The First Time I Heard About Menjangan

     During a previous trip to Bali, at sunrise on the summit of Mount Batur, after a long hike up the volcano, an anonymous early-riser first told me about diving at Bali’s western edge. Then again, a diving buddy whom I met through the Saigon Divers Club, a community of divers based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, recommended Menjangan for its pristine reefs within West Bali National Park. Until then, Bali had been synonymous in my mind with mass tourism, giant parties, freediving schools, yoga retreats, and seasonal Mola Mola chasers. That’s why I was so happy to reconsider Bali, for a quiet, relaxing diving vacation, at the doors of a natural reserve only one short flight away from home.

Diving Inside a National Park

     Quick reads led me to understand that the park management charges passes to those entering the boundaries of the reservation, from both land and marine access. This was not mentioned at all during my diving booking process, for me later to understand that all park fees were actually already included inside the diving package. Before I even packed my dive gear, I was relieved to feel as if the operator was, by standard, embracing the park policies and making the experience friction-less for the diver. On the flight to Bali, I kept wondering what the underwater world would look like in Menjangan, if all local businesses and communities participated in unison to the good management and protection of the park, in a way that allows both nature and people to coexist.

After I landed, I quickly realized why Menjangan never made the top lists of travel bloggers for tourism hotspots around Bali. The 5-6 hour car ride from Denpasar is indeed a turn-off to those seeking a quick or condensed trip to Bali. But for those looking for a quiet place free from the pressure of mass tourism, Bali’s Northwestern tip lives at the pace of its natural reserve. Once I arrived at the resort, what positively surprised me first was how understated everything was. Drinking water was refilled without question. There were no plastic bottles piling up in corners, no stacks of printed schedules or resort map handed out automatically to keep printouts to a minimum. On the dive boat, lunch came in reusable bento boxes and water, in tumblers tucked into camping coolers. It was practical and unceremonious. Nobody made a speech about it. It simply was how things were done around the place. Even the pace of the diving felt measured. The boats were not oversized, just enough for 6 divers (guides included) and spare tanks. The groups were not rushed. I was told that fishing activity in the area is limited by both catch and boat size. The limits feel tangible here, shaped by scale rather than slogans.

     West Bali National Park was originally created to protect a critically endangered bird, the Bali Starling. I did not see one, though I have to admit I was not focused on the treetops. My gaze was pointed at the ripples and waves on the water, with the occasional splashes indicative of frantic schools of mackerels that I would get to see for myself. At the mooring line, the water visibility was clear enough to see the outline of the reef and the beginning of the slope that would end into a deep vertical wall.

The Acropora coral felt healthy, solid. Table corals were large and filled with life inside their intricate branches, from pink eyed gobies to bandit crabs. The soft coral was dancing with the surge, to a the rhythm that made the carpet anemones flip, revealing the porcelain crab that literally likes to live on the edge of its mantle. Expectedly, bleaching came up in conversation with my dive guides; last year had been severe. Some sections were visibly affected, and you could still see patches of coral where color vanished. While protection at the local level clearly matters, it just does not shield the reefs from rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification caused by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Diving at the Scale of a Fingernail

     Beyond the broad view of the reef, the real discoveries began when Putu, my dive guide,  and I slowed down along coral heads, peering into tube sponges, carefully studying crinoids. We hovered in front of gorgonian fans, watching the polyps extend and retract into the current while hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pygmy the seahorse, its prehensile tail curled around a branch. No such luck. But it doesn’t mean we didn’t encounter curious little critters along our dives… far from it! At the scale of a pinky fingernail, diving requires patience, decent buoyancy and accepting that you might just devote 10 minutes of air to something so small only a camera can reveal.