The Japanese Wreck, Bali, Indonesia

The wreckage is the remains of a 20m steel freighter in 5 – 15m of water, within snorkelling distance of the beach.  Having said that, there’s little remaining of the ship per se. Here is a little video footage of the dive – as you can see, it’s more about muck-diving than wreck diving.

The wreckage is almost just a ‘placeholder’.

The upright steel remnants of the wreckage are encrusted with sponges and Gorgonian fans. The sea bed of black sand slopes at 45° down to about 25 m where it levels off. Most of the interesting stuff is on this slope from the line of the wreckage north including these garden eels, probably watching the last pair of divers disappearing off to the left, not realising we were coming next.

There are scattered corals of all shapes and sizes including large sponge barrels.

Looking straight down from the wreck to 24m you’ll see a large Gorgonian on which your guide will likely to be able to point out many tiny (tiny tiny!) critters. I was more interested in the Spotted Moray whose hole is near the base of the fan.

From here the dive proceeds north (slope on left) in the 18 – 22m zone to the ‘corner’ where the coral diminishes, and then returns diagonally back up the slope (slope on right) over and around the coral stacks. As well as the obvious cuttlefish, now is the time to think small, if you want to see more.

There are Nudis all over the place, blue and green nembrothas (hope I got that right!),…

Elizabeth’s Chromodoris …

and the Elegant Phyllidia.

As well as lots of damsels, including this guy who I believe is a subadult Ambon Damsel (Pomacentrus amboinensis)

And this Ringtail Cardinalfish with the interesting face markings and a giveaway ring around the tail.

There are wrasse, though not many.

And finally a longspine porcupine.

We dived this site with Aquamarine Diving – Bali.  A full 62min dive. The trip on Aquamarine 1 just 40 minutes from Padang Bai.