Whoa, now that is a shipwreck

Not too long after my underwater exploits in the Gilis, I decided to follow several people's recommendation and dive Tulamben. On the east coast of Bali, Tulamben is famous for an easily accessible shipwreck. It's quite a ship too: the USAT Liberty, many meters long. sunk off the coast by Japanese torpedoes in 1942, it was towed to shore for salvage. A 1962 volcano eruption pushed it a bit further out to its current depth of 10 to 20m.

Nick and I did a day trip up from Ubud, a short 2.5 hour drive away (ok, not that short). With an earlier 6:30am start, we were at the dive shop at 9am. We met Made, our divemaster, and began to suit up. It is a beach entry dive, so with everything strapped on and working properly we waded into the water to about 4 feet, then attached our flippers and descended. A quick 30m swim and we were at the beginning of the dive, the tail of the ship.

The first dive was fantastic. Right before we got to the ship, there was a large school of silver fish, probably 100 or 200 in total. Then, the ship itself was massive. We ended up perusing the back half of the ship in the first dive, saving the front half for the second. There was coral everywhere: big brain coral, purple bucket coral the size of large wine barrels, lots of really cool soft coral (one was essentially a purple tree with white buds, amazing to see). There was also fish everywhere, often in schools. Nick spotted two huge triggerfish floating through a hole in the ship. As we came up the middle of the ship, there was a very large barracuda, probably 7 feet in length, long and threatening-looking.

The second dive was just as awesome. Here, we started at the middle and went aft-ward. On this dive there were several opportunities to navigate inside of the ship through openings here and there. Some of these were narrow and it was certainly tricky to navigate with full motion underwater while also making sure the tank stayed in place. We also saw the anchor and a large gun protruding off the front. We saw our friend the barracuda again. There was also a scary bed of eels, with the slithering creatures coming up a foot or so out of the sea bed, with no tail in sight. We also re-encountered the school of silver fish and Nick pulled a Jacques Cousteau and swam up into the middle of the barrel.

Very, very cool diving, some of the best of my life.

H/T especially to Nitara for the recommendation.