Secret Bay Gilimanuk

Gilimanuk · Bali · Indonesia

Secret Bay Gilimanuk hides in plain sight on Bali's far western tip, a shallow, silty bay adjacent to the Java ferry terminal that most travelers pass through without a second glance. Beneath the unremarkable surface lies one of the Indo-Pacific's most productive muck diving sites, a black volcanic sand slope that packs more rare critters per square meter than anywhere else on Bali and rivals the legendary muck sites of Lembeh Strait and Anilao. I walked in from the beach just after dawn, the water warm at twenty-eight degrees and the visibility a workable eight meters. The bottom dropped gently from the shore, black volcanic sand giving way to patches of rubble and sparse seagrass. Within three minutes and at barely four meters deep, my guide had found the first frogfish: a hairy frogfish the size of a tennis ball, its body covered in fleshy filaments that made it nearly invisible against the debris it sat upon. It was going to be that kind of dive. Over the next ninety minutes at depths never exceeding ten meters, Secret Bay unloaded its treasures with almost absurd generosity. A mimic octopus flowed across the sand, its body shifting between flounder, lionfish, and sea snake impersonations with each perceived threat. Two painted frogfish in different color phases sat within a meter of each other on a discarded tire. A wonderpus emerged from its burrow, extending its dramatically striped arms in a threat display that seemed designed specifically for my camera. The macro life here is staggering in its density. Ornate ghost pipefish hung among crinoid arms, their bodies matching the feathered profile of their hosts with uncanny precision. A blue-ringed octopus retreated into a shell, flashing its warning rings. Flamboyant cuttlefish walked across the sand on their modified arms, their bodies pulsing with psychedelic patterns of purple, pink, and yellow. And mantis shrimp occupied every suitable burrow, their stalked eyes tracking my movements with an intelligence that is slightly unsettling in an arthropod.