I'm still curious until now, whether Jukung Dive can be promoted as PADI Distinctive Specialty certification :-). This is one of Bali specialties, like its spicy food, its idyllic atsmosphere or others like crafts, paintings, statues, clothes, everything. Bali is very special, because it has many specialties. At scuba diving area, one of them is the Jukung Dive (I will try to hold explaining what the Jukung is, until the end of the article). Others are like the Mola-mola dive at Nusa Penida, the TPS (Tulamben Porter System) and the fact the Bali is located at an ideal place where it hubs other dive destinations in Indonesia, like Lesser Sunda, Komodo, Tukang Besi, Selayar, and even Bunaken. Last but not least, doing scuba diving with Kapal Selam members maybe become one of the Bali specialty also in the future :-). Deeper And Get Drifted.....
You can easily try Jukung Dive at many places, like at Tulamben (e.g. to reach Batu Kelebit), Lovina, Amed Area and Padang Bay. The prices is so cheap, to hire Jukung you only need in average IDR 100.000,- for two dives. There are some technical and non technical stuff that you need to aware-of to do Jukung dive.
First of all, for non technical stuff. No guarantee that the Jukung Man can speak English, even Bahasa Indonesia so better if you take local divemaster with. The jukung is parked on the beach by just by doing full throat on the engine and hit it to the bank of the sand, so to bring it back to the sea will be little bit difficult, here you need to help the Jukung Man to push the Jukung back to the water. Also, don't order jukung for longer distance, maximum one hour distance.
The technical stuff are about how to store the equipment, when you have to set your gear, how to do entry, how to do safety stop and the last one is how to locate the boat (or how the Jukung Man can locate you).
Jukung Dive is not recommended for drift-dive in strong currents. No guarantee that the skill of the Jukung Man as well as the power of its engine can allow them to chase you when you got drifted away.
Jukung is a small wooden boat. It is fishermen boat. The boat is powered by out-triggered small gasoline engine. You can not use a trawl to catch the fishes, because the boat is too small. The fisherman is only doing fishing with this boat and only can reach a coastal are of of the sea, may be only few hundreds meters from the land. It is not designed for scuba diving. Fishermen will be happy to take you to the dive site, in fact the income is better by taking you to do scuba diving than doing fishing all night long. You might give the tips also to Jukung Man, just make the IDR notes little higher than agreed rate. In Tulamben, Amed and Padang Bay, the jukung was under coordination by local resident to avoid unfair competetion between them.