the south

Home of the mantas! The slightly longer rides to the south of Penida will blow you away with the incredible scenery – stunning cliffs and rock formations make you feel like you’re already on an adventure! The south coast is not only home to manta rays, you will also find other stingrays as well as sharks, turtles and plenty of octopus and nudibranchs.

Ride time is 20-45 minutes.

This huge bay on Penida's South West side is a great spot to see manta rays - It's a feeding area for them so they are often close to the surface, making it a great site for both snorkelers and divers. The bay has sandy patches and flat rocky ridges encrusted with coral, with some larger coral bommies scattered around. It's a very gradual slope so we usually dive to a max depth of 20m here, but the site does extend deeper for those up for a swim! When not looking for mantas this is a great site for octopus, cuttlefish, bamboo sharks, nudibranchs and in the colder season (June to October) we can see spotted wobbegong.

Manta Point is a popular site as it's a manta cleaning station. The topography is similar to Manta Bay in parts with a sandy patch, flat rocky ledges and outcrops with encrusting corals. This site also has some big boulders and larger bommies. The cleaning station itself is shallow (5-10m) so we generally start here and have a quick look for mantas, and then swim into the deeper part of the site (max depth 30m), and then make our way back to the cleaning station towards the end of the dive. Waiting at the cleaning station can make for a very entertaining safety stop!

Essentially an extension of Manta Point as it's in the same bay, we often see mantas cruising around in the shallows here if they're not visiting the nearby cleaning station. Located to the East of the main cleaning station this site has sandy patches and big boulders and bommies and we have also seen mantas being cleaned here. Like at Manta Point we can also see bamboo sharks, stingrays and unusual nudibranchs at this site.

This site has awesome topography and lies to the West of Manta Point. It has large boulders and swim throughs and we can also see manta rays here as well as several species of sharks. Macro life is also really good here so remember to look down as we swim through the boulder garden on the way to the sandy bottom at the end of the site.