Tulamben Diving

At first sight, the little village of Tulamben is rather uninviting. Its beach is a spread of black sand covered by smooth, fist-size rocks, the waterworn remains of rubble cast here by Gunung Agung's 1963 eruption. In the dry season, the

Countryside assumes a nondescript shade of brown. Like all the north coast villages, there are no lush rice fields here - Gunung Agung and the other mountains steal the rain, which comes from moisture-laden air that blows in from the south. Thus South Bali is the island's rice bowl. What brings people to Tulamben is not visible from above water, however. People wake upearly, fight the snarled traffic from the tourist centers of the south and emerge from their bemos, groggy and cross, for only one reason: to dive the wreck of the Liberty at Tulamben.

The Liberty
Just 30 meters from the beach at Tulamben is a World War I-era cargo ship, broken up but impressively large, stretching along more than 100 meters of steeply sloping sand. The top of the wreck is just 3 meters underwater; the bottom is at 29 meters. On January 11, 1942, this ship was hit by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine while crossing the Lombok Strait. The damage was critical, but two destroyers hitched up to the ship and tried to tow it to the port at Singaraja. The wounded cargo ship was taking on too much water, however, and her crew ran the vessel up on the beach at Tulamben. There she stayed there until 1963. Local entrepreneurs stripped the boat of its cargo-one source says raw rubber and railroad parts and were in the process of cutting her up for scrap when Gunung Agung exploded in 1963. The explosion was disasterous, killing thousands and destroying vast tracts of fertile riceland to the south. It also pushed the Liberty off the beach to its present location, in the process splitting the hull in two.

Welcoming Committee
Divers simply walk out from the beach, spit in their masks, and go. Sometimes the waves are up, churning up the sand and turning a suited-up diver into an ungainly creature. And the big smooth stones that serve as a beach are always hard on the feet-bring diving boots! Never mind these small indignities, however. This dive is most decidedly worth it. Wave action is strongest  during the southeast monsoon, late June through August and again-but some-what less-from late November through January. As soon as you dump the air out of your BC and drop to the black sandy bottom, you know that you've made the right move. Right away you meet a colony of spotted garden eels (Heteroconger hassi), heads and bodies swaying in the current like plants in a breeze. Their tails remain in the sand as they snap plankton from the current. As you get closer the eels shoot back into their burrows, disappearing into the sand like an illusion. At this disturbance, goatfishes hit the sand, searching for juicy tidbits. You look up and here comes the welcoming committee: several species of snubnose chubs, sweetlips, parrotfishes and a small army of fearless sergeant majors, not so numerous else where in Bali.These plucky little damselfishes swim right tip to your face, to the point where you can even touch them. If you've brought a camera, exercise restraint. If you don't watch out, you'll shoot your whole roll before even reaching the wreck.
Electric blue neon damsels darting around with a seeming inexhaustible store of energy, stand out vividly against the black sand and rocks. As I watched, their happy antics were interrupted. A hawkfish pounced, snatching a small damsel in a flash. A sudden jerk, the damsel's head disappeared, and the hawkish resumed its motion less posture, looking for his next meal. Small groupers, cornetfish and trumpethfish the odd parrotfish and a few morays inhabited patches of coral along our route. The black sand bottom around the wreck makes an excellent background for fish photos-but be careful with auto exposure cameras, as the meter will want to overexpose your shots. On and around the ship, carefully monitor your buoyancy. Bumping the wreck could lead to nasty burn from a stinging hydroid, or even a more serious sting from a lionfish or scorpionfish. More likely, however, you will just damage the fragile organisms encrusting the ship. Move slowly and carefully. This is also the best way to get close to the fish.

On to the Wreck
The wreck of the Liberty lies parallel to shore on a steep sand slope. Part of the superstructure is within snorkeling distance from the surface. The hulk is broken into large chunks, and there are lots of big holes in the hull, making it easy to explore   the vessel's innards. Don't expect to find any interesting mementoes inside, however. Remember, this ship was stripped while still on the beach.
The treasures of Tulamben are swimming in and around the wreck: hundreds of species of fish in good numbers, most having become semi-tame and used to divers. We saw several fairly large a meter or so-specimens, but it is the huge numbers of medium-sized fish-30-80 centimeters-that make the wreck such an interesting dive. If you planned just one or two dives here, we guarantee you will regret not having more time. Unfortunately, not everything is perfect in Tulamben. When we dove there in late June, visibility was just 12-15 meters, and this seldom improves much. Expert underwater photographers and marine biologists, men like Rudie Kuiter, John E. Randall and Roger Steene, dive Tulamben over and over, coming up with great shots and even new species. Australian Rudie Kuiter, author of the definitive guide to Indonesian reef fishes, estimates that some 400 species of reef fishes live on the wreck, which is also visited by perhaps 100  species of pelagics. These are remarkable numbers for an area   just 100 meters long.

On our dives we never saw any sharks or other really big fish at Tulamben. There were a few good sized tuna, bonito, several 80-centimeter plus emperors, and jacks, Napoleon wrasses pushing the meter mark, and one huge 80-centimeter scribbled filefish. On the sandy bottom next to the wreck, where I thought rays would abound, I saw only one small eagle ray, and a very large blue-spotted stingray. Both ducked for cover before I could say "Glenfiddich." We also saw a meter-long barracuda, but one of my dive partners, Wolfgang Bresigk of Baruna Water Sports, says a 1.5 meter barracuda regularly forages on the wreck. Another dive buddy, Wally Siagian, saw a huge oceanic sunfish (Mola mola) close to the wreck, four times in a one-week span. On one of these occasions, he saw this most unusual fish being cleaned by several singular bannerfish (Heniochus singularis). Off to one side of the wreck Wally took us to visit a colorful black-spotted moray eel
(Gymnothorax melanospilos), a beautifully marked animal with a yellow body and black markings. The eel lives at the base of a barrel sponge at about 40 meters.

A Swarm of Beggars

Arriving at the wreck, we stayed shallow and settled near the upper edge of one of the ship's large holds. The top of the open hold lies at around 5 meters, with its bottom at around 14 meters.
The superstructure reaches to couple of meters of the surface. It took a good ten minutes before the swarms of sergeant majors, a couple of insistent crescent wrasses, and a dozen large bignose unicornfish all understood that we.had no food for them and stopped bothering us. Fish here are often fed by divers or their guides, which is why they allow divers to get so close. Bananas, strange as this may seem, are their standard fare. Clearly nonplussed that we had not brought any food, the fish finally left us alone-but not before the sergeant-majors gave us a few nips. Once the beggars left us alone, we were able to look over the swarms of fishes living on and around the wreck. Schools of several dozen golden and lined rabbitfishes hung almost motion less in 6-7 meters of water. Standing out like a sore thumb in this group, was an occasional big-eye emperor, or large red snapper. Below this group were bright pairs of coral and foxface rabbitfishes. These beauties were a bit nervous, and it took patience to get within good camera range. Lone snappers and mixed schools of sweetlips also inhabited the shallow areas near the northeast corner of the wreck.

We identified five species of sweetlips: clown sweetlips, Sulawesi sweetlips, striped sweetlips, Goldman's sweetlips, and, most numerous of all, the oriental sweetlips. These fish allowed us to approach to one meter. Surgeonfishes were common, and inhabited various depths. We frequently saw yellowfin surgeonfish, orangeband surgeonfish, Thompson's surgeonfish, and clown surgeonfish. We saw a few orangespine unicornfish, with their curious mandrill-like faces, and a few male spotted unicornfish. Bignose unicornfish wandered the wreck in large schools, mostly consisting of drab females, but with an occasional bright blue courting male, his magnificent tail filaments undulating with each flip. These fish allowed us to get very close, and we saw them on every dive. A variety of fairly large parrotfishes (40-75 centimeters) added color to every dive. With a bit of patience we could get to within a meter of the blue-barred parrotfishes, but the others-mostly palenose parrotfish and bullet head parrotfish-were more shy. Small damsels were common, in particular golden damselfish. These bold little animals frequently nipped us if we got too close to their home turf. Butterflyfishes are not present here in overwhelming numbers. Perhaps the dearth of hard corals is responsible for this, as many butterflyfishes are polyp feeders, some relying completely on this source of nutrition. The vaguaries of memory have reduced the list to six: lined butterflyfish, raccoon butterflyfish, threadfin butterflyfish, Bennett's butterflyfish, spotnose butterflyfish and the Pinocchio-like long nose butterflyfish. I had seen Titan triggerfish-a sometimes nasty animal with a distinctive "mustache" and loopy eyes-on many previous dives in eastern Indonesia, sometimes as many as a half-dozen in a single dive. They had always been very wary, never allowing me to get close. On the wreck, however, they were much more relaxed, allowing me to get within 1.5 meters. These were also among the largest I had seen, doing justice to the name 'Titan." Angelfishes were not particularly abundant on the wreck, but those that I saw here were among the largest specimens I have seen. We spotted blue-faced angels, blue-girdled angel, emperor angels and regal angels.

 
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