Most people who book a dive on Gili Air are here for one animal. It is a reasonable thing to be here for: green and hawksbill turtles are seen on nearly every dive we run, year-round, and our house reef is literally called Turtle Point. But "you'll see turtles" is a brochure line. This is the longer version — which two species you are meeting, the sites where we actually find them, how to behave so the encounter lasts more than four seconds, and what changes with the seasons.
Two species, not one
The Gilis are home to green turtles and hawksbill turtles, and once you have seen both in the same week you stop confusing them. The hawksbill has a narrow, pointed beak — it is a tool for picking food out of tight places, and you usually meet hawksbills in the shallows, working the soft corals. The green has a blunt, rounded head and, more to the point, is usually the bigger animal parked on the reef looking entirely unbothered by you.
That difference in behaviour is the useful part for a diver. Hawksbills tend to be busy and shallow. Greens are the ones we find resting: settled on top of a coral mound, occasionally lifting a flipper, with cleaner wrasses and surgeonfish working over their shell and skin while they sit there and let it happen. A cleaning station is the single most reliable place to spend real time with a turtle instead of watching one swim away.
Where we actually find them
Every site on this list is one we dive on ordinary weeks, not a highlight reel. All of them are 5 to 15 minutes from the harbour.
- Turtle Point (3–12 m, beginner-friendly) — our house reef, straight off the beach in front of the centre. Gentle, shallow, and packed with both species. Most first dives on Gili Air happen here.
- Turtle Heaven (5–35 m, every level, 15 minutes by boat) — a steep coral slope running parallel to the shore, built around a large central mound that climbs from 30 m to within 10 m of the surface. Green turtles rest on top of that mound and get cleaned; hawksbills graze the shallow soft corals nearby. Octopus, peacock mantis shrimp and three species of anemonefish share the slope. The deep bommies at 30–35 m — reef sharks, groupers, eagle rays — are the advanced half of the same dive.
- Total Heaven (5–35 m) — mushroom corals and a hawksbill in the shallows, then a swim out to a big pinnacle running from 12 m past 30 m where the large green turtles hang out, alongside batfish, morays and the occasional frogfish.
- Shark Point (5–40 m) — greens and hawksbills, plus blue-spotted stingrays (one of the best spots in the islands for them) and juvenile white-tip reef sharks resting in the cave at 18 m.
- Manta Point / Sensei Tree (10–22 m) — a wide, gentle slope with mild current and light surge, plenty of turtles, clownfish everywhere and schooling snapper. The relaxed one, and our usual answer for freshly certified divers.
- Bounty Wreck (8–25 m) — not a ship but a hotel jetty sunk in 2001, now a rectangle of life: turtles and batfish over the structure, frogfish and seahorses on it.
- Hans Reef (12–22 m) — sandy bottom, coral bommies, small turtles between the pinnacles, and the best macro hunting in the islands. Also a superb night dive.
The full map, with depths and levels for every site, lives on our dive sites page.
Why the encounters here are so reliable
Nothing mystical: the reefs start shallow, the food is on them, and the resting and cleaning spots are in the same places week after week. Our guides know which mound, which ledge, which patch of soft coral — because they dive them daily and because they grew up on this island. That is most of the trick. The other part is that the reefs are minutes from shore, so we can pick the right site for the conditions on the day rather than committing to a long crossing.
The etiquette, which is the whole point
A relaxed turtle stays. A stressed one leaves — and the next group gets nothing. Almost everything on this list exists for that reason rather than for the rulebook.
- Never touch, hold, ride or chase. No exceptions, no photo worth it.
- Approach slowly, from the side, and stop. Then wait. Turtles that are not pursued frequently come closer on their own.
- Never get between a turtle and the surface. It breathes air; blocking its way up is the one thing that genuinely stresses a resting animal.
- Give cleaning stations room. A turtle being cleaned is doing something. Hover low, off the coral, and let the wrasses work.
- Buoyancy is the etiquette. Fins, knees and hands off the reef, always. If you are still fighting your weighting, that is the skill to fix before the photography.
- No gloves — hands you can't use are hands that stay off the coral.
- One diver at a time on a good encounter. Four people crowding a turtle ends the encounter for all four.
- Take nothing. Not shells, not coral, not a "dead" fragment.
We cap groups at four divers per guide, which is partly about safety and partly about this: fewer fins near the coral, and fewer people in the frame when something good happens.
What the seasons change — and what they don't
The turtles are the constant. They are resident, they are here in January and in August, and no month is "turtle season" because every month is. What actually shifts is how you see them.
- Visibility. Roughly 25–35 m in the dry season (May–October); 10–25 m in the wet season (November–March), when plankton thickens the water.
- Temperature. 27–30 °C year-round, warmest May to August, about a degree or two cooler December to March. A 3 mm suit covers all of it.
- Sea state and crowds. April to October is the calmest stretch; September–October and May–June are the sweet spots; July and August are the busiest weeks on the island.
- Big visitors. Wet-season plankton does bring a chance of mantas and, rarely, other large animals. We treat those as chance encounters, because that is what they are — not residents, not a season you can book.
Getting more out of the encounter
Practical things that make the difference between seeing a turtle and spending time with one. Dives here run around 45 minutes, and we run several boat trips a day — morning, late morning and afternoon, with night dives on request — so if the first dive was rushed, there is usually another one a couple of hours later. Arrive about 30 minutes before your trip: a calm gear-up and a proper briefing is half of a calm dive.
Move less than you think you need to. Slow fins use less air, which means a longer dive, which means more time on the reef when something good turns up. Tell your guide before the briefing what you are hoping to see — the site choice is made on the day, around the conditions and around the group, and "I really want turtles" is useful information. And you do not need to bring a camera: underwater videos of your dives are included, and if you want your own footage a GoPro rents for IDR 150,000 per dive.
Going to meet them
If you are already certified, fun dives are the direct route: several boat trips a day, four divers per guide, and a guide who will pick the site around what you most want to see. If you are not certified yet, you can still meet them — a Try Scuba dive goes to 12 metres over the same shallow turtle reefs, with an instructor beside you the whole time, and it counts toward the Open Water course if you decide one dive was not enough.
Tell us what you would love to see and we will pick the reef for it. Just don't ask us to promise a manta — we'll promise you turtles instead, and mean it.