Diving

Dive sites in Redang, Perhentians and Lang Tengah in East Malaysia

Dive Information: dive operators, liveaboards, dive safety, dive conditions
Photos: look at underwater photos taken on the east coast of Malaysia
Print version of this page (mostly dive sites)

The Perhentians, Lang Tengah, Yu, Bidong and Redang islands lie on the east coast of Malaysia in the gulf of Thailand. I have visited these islands on several occasions and must have done over a hundred dives in this area. Dive sites are very varied, from current swept rocks close to the Perhentians and Bidong to gentle slopes covered with sea anemones around Redang to underwater mounds in Lang Tengah. All these places also have excellent house reefs that are good for night dives or snorkeling. Visibility is not always so good, because the islands lie on a shallow plateau.

Please also check out these links to the Terengganu turtle conservation project: Sea Turtle Research Unit (SEATRU) / Arbec

Perhentian Islands, east coast Malaysia

Map of dive sites in the Perhentian 1. Batu Layar 2. Tanjung Besi 3. Terumbu Tiga (Tiger Rocks) 4. Shipwreck 5. Batu Nisan 6. Teluk Kerma 7. Pulau Rawa 8. Tokong Laut 9. Artificial Reef

My favorite dive sites in the Perhentians

Tokong Laut lies out in the sea in the northwest of the Perhentian Islands. It is a rocky pinnacle covered with soft and hard corals. You can find dozens of small bamboo sharks lying under the corals, sleeping. Sometimes there are several lying one on top of the other, moving there tails with the water current. Look under the rocks around 20m. If you don't find bamboosharks it will be a moray eel! This time there were also a lot of mackerels and jackfish.

Terumbu Tiga lies on the east of Perhentian Besar Island. Its a jumble of large rocks with many swim throughs. Visibility isn't so good and there is often a slight film of particles on the rocks. Nudibranchs seem to love it, specially one that is called "blue dragon", a beautiful bluish, violet slug. Terumbu Tiga was one of our first dives in that area. We were very lucky, because at the beginning of the dive we saw a large school of mackerels and another school of small herrings that just about covered the reef. My divebuddy Jutta and myself stayed over 20min. around 15m and watched their dance. The mackerels attacked the herrings in large and small groups and tried to divide the large school, round up smaller numbers of fish and urge them towards the surface. Deadly and beautiful! Later on another dive at the same site I met a leopard shark. It was swimming in front of us for several minutes, before it disappeared towards the sandy area. Great!

You can find detailed information about dive operators, liveaboard operators, dive safety, dive conditions, climate, hotels and how to get to the Perhentians on a separate page ready to print.

Diving at Lang Tengah island

Lang Tengah lies between the Perhentians and Redang and can easily be reached from both. This island offers you relaxed diving in an idyllic, laid-back setting. Of the nice dive sites around this island, I specially recommend the underwater mound.

1. Karang Nibong Laut 2. Tanjung Nibong 3. Batu Broler 4. Batu Bulan 5. Terumbu Putih 6. Batu Kapal 7. Batu Kuching 8. Tanjung Telunjuk 9. Karang Bahar 10. Terumbu Kuning (Yellow Reef) 11. House Reef 12. Batu June 13. Blue Coral 14. Batu Nayak Keras 15. Goby Garden 16. Karang Nibong

My favorite dive sites in Lang Tengah

Karang Nibong Laut: The underwater mound consists of a pile of huge rocks on a sandy area. We found a lot of bamboo sharks sleeping under these rocks and also some very nice nudibranchs. Look under the saucer like leather corals, there are always some moray eels hiding there.

House Reef: This place is nice for night dives. In the sandy areas you can find cuttlefish, octopus and moray eels. If you go snorkeling check out the resident black tip reef sharks at the southern end of the beach.

Terumbu Kuning (Yellow Reef): A rocky formation (bottom 25m) where you can find nurse sharks hiding in the crevices. There are a lot of small animals like shrimps, flatworms, nudibranchs, gobies, pipefish.

You can find detailed information about dive operators, liveaboard operators, dive safety, dive conditions, climate, hotels and how to get to Lang Tengah on a separate page ready to print.

Redang Island dive sites

Map of dive sites in Redang 1. Turtle Bay 2. Tanjung Tokong 3. Gua Kawah 4. Big Sea Mound 5. Pulau Paku Kechil 6. Pulau Lima 7. Ma Chantik 8. Housereef 9. Mini Sea Mound 10. Anemone City 11. Terumbu Kili 12. Marine Park Headquarters

My favorite dive sites in Redang

House Reef just in front of the Redang Lagoon, it's just great. Grab a tank and jump in! Starting on the northern side you dive around a small promontory. It isn't very deep, no more than 15 m at the most. There are always 4 to 5 small baby whitetip reef sharks swimming close to the rocks.  It seems to be a protected area for sharks to grow up in, since I have seen them there three years in a row. I also saw every time a group of sepias and another of needlefishes just at the surface. Further on there are staghorn coral fields and a small reef. One of the guys (Zorro) that go out with snorkeling groups told me, he had seen black seahorses there. My try at finding them - I even got up at seven o'clock in the morning (!!!) - was unsuccessful.

Tanjung Tokong: This dive site lies south of turtle bay in the northern part of Redang. This is a good place to see Napoleon fish, sharks and plenty of nudibranchs and flatworms.

Marine sanctuary: there lies a cargo boat in about 8m water just in front of the administrative center of the marine park. Go very early in the morning. The boat's cargo was jute bags, they cover the bottom of the hold and are slowly rotting away. Somewhere in the middle of this lies a stonefish! He makes himself a small bed from pieces of stone, clamshells and coral pieces and waits for his breakfast.

Paku Kechil: This dive site is quite nice by day (always large rays, double-ended pipefish), but go there at night with Anuar and it gets really interesting! He had already told us about the five Janss pipefish, that only come out at night. These are colored blue - yellow - blue and are very shy. They clean other fish like the cleaner wrasses. We also saw some ornate pipefish and a stonefish.

Sandy areas around Paku Kechil and Terumbu Kili: We made several dives on sandy areas, swimming out from the reef as long as we could without getting deco (depth 16 to 18m). I don't recommend this for everybody. Take a compass with you and tell the boatman about it! Expect long stretches of boring sand and then in-between the surprises. Look at every sponge, anemone, seagrass you happen upon, study every seacucumber close up and it is incredible how much life you can find.

First time we went out on the sand we were looking for the saddleback anemone fish, which is quite rare in this area. But we also found sponges covered with blue crabs, anemones with dozens of cleaner shrimps as guests, seacucumbers covered with symbiotic anemones. The biggest surprise was a small white frogfish, only about 2cm length that I found on a sponge. Actually this part of Malaysia is not known for frogfishes at all - so this was a real find! And since I am a frogfish-fan (look at my frogfish pages!) this was a real gift for me.

You can find detailed information about dive operators, liveaboard operators, dive safety, dive conditions, climate, hotels and how to get to Redang and Bidong on a separate page ready to print.

Pulau Bidong and Yu

Pulau Bidong and Yu lie to the south of Redang and can be reached from there. It is also possible to go from Merang by boat. Actually Anuar from Scuba Quest intends to offer the later next year, starting from a hotel in Merang. There are no resorts or dive operators on the island.

Map of dive sites in Bidong and Yu 1. Heathers Rock 2. Blue Garden 3. Fu Yong 4. Southeast side Pulau Yu Besar 5. Bumphead-Reef 6. Northeast side Pulau Yu Besar 7. Yu Kechil 8. Batu Rusa 9. Halfter Rock 10. Batu Tengkorak (Skull Rock)

My favorite dive sites around Bidong

Batu Takorak (scull rock): This dive site lies close to Redang. I had hoped to go there several times, since this is an excellent dive site with large fish, such as barracudas, mackerels etc. and very nice corals (large Porites corals mostly) also. We only did two dives there, both very nice. Anuar intends to go there more often, once he also operates from Merang.

Pulau Yu besar and kechil: these islands lies at the edge to deeper water, so you can find larger fish such as barracudas, mackerels, bumphead parrotfish, sharks and do some deeper diving for a change.

Blue Garden, Bidong: a great place that I visited together with my dive buddy Gate two years ago. Unfortunately we couldn't go there this time, but we went to a new dive site close to Eroding, "Anemone City", that was somewhat similar. As the name suggests, this dive site is full of blue anemones. Go there, when it is starting to be dusk, because then the anemones close their tentacles. Their bodies seem to give off a blue light. I also saw some porcelain crabs and cleaner shrimps living on the anemones.

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