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Map courtesy of Villa Almarik

GILI ISLANDS (LOMBOK)

The island of Lombok lies about 34 miles east of Bali. Just off Lombok's northwest coast you'll find the coral ringed Gili Islands. Over 20 dive sites offer drop-offs, plateaus, and slopes to explore. Here are a few favorites.

SUNSET
15-65 ft
This site, located off the southern tip of Gili Trawangan, is a gentle slope marked by coral bommies, table corals, and soft corals. Common sightings include groupers, snapper, sweetlips, angelfish, and parrotfish. White-tip and black-tip sharks, stingrays, and turtles like to hang out where the slope bottoms out.

TAKAT TUNANG
60-105 ft
This deep wall off the east coast of Gili Air offers pristine corals and sponges and is frequented by sharks, as well as huge schools of tuna, trevally, barracuda, jack, and snapper.

DEEP TURBO
75ft
Sea mounds and canyons covered in hard and soft corals make for interesting terrain to explore. Search for huge sea fans, barracuda, tuna, triggerfish, snapper, stingrays, and turtles. Garden eels can be found on the white sandy bottom. Leopard sharks, white-tips, and black-tips have also been known to put in an appearance.

HANS REEF
42-72 ft
This dive site is located off Gili Air's north coast. It consists of a gently sloping reef with a white sandy bottom and coral bommies scattered about. A very relaxing, yet eventful dive. You'll see batfish, angelfish, boxfish, frogfish, and leaf scorpion fish. A closer inspection will reveal seahorses, morays, pipefish, mantis shrimp, and nudibranchs.

SHARK POINT
54-84 ft
As its name suggests, this is an excellent site for spotting larger pelagics. Look for white-tip and black-tip sharks, jacks, barracuda, tuna, trevally, angelfish, snapper, groupers, batfish, parrotfish, triggerfish, puffers, surgeonfish, blue-spotted stingrays, and moray eels. Turtles tend to hang out in the shallower areas among the soft corals.

All photos courtesy of Villa Almarik