are ideal for a Try-a-dive or the Open Water Diver course - an amazing experience in one of the most diverse marine environments in the world.

If you are already a diver you could consider the Advanced Open Water Diver or Rescue Diver courses. There are also specialty courses for all levels of divers, and especially good in this area are:

• Peak performance bouyancy - because most of the dives are on wall, you need to have good bouyancy, and this will increase your dive times by a significant amount

• Underwater naturalist - this is great to do in one of the most diverse marine environments in the world

• Wreck diving - there is a great wreck here that is about 60m long, perfect for some mapoing and penetration dives

• Night diving - some critters just don't come out during the day, so this is great to see some other critters

• Underwater digital photography - the photography attractions are world famous so why not get some expert advise on how to capture that perfect image

If you are doing a combo-visit, we would be happy to spread your course over our two centers in Bunaken and Lembeh, but we can only run the Go Pro courses (DiveMaster and Assistant Instructor) from our operation in Bunaken.