Coral Garden is a flat reef of 3 to 15 meters deep, which is covered with beautiful hard and soft corals. It is inhabited by many reef fish and blacktip reef sharks are regularly spotted. There is also a wide variety of shrimp and other critters, and you will find several cleaning stations where morays, groupers and other reef inhabitants come by to get cleaned by many cleaner shrimps and small perch. Coral Garden is a great location for night dives, often we spotted the beautiful spanish dancer and various species of crabs.

The fish life, as with the Drop-Off and the USAT Liberty Shipwreck, is very diverse with a surprising number of Blue ribbon eels (the juveniles of which are black), cuttlefish and octopus. In addition there is wide variety of shrimps (inc Peacock mantis shrimps), frogfish, ghostpipefish, nudibranch and anemonefish. Black-tip reef sharks patrol up and down, and you may well see Giant groupers and the school of Bumphead parrotfish too.

If you carry on down the sand slope, you’ll find barrel sponges with many surprises: juvenile Emperor angelfish, Two-spot lionfish, maybe a school of juvenile catfish; cleaning stations with shrimp and wrasse, a shoal of razorfish swaying in their hiding place. If you follow the slope towards the Drop-Off, you’ll come to Tulamben’s River Bed – although not an area for divers looking for a profusion of marine life, it is often the best place in Tulamben Bay to find unexpected specimens!