Sahaung Island

Manado · North Sulawesi · Indonesia

Sahaung Island sits in the Bangka Strait off North Sulawesi's northern tip, a tiny volcanic rock that barely breaks the surface yet hides an underwater world of extraordinary color and diversity beneath its waves. The site is a series of submerged pinnacles rising from a sandy seafloor at 30 metres, each one smothered in soft corals so dense and vibrant that first-time visitors often struggle to process the visual overload. This is North Sulawesi diving at its most photogenic. I descended along the main pinnacle's western face and was immediately engulfed in color. Dendronephthya soft corals in shades of magenta, electric purple, and fiery orange cascaded down every vertical surface, their delicate branches fully extended in the gentle current. Schools of golden anthias swarmed the coral heads in shimmering clouds, darting in and out of the soft coral canopy with mechanical precision. The sheer density of color here rivals anything I have seen in Fiji's Somosomo Strait. But Sahaung's real treasure lies in the small. The gorgonian fans anchored to the pinnacle between 18 and 25 metres are home to multiple species of pygmy seahorse, those impossibly tiny creatures that require a trained eye and a patient guide to locate. My dive guide pointed out a Denise's pygmy seahorse barely a centimetre long, perfectly camouflaged against the orange polyps of its host fan. On the volcanic sand slopes between pinnacles, ghost pipefish hung motionless near crinoids, a painted frogfish sat wedged against a sponge, and a blue-ringed octopus prowled through the rubble. The upper sections of the pinnacles between 5 and 12 metres offered a different mood entirely: hard coral gardens patrolled by sweetlips, fusiliers, and territorial damselfish. Moray eels occupied crevices in the basalt rock. Sahaung delivers the full North Sulawesi experience in a single dive, from wide-angle soft coral spectacle to the most demanding macro subjects in the Indo-Pacific. It is a site that rewards both the patient lens and the wandering eye.