When scuba diving in Bali Indonesia you understand why the place has such a fantastic reputation as soon as you hit the sparkling clear waters the black sand makes all the colors jump out and highlights all of the wildlife of which there are hundreds of species ranging from the slug like nudibranchs to the mysterious 3 meter long visitors from the deep, the Mola Mola. Bali scuba diving while not as highly rated as other parts of the 18,000 island diving Mecca of Indonesia, does have some excellent reefs of its own and has one of the best Asia scuba diving wrecks the Liberty Wreck on Bali’s North side. This Bali wreck sits under the majestic volcanic mountain Agung framed by plumeria and other beautiful tropical plants makes for a memorable view below the water and above.
The Liberty wreck was hit by Japanese torpedoes and was being towed to a nearby port to receive repairs when it finally sunk. Before it sank completely they drove the boat onto the beach to salvage the cargo, and the ship was being stripped on shore when it was moved by a volcano to its present location. The ships interiors are all mostly visible and there are not any areas that you would want to penetrate into; there are however some neat little swim thru, one of which we were doing when we ran into a 2 meter long barracuda. While quite menacing looking, this barracuda is used to seeing scuba divers on a regular basis, so as long as you don’t approach to close the fish will give you some awesome underwater photo’s and videos. Like sharks they snap their jaws as a way of warning you that you re getting to close, which your dive guides will not let you get to close anyway.
The Liberty wreck lays just meters off the shore and is very easy to access as a shore dive. The bottom of the wreck is in 26 meters of water, but a large portion of the wreck is above 18 meters, so it is a great wreck for PADI open water divers before they do the Advanced Open Water course which allows them to descend to depths greater than 18 meters to a max depth of 30 meters. Below 30 meters one needs to do a PADI Deep Diver specialty course. If one wishes to go deeper than 40 meters as a PADI diver one needs to do a Technical diving course with PADI or with one of the many specialty diving certification agencies available today.
