Hammerhead Shark in Bali 2002

Departed from Denpasar at 7:00 directly head to Amed. Arrived at 9:30, negotiate the price with I Ketut Sepel, the owner of Diver's Cafe Amed. He offered us to use his brand new 25 HP instead of ordinary jukung with 8 HP engine.

According to him, with 8 HP engine it will take at least 1 hour, while with 25 HP engine it's only 30 minutes. Actually from Jemeluk to Gili Selang, you will find a lot of unexplored dive sites.


It was true, within 30 minutes we already saw the tip of the easternmost tip of Bali. Gili Selang itself basically is Bali island that separated by te abrasion.

Once we got there the boat was anchored in the inner area of the small bay to keep away from strong current. As we descend we started to look at the pristine soft coral, it was very beautiful. Two 2 meters white tip sharks gave us a warm welcome in the 23° Celcius water.


When we were getting deeper, we can see that hard coral start to replace the soft coral. Still descend to 26 meters, we can see a river-like current in front of us, even the jackfish jump in and out of the current. The guide (I Nyoman Kajeng) coded us to get back to the other direction.


When I was still thinking about how stupid I am to use this shorty 2 mm Billabong wetsuit and feeling numb, suddenly the guide hit his tank with a stone while pointing to the right. It seems like a schooling dolphin but when they were getting closer I saw the hammer! It was schooling of hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna zygaena). I counted them, eight 2 to 3 meters hammerhead sharks, man! The biggest one, I guess it was 3 meters, which I believed to be the leader of the group, getting quite close to us, it was only 10 meters from me. And his eyes seems dancing around paying attention to three of us. After the group pass and for while we forgot the 23° water.


We continued and tried to swim a bit into the inner area of the bay but unsuccessful. Therefore we had to swim a bit in the outer area which not as beautiful as the first place. We finished our first dive and had our lunch on the beach nearby. Second dive we tried Tundut Sapi but this place is not as beautiful as Gili Selang and suroundings.