Pemuteran and Menjangan in Bali
Part of the Bali travel guide — see every topic in All Bali Guides.
Pemuteran is a quiet bay on Bali's north-west coast, three hours from the airport and a long way from anything fashionable, and it holds two things you cannot get anywhere else on the island: the largest and longest-running coral restoration project in the world, snorkellable straight off the beach, and the jumping-off point for Menjangan island, which has the clearest water and the best wall diving in Bali. It is a diving and conservation destination with a handful of good hotels and essentially no nightlife.
The Biorock project
Pemuteran's reef was destroyed in the 1990s by dynamite and cyanide fishing and by the 1998 bleaching event. From 2000, the village worked with marine scientists to install steel structures carried with a low-voltage current — the Biorock technique — which accelerates mineral accretion and coral growth on the frames. Two decades on there are dozens of structures in shallow water in the bay, thickly grown, patrolled by fish, and snorkellable from the beach. It is now the largest such project anywhere. The village runs it, funds it partly through a small reef fee, and the whole thing is a case study in community-led restoration.
Menjangan island
Menjangan sits inside the West Bali National Park, half an hour by boat from Pemuteran or twenty minutes from Labuhan Lalang. It has the clearest water in Bali — thirty metres of visibility on a good day — and sheer walls dropping from the shallows to sixty metres, covered in gorgonians and soft coral, with almost no current, which makes it unusually relaxed diving for Indonesia. There is a small wreck at the anchor point. The island is uninhabited apart from a temple and a population of Java rusa deer, which is what its name means.
The national park
West Bali National Park covers around 190 square kilometres of dry monsoon forest, savanna, mangrove and reef, and sees a tiny fraction of Bali's visitors. It is the last home of the Bali starling, a white bird with a blue eye mask that fell below ten wild individuals in the early 2000s and has been brought back through captive breeding, much of it on Menjangan. Guided birdwatching walks leave early and turn up hornbills, kingfishers and bee-eaters reliably. Entry is around 200,000 rupiah for foreign visitors plus a guide.
Practicalities
Pemuteran is three to three and a half hours from the airport via the north or the west coast road — a long drive, which is why it is quiet. Accommodation runs from 300,000 rupiah guesthouses to several genuinely good beachfront resorts at 1.5–5 million. Diving is 1.2–1.8 million for a two-tank Menjangan trip. There is very little nightlife and the restaurants are mostly attached to hotels. It pairs naturally with Munduk, an hour and a half east, or with the Java ferry at Gilimanuk if you are continuing to Ijen and Bromo.
Pemuteran and Menjangan at a glance
| Biorock | World's largest coral restoration project, running since 2000 |
|---|---|
| Snorkelling | Straight off Pemuteran beach, shallow, restored reef |
| Menjangan | Best visibility on Bali — up to 30 m, walls, no current |
| National park | ~190 km²; last wild Bali starlings |
| Distance | 3–3.5 h from the airport |
| Two-tank dive | IDR 1.2m–1.8m |