Bali Dive Blog

The Liberty Wreck of Tulamben, Bali

Diving Liberty Wreck,Tulamben

By Erwin Kodiat

Liberty Ship Wreck

The shipwreck area is probably the easiest wreck diving in the world. It was Liberty that motoring across Lombok Strait in World War II service on 1942. The ship took a torpedo from Japanese submarine. Two destroyers that went along towed her toward Singaraja, however the damage took too much water that made her beached at Tulamben. It sat grounded in the shallow part of Tulamben bay for more than twenty years until Mount Agung erupted on 1963. Its earthquakes cause the ship to roll out into deep water and broke her at bow and stern.

Once you get there you can either ride the car through the main street and find the off-road street toward the beach or you can walk through the rocky beach heading north from your hotel, I assume you stay at a hotel next to the beach. Once you geared up, just swim perpendicular of the beach around 35 meters. If you prefer to start from the bow, then the off road street would be your rule of thumb, otherwise if you prefer stern, find the end of the restaurant, swim direct from there.

Once you see the wreck, group of surgeonfishes (Acanthurus sp) will swim around you. It is because for quite a long time some divers feed them rice, bread or banana. We strongly disagree with this kind of attraction since it would change the feeding behavior of them. Also, you have to be careful with the scalpel-like spine on each side of the tail base. It can cause painful wound on you!

The shipwreck itself is about 120 meters length and many species live there. Although it is not usual, we encounter a one and half meters Napoleon wrasse (Cheilinus undulatus) and our friends saw his very first Pygmy Seahorse (Hippocampus sp) in 28 meters depth. Even I met my first 1.2 meters teenager White tip shark (Triaenodon obesus) chasing a giant trevalley (Caranx ignobilis) during dive four of my Open Water course there. During one of our night dives there, we found out that a one-meter bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) slept in one of the protected area of the wreck.

Some fellows divers, one of them is Prastiyono, spotted a pygmy seahorse (Bargibanti sp) at the sea fan close to the bow. Ask him how to find it, he would be more than glad to tell you.

The water is usually calm with low current and good visibility (15-25 meters). The problem diving there is its popularity that makes many divers visiting Tulamben will dive it. Awful buoyancy will reduce the visibility since the sand will go up from the bottom. Blue spotted stingray (Dasyatis kuhlii) and huge, swirling, ball of big eye jack fish (Caranx sexfasciatus) also common encountered here. One notable event is when we do our safety stop, we often encounter juvenile fishes of any kind. If you happened to do the safety stop close to the stern, try to find the garden eel (Heteroconger polyzona).

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 30th, 2002 at 13:10 and is filed under SCUBA Diving, Bali, Dive Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.