Dive in Sulawesi

Sulawesi (formerly known as Celebes) is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. Sulawesi is the world's eleventh-largest island, covering an area of 174,600 km2 (67,413 sq mi). The island is surrounded by Borneo to the west, by the Philippines to the north, by Maluku to the east, and by Flores and Timor to the south.

It has a distinctive shape, dominated by four large peninsulas: the Semenanjung Minahassa; the East Peninsula; the South Peninsula; and the South-east Peninsula. The central part of the island is ruggedly mountainous, such that the island's peninsulas have traditionally been remote from each other, with better connections by sea than by road.

The island is subdivided into six provinces: Gorontalo, West-Sulawesi, South-Sulawesi, Central-Sulawesi, Southeast-Sulawesi, and North-Sulawesi. West-Sulawesi is a new province, created in 2004 from part of South-Sulawesi. The largest cities on the island are Makassar, on the southwestern coast of the island, and Manado, on the northern tip.

LEMBEH STRAIT in North-Sulawesi

Critter heaven! Bring your macro lens and shoot flamboyant cuttlefish, harlequin shrimp, skeleton shrimps, innumerable nudibranchs, and amazing fish such as stargazers, snake eels, stonefish, sea robins, devilfish, weedy scorpion fish, pygmy seahorses, Pegasus sea robins, cardinal fish, ghost pipe fish, and the queen of small tropicals, the kaleidoscopic mandarin fish. Moreover, while much of Indonesian diving requires dealing with currents, Lembeh features easy diving in calm lake-like water. This place has earned its reputation as the muck diving capital of the world. And it makes for part of a great combination trip with Togian National Park (see the next listing).

TOGIAN National Park in Central-Sulawesi

We know of nowhere else where you can dive on barrier reefs, atolls and fringing reefs all in the same area. Togian's coral reefs offer beauty and diversity with visibility of 15 to 30 m. Eye-popping density of fish life includes schools of jacks and barracudas, bumphead parrotfish, Napoleon wrasses, snappers, fusiliers and more. The underwater landscape matches the beauty of the fish life. Explore drop offs with crevasse and overheads, canyons, rock formations, pinnacles, steep slopes and walls. You'll see abundant gorgonians and healthy soft corals. Plus you can see a remarkably intact WWII B-24 Liberator plane wreck at 18m.

WaKaToBi (also called the Tukang Besi Islands) in Southeast-Sulawesi

This archipelago is named after its four main islands: Wangi Wangi, Kaledupa, Tomea, and Binongko. Here you'll experience great wall diving, unparalleled diversity of marine life and the healthiest reefs in the Sulawesi region. On any given day look for mimic octopus, devil scorpion fish, stonefish, ribbon eels, "disco clams", and many other fascinating critters. Night dives are breathtaking. Entire walls burst into vivid colors as nocturnal tubastrea and soft corals "bloom". And the diversity of invertebrates such as crustaceans, nudibranchs and mollusks is bewildering. Caribbean divers will sit staring at their logbooks after each dive, not knowing where to begin.

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