LAYANG LAYANG
ISLAND RESORT
Dive Sites
Snapper Ledge
Snapper Ledge is a safe and easy dive with magnificient corals and colourful reef fish. For photographers, its a good spot for both wide-angle, and close-up shots, when the sun is directly on your subjects. Otherwise, one can simply drift along with the current and relax.
Remember to watch your depth and avoid collision with the corals.
Crack Reef
Crack-reef is a relaxing dive site with lots of reef activity and gravity-defying corals, sponges, sea-whips and sea-fans. The fish tumble down the wall and then race back up as if going to the surface for air. Turtles cruise indifferently along the steep walls and white-tip sharks drift by lazily.
Crack-Reef gets its name because the dive begins on a large vertical crack in the wall that starts at the surface and plummets to 40+m. Please watch your depth limit and air consumption. Sometimes strong currents will help you cruise the wall with ease, so please do not grab the coral formations just to get that shot.
The Runway
The Runway is a breathtaking dive with deep vertical walls, gullies and crevasses. Reef fish swim vertically, an unusual sight that takes getting used to. Schools of jacks cascade down the wall and large tuna swim by, on the lookout for an easy meal. Schools of baitfish, fusiliers, and surgeon fish sparkle and glitter in the crystal clear water.
Sharks and manta-rays cruise the wall; hammerheads have on occasion been seen in this area, so always look seawards, with fingers crossed.
Remember that the depth limit is 40m in these waters. With so much to see its easy to accidentally exceed this limit, especially for the photographers among you.
The Tunnel
The Tunnel is a hard-coral lover's dream and a beautiful night dive with its myriad of colourful and dense marine corals, such as staghorn, plate, table, mushroom and brain corals.
There is an abundance of reef fish, ranging from the anthias to travellers. Moray eels lie in cubby holes and gullies of the coral formations, with the occasional turtle drifting by. At 10m, the coral slope gives way to vertical drop-off which is home to soft corals and sponges of all descriptions and colours.
On occasion, amber-jacks can be seen swimming around, forming large barrel-like schools. By drifting to this formation slowly, one can enter the coil of fish, and provided you swim in the same circular manner, the jacks will accept you as one of their own; and round and round you go with your new-found friends.
Photographers should stay with the close-up or macro kits, but if you are going to move along the wall face, be prepared for anything. You're in 2,000m of water, the large and unusual can present themselves to you in the blink of an eye.