Blue Bay Divers

Soft corals and Frog Fishes

Bangka/Gangga-Archipel

The island of Bangka, with its rolling hills of green fields and forests, and the nearby islands of Gangga and Talise offer over 25 dive sites with fringing reef slopes and pinnacles carpeted in soft corals.

Because this Dive Area is nearly untouched and unknown, most of the spots here we discovered ourselfs during the last years, and still do. Underwater many different species and maters of camouflages waiting for your visit, like different kinds of Pygmy Seahorse, different kinds of Frogfishs and Ghostpipefishs, Sepias and Octopusses, Pipehorses and Mandarin Fishs. Dive with us into the Macro Paradise around Bangka Island.

Just as an overview – some of the famous spots around Bangka (we dive in aprox. 25 - 30 spots around Bangka and the Sulawesi Mainland - Pulisan)

Batu Sahaung

our “house reef”,just around the island, on the east coast is a very well known of Bangka diving site and for very good reason. The row of underwater boulder pinnacles that just break the surface here, form giant steps underwater. As you descend down the pinnacles you will marvel at the proliferation of green and golden brown soft corals, huge elephant ear sponges, dense thickets of branching green cup coral and table corals. There are carpets of frilled leather corals and pink, brown, cream and lilac soft coral trees swaying in the shallow surge.

At the same time swarming all around you are redtooth triggerfish, midnight snappers, blue-striped snappers and long-fin bannerfish. Fish soup! If you are not sufficiently enthralled by this, then the site may also throw in teira batfish, pygmy seahorses, frogfish, harlequin sweetlips, palette surgeonfish and perhaps a whitetip reef shark or two might put in a guest appearance. “Breathtaking” and “awesome” are oft-used words on the boat after this dive.

Batu Mandi

is just off Sulawesi mainland and consists of a large rock jutting out of the surface, forming a steep slope. As you dive along the wall here you will see no shortage of pretty macro life including ornate ghost pipefish, lots of nudibranchs and if you are lucky some gorgeous mantis shrimps.

In addition to the abundant macro life, another major feature here are the colossal sea fans at around 20 m and on top of the reef a series of sea fans in hues of pink and red. At Batu Mandi there is no great variation in depth so it diving here normally takes the form of a nice and easy shallow dive.

Batu Gosoh

Another famous dive spot is Batu Gosoh with his Drop offs with vertical cracks and caves surrounded by nades rising up from the depth. Gorgonians, alcionaries and very colorful soft corals or BUSA BORA shows big sponges, many colorful nudibranches, giant basket stars and Special pigmy seahorse, different frog fish and ghostpipefish, Moray ribbon eel.

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