| To the east of Gili Trawangan is the smaller island of Gili Meno. It is a slightly more upmarket resort island.
Meno Wall is covered with soft corals down to 24m and is a popular day and night dive. The usual reef fish are here and turtles are often seen. Crustaceans and nudidranchs are numerous. Spanish Dancers can be seen on night dives.
Malang Reef is a submerged sea mount that starts at 12m then drops away to over 40m. Hard and soft corals, sponges and gorgonian seafans are home to impressive marine life. There are some good swim-throughs here.
Gili Air is the closest of the Gili's to Lombok and is the most populous. There are plenty of accommodation options and a couple of dive centres. One dive centre runs a turtle hatchery to protect hawksbill and green turtles.
There are several diving spots around the island including Hans Reef and Air Wall. Despite less than perfect coral coverage these are good dive sites to find macro subjects like frogfish, ribbon eels, mantis shrimps, jawfish and ornate ghost pipefish. Of course turtles can be seen as well as the occasional small reef shark.
The Japanese Wreck is a World War II patrol vessel lying in 45 metres to the south of Gili Air. The 20m long wreck is home to lionfish, scorpionfish, moray eels and schools of fish including trevally and barracuda. |
