Manado/Bunaken Diving

Manado/Bunaken are the year round destinations. The wet season, from November to mid-April, brings frequent rains. The dry season is from May to October. November to late-February sometimes sees winds and rains so surface conditions can be occasionally rough.  Water temperature is 27-30°C/80-86F and water visibility averages around 20-35m/65-114ft almost  all year round. 

Manado is the capital city of the North Sulawesi province of Indonesia. It is a famous destination among tourists and especially among divers because of The Bunaken National Marine Park. The Park  was formally established in 1991 and is among the first of Indonesia's growing system of marine parks. It is located just out of Manado Bay in the Sulawesi Sea. The Bunaken National Marine Park consists of five islands: Bunaken, Manado Tua, Nain, Montehage, and Siladen as well as a part of the North Sulawesi mainland. Divers here can discover some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world, with outstanding fish variety and world-class wall diving. Many creatures here are year round, such as the amazing array of giant clams and nudibranchs. Resident dugongs as well as barracuda and tuna appear throughout the year. June is a good months for sharks, July for dolphins and whales. Sperm whales migrate through the region to calf in the Sangihe region in March and July/August. The eastern side of Bunaken Island offers a great wall diving and excellent snorkelling. The vertical wall has many cracks and small caves all covered with soft and hard corals, gorgonians and huge sponges. The diverse marine life here includes barracudas, triggerfishes, parrotfishes, surgeonfishes, unicornfishes, wrasses, drummers, butterflyfishes, trumpetfish, trevallys, groupers, snappers, sweetlips, angelfishes, batfishes, turtles, whitetip and blacktip reef sharks,  napoleon wrasse, eagle rays and blue-spotted stingrays. Bunaken is considered an underwater photographers' paradise as well. The vertical walls, steep slopes and colourful reef flats of Bunaken National Marine Park as well as the diving sites in Manado Bay offer a lot of  opportunities for both macro and wide-angle photography.  There are more than 40 dive sites around the islands and along Manado Bay. These sites are available for different levels of experience. Among the most popular are: Black Rock, Celah Celah, Depan Kampung, Fukui Point, Lekuan I, II & III, Mandolin Point , Sachiko's Point, Tanjung Kopi, Bunaken Timur. There are many dive centers that offer dive tours and equipment in Manado and Bunaken. You can buy a tour there you like or even do it in advance by using Divebooker.com a new online booking system.