Off Gili Air
Hans Reef
The macro treasure hunt of the Gilis — a frogfish on almost every pinnacle, day or night.
Off Gili Air
The macro treasure hunt of the Gilis — a frogfish on almost every pinnacle, day or night.
Hans Reef is not a reef in the usual sense. It is a sand plain off Gili Air with small pinnacles and Biorock structures scattered across it, and the fish concentrate on those structures because there is nothing else to concentrate on.
That is exactly what makes it prime macro diving. Divers who slow down and search the pinnacles find a frogfish on almost every one of them, along with ghost pipefish, harlequin shrimp and nudibranchs. Seahorses hold on to the growth in the shallower sand, garden eels stand up in the open, and small turtles cruise through.
It is a dive that rewards a guide who remembers where things were yesterday, and a diver willing to spend ten minutes on one square metre of sand.
What you come for
Hans Reef is as good after dark as it is in daylight, which is not true of every site. The sand comes alive at night and a torch beam turns the pinnacles into something else entirely.
Dusk is its own dive here: mandarinfish come out in the last light of the day, and the window for seeing them is short enough that the timing of the entry matters more than anything else on the dive.
The same for every site on this list.
Diving works all year here. April to October is the dry season and gives the clearest water, with September, October, May and June the sweet spot; July and August are the busiest. November to March brings plankton and less visibility, and with it a better chance of something big passing through.
Small groups, four divers to a guide, and a crew that picks the site by the conditions rather than the timetable. Message us on WhatsApp and we will tell you what the water is doing today.
Book on WhatsAppEvery site on this page is dived from Gili Air, most of them within a fifteen-minute boat ride.
