I am spending next week diving with Living Seas in Bali. Living Seas set up shop in Bali about a year ago and is fully set up for technical diving and bespoke adventures. We will be heading all over the island to dive some common and some off the beaten path sites. We are going to be diving Padang Bai (southeast), Nusa Penida (island off the southeast), Lake Batur (inland northeast) and Tulamben (northeast). Nusa Penida is home to a mola mola and manta cleaning station. Fingers crossed to have good conditions, reasonable vis, and responsible divers so I can get some decent photos. Tulamben is home to the USAT Liberty, a 125m long US Army cargo ship torpedoed by the Japanese in WWII and one of the best wreck diving sites in the world.
We'll be doing a mixture of technical and recreational dives, depending on what's hot. At the tail end of the trip, I have arranged an additional 2 days of guided diving in Tulamben with Jeff Mullins' Reef Wreck & Critter focused on photography.
Bali has great diving and very diverse marine life, but the obvious problem is overdiving and diver damage. There are also a lot of unscrupulous dive guides who have no qualms manipulating the marine life. I'm hoping to avoid the crowds and dive at pristine sites given all the arrangements that I've made. Also, Bali is largely unexplored below recreational depths so I'm hoping that we'll be lucky and get some surprises on our technical dives.
