Gili Islands dive site
Simon's Reef
A pinnacle out of the deep blue — the dive that makes the Advanced course worth doing.
Gili Islands dive site
A pinnacle out of the deep blue — the dive that makes the Advanced course worth doing.
Simon's Reef is one of the deep dives the Gili Islands are known for. A single large pinnacle climbs out of water deeper than forty metres and tops out at around fourteen, with a scatter of smaller towers and seamounts around its base.
The scale is the point. You drop into open blue, the shape resolves below you, and then you work around it: canyons between the towers, big gorgonian fans and barrel sponges on the walls, schooling fish stacked on the up-current side.
There are pygmy seahorses on the fans for anyone with the patience and the eyes for them, but most divers remember Simon's for its topography rather than for anything small.
What you come for
This is an Advanced dive and nothing else. The top of the pinnacle already sits below the eighteen-metre Open Water limit, and the interesting part of the site is deeper still — the Advanced Adventurer certification takes you to thirty metres.
Given the depth, it is also a site where enriched air nitrox earns its supplement: more time on the pinnacle, and a shorter surface interval afterwards.
Simon's takes channel current, which can run medium to strong, and it is dived as a drift. The crew reads the water before anyone gets in — on this site more than most, the entry point is a decision, not a habit.
Advanced only. This is one of the deep dives worth doing the Advanced course for.
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.
