Indonesia’s Little Known Premier Dive Sites!

The snorkelling and diving in Pulau Weh, and the other islands of the Sabang area, was outstanding! We were truly astounded by the amount of fish, the variety of marine life and the size of some of the fish we saw. Spending the last 18 months snorkelling in South East Asia hasn’t always been pleasant. Unfortunately, it is often a blunt reminder of the tragedies occurring within our oceans, seas and reefs. We have seen evidence of dynamite fishing, collection of turtle eggs, severely damaged coral reefs, tourists standing on and /or kicking coral with their fins, rubbish of extraordinary amounts and we have even saved a turtle that was tangled up in an astronomical amount of rubbish and fishing nets.

In Sabang, the problems of rubbish, and the tourists related coral damage, still apply. However, the tourism in Sabang is still relatively small, and the BPKS are hopefully going to start addressing the problems associated with coral reefs, tourism and rubbish collection, as they work towards developing the tourism in the Sabang area.

About Sabang

Sabang is a municipality which encompasses five Indonesian islands. Recently we have had the opportunity to spend a month there, three weeks of which were spent snorkelling and diving. It was some of the best we have done in Indonesia… scrap that, it is the best snorkelling and diving we have come across in Indonesia.

We sailed from Phuket in Thailand to Pulau Weh in Indonesia for the Sabang Marine Festival. We were not even aware of how good the diving was in Sabang. We got a very pleasant surprise when we jumped into the water. Hundreds of fish immediately surrounded us. Some dive spots have little coral but heaps of fish, others are beautiful sea gardens of colourful plate coral. One dive site is locally known as “the underwater volcano”. This area full of *fumaroles and you go there to swim thought the warm bubbles!

An amazing variety of marine life!

While diving Dwayne saw a manta ray, sharks, nudibranchs, frogmouth fish, ribbon eels and a gargantuan sweetlips. We also saw lionfish, scorpionfish, shrimpfish, long-horned cowfish, peacock manta shrimp, painted lobsters, sea snakes, and the entire star-studded cast of Finding Nemo! A full list of the species I could identify is at the bottom of this post.