Diving Amed, Bali: My 3 Best Dive Sites & Tips

I spent a week in Amed, Bali in June and July of 2026, diving with Fresh Fins Diving.

Every dive here is a shore dive.

You walk off a black sand beach or scooter five minutes up the coast in your gear, and tank porters have everything laid out waiting for you when you arrive.

Visibility ran 98 to 100 ft (30 m) on every dive I did, and the water sat at 82.4°F (28°C) the entire week.

The best dive on this coast is not technically in Amed at all. The USAT Liberty is 25 minutes up the road in Tulamben, and almost everyone dives it out of Amed anyway.

The Best Dive Sites in Amed

I dived three sites here, two in Amed proper and one in Tulamben up the coast.

They are not close in quality, and the best one is the one outside town.

Best Wreck Dive: The USAT Liberty

The USAT Liberty sits in Tulamben, a 25 minute drive north of Amed, and most Amed shops run it as an early morning trip.

It was easily one of the top five shipwreck dives of my life.

She is a 120 metre US Army cargo ship that has been underwater since 1963, and she is completely covered in coral and marine life now.

The history is worth knowing before you drop in. A Japanese submarine, the I-166, torpedoed her on January 11, 1942 while she was running from Australia to the Philippines. The USS Paul Jones and the Dutch HNLMS Van Ghent towed her away from Lombok toward Singaraja to save her cargo of rubber and railway parts, and she sat beached on the shore until 1963, when tremors from the Mount Agung eruption slid her into the sea.

She now rests 15 to 30 metres (49 to 98 ft) off a rocky volcanic beach, which is why a 120 metre wreck is a shore dive.

I woke up at 5:30 AM for the pickup and was in the water by 6:45 AM. We dived her twice, the first pass mostly external and the second one working through the swim-throughs and penetration routes.

The second dive was the better of the two by a wide margin.

Marine life on her is genuinely dense. Two sea kraits on one dive, clownfish in carpet anemones all over the hull, hawkfish, damsels in the hard coral, golden torch coral and nudibranchs everywhere.

One warning. Coming back toward shore at the end of the second dive the current picked up and ran like a river, and we had to fight it the whole way in.

Best Artificial Reef: Amed Pyramids

Balinese diving associations sank around 30 hollow concrete pyramids at Amed Pyramids in 1995. Three decades of growth later they are a proper reef rather than a novelty.

The shallowest pyramids sit at 13 to 16 ft (4 to 5 m), shallow enough that snorkellers rent gear on the beach and go look at them without ever putting a tank on.

This is the site where I saw the most. Two blue spotted stingrays on the sand before the reef, a moray hanging under one of the pyramids, an emperor angelfish, an octopus changing colour under a rock, trevally out in the blue, pipefish and Moorish idols on a reef patch, and turtles.

There is natural reef at the site as well, so it is not purely concrete.

We scootered over in our scuba gear, parked on the street and walked down an alley to the beach, where the tank porters were already waiting.

Best Beginner Dive: Jemeluk Wall

Jemeluk Wall was the first dive I did in Amed and the first site I had ever dived with black sand.

It is a drop-off you reach by walking off the beach, and it is the easiest of the three to dive. My average depth was 36 ft (11 m) across a 67 minute dive, which is the longest I logged here.

Closer to shore there is a Japanese temple statue covered in coral that you can swim over on the way in or out.

Schools of chromis and anthias sit off the wall, and there were blue spotted stingrays, a venomous scorpionfish walking across the sand, torch coral moving in the current and plenty of clownfish.

The catch is the crowd. Jemeluk is one of the most popular sites in Amed and there are dive shops lined up along this whole stretch of coast, so expect company on the beach and in the water.

Sites I Didn't Dive

Amed and Tulamben together hold far more than the three sites I got to in a week, and Fresh Fins alone run a longer rotation than I dived.

I have not been in the water at any of these, so I cannot rank them or tell you what they are like right now.

The Other Wreck: Japanese Shipwreck

A small Japanese vessel believed lost in these waters during World War II, sitting in Lipah Bay down the coast from Amed. It lies in 20 to 40 ft (6 to 12 m), which makes it far shallower than the Liberty, and it is reported to be covered in hard and soft coral, gorgonian sea fans and large sponges.

Shallow enough to be a genuinely relaxed wreck dive, which the Liberty is not.

Reef Shark Nursery: Lipah Bay

The same bay as the Japanese wreck. Operators describe it as calm reef and critter diving, and it comes up repeatedly as a reef shark nursing site where guides find baby sharks tucked under the big table corals.

Harlequin Shrimp: Seraya Secrets

Seraya Secrets is the macro site on this coast, and it is the one I most want to go back for.

It sits just south of Tulamben, so it is the same drive as the Liberty rather than a site in Amed itself. Fresh Fins list it from 16 to 130 ft (5 to 40 m), and it is a shallow black sand muck dive.

Harlequin shrimp are what it is known for, and pairs reportedly hold the same crevice for months at a time. Ghost pipefish, flamboyant cuttlefish, frogfish and nudibranchs fill out the rest of the list.

Given how much small life turned up on the three sites I did dive, this is what I would book first on a second trip.

Macro Diving: Ghost Bay

Ghost Bay is the Amed side equivalent, a few minutes from the dive shops rather than 25 minutes up the road.

It mixes patches of artificial reef with sand slopes, and the critter list operators publish for it covers mimic octopus, wonderpus, painted and clown frogfish, seahorses, ghost pipefish, leaf scorpionfish and stonefish. Neighbouring Melasti gets grouped with it.

One naming thing worth knowing. Ghost Bay sits in Bunutan, and Bunutan is also the name of the wider bay, where Fresh Fins run a separate drift dive from 52 to 98 ft (16 to 30 m). Name the site you actually want when you book.

Advanced Only: Gili Selang

A small island off the eastern tip of Bali with walls covered in soft coral. It is the one site on this coast that operators consistently flag as unsuitable for new divers, because of strong currents.

Best Time to Dive Amed

Amed dives year round, which is the first thing that separates it from most of the places I have been.

The dry season runs April to November and that is when operators point you at, with the highest visibility and the mildest currents. Amed sits on the dry northeast coast of Bali, in the rain shadow of Mount Agung, so it stays workable when the south of the island is wet. Agung is the volcano you are looking at from the shore on every entry here, and it is the one that put the Liberty in the water in the first place.

I dove in June and July, inside that window.

I had 98 to 100 ft (30 m) of visibility on all three sites. Water temperature was 82.4°F (28°C) every single dive, with no thermocline worth mentioning at the depths these sites run.

The one timing decision that actually mattered was the time of day rather than the month. The Liberty is the most crowded dive site in Bali, so we went at sunrise.

Dive Operators in Amed

I dove the whole week with Fresh Fins Diving in Amed.

What makes this town work is the tank porters. Every site I dived, the gear was carried down and laid out on the sand before we got there, which is the difference between a shore dive being easy and a shore dive being a chore.

They run the Liberty at sunrise, which is the single most useful scheduling decision anyone made for me on this trip. They also run Seraya Secrets and Bunutan, which I did not get to.

There are dive shops lined up the whole length of this coast, so the beach is busy regardless of who you book with.

What Diving Amed Costs

These are Fresh Fins Diving's published rates rather than a negotiated price, so you can plan against them directly.

• Single fun dive: 650,000 IDR, around $40
• Two dives in a day: 1,100,000 IDR, around $65
• Three dives in a day: 1,500,000 IDR, around $90
• Night dive: 750,000 IDR, around $45
• Package, 2 days and 5 dives: 2,550,000 IDR, around $150
• Package, 3 days and 7 dives: 3,800,000 IDR, around $225
• Package, 10 dives: 4,950,000 IDR, around $290

Dive computer rental runs 150,000 IDR (around $10) a day, a 15 litre tank or a nitrox fill is 30,000 IDR (around $2), and there is a 200,000 IDR (around $12) surcharge per person on the dives that need a boat.

At $29 a dive on the ten dive package, this is some of the cheapest quality diving anywhere. A week here on a package costs less than two days on a lot of liveaboards.

Courses are cheap too. Open Water runs 5,500,000 IDR (around $335) and Advanced 4,900,000 IDR (around $295).

Water Conditions and What to Wear

Water temperature was 82.4°F (28°C) on every dive across both months. A 3mm is plenty and a shorty is defensible if you run warm.

Visibility was 98 to 100 ft (30 m) at all three sites, which is three to five times what I have had in plenty of places that market themselves harder than Amed does.

Current is the thing to plan for, not temperature or visibility. Amed Pyramids is run as a drift. The Liberty was calm on the way out and running like a river on the way back in at the end of the second dive.

The bottom here is black volcanic sand, so it silts up fast if you are careless with your fins, and it swallows light. Your photos will look darker than the same reef would on white sand.

Two of the three sites I dived list Advanced Open Water as the recommended certification. Jemeluk Wall is the one that does not.

Where to Stay in Amed

Stay in Amed, not Tulamben.

I based in Amed for a week and would do it the same way again. Tulamben is a much quieter town with far less infrastructure, and it is only 25 minutes up the road, with most dive shops running you there and back.

Amed is spread along the coast rather than clustered in one village. Jemeluk, Bunutan and Lipah are separate bays along the same road, which is why a scooter matters here. We rode to the Pyramids in full scuba gear and parked on the street.

Getting to Amed

Amed is about a 2.5 hour drive from Denpasar (DPS) airport, on the far northeast side of the island from the airport and from Kuta, Canggu and Seminyak.

That drive is the reason to stay several days rather than day tripping it. Five hours in a car for two dives is a bad trade, and it is what most people visiting Bali end up doing.

It also puts Amed within reach of the rest of eastern Indonesia's diving. The Gili Islands and Nusa Penida are both realistic additions to the same trip.

The questions I get asked most about diving here.