Lava Flow

In 1988 Gunung Api erupted and poured lava into the sea, sterilizing this slope entirely. What happened next made the site famous: corals recolonized the fresh rock at a pace researchers have described as among the fastest reef recovery ever recorded, and today the flow is buried under acres of table corals stacked like crockery, in places from the surface down past twenty meters. Diving it is a double exposure, black basalt fingers still visible beneath a canopy barely three decades old, with anthias, turtles, and reef sharks already treating it as ancient. The volcano steams quietly overhead. As a demonstration of what reefs can do when left alone, nothing else in Indonesia states the case this plainly.

The moment you come for: Record-pace coral regrowth on young lava; unbroken table-coral fields; the smoking cone directly above the anchorage.

Topography: A tongue of 1988 lava from Gunung Api, now overgrown with dense fields of table and staghorn coral.

Current: Usually gentle along the slope; the site sits in relatively protected water near Banda Neira.

Hazards: Few in normal conditions; shallow coral on the ascent line.

Conservation: The young coral plates are brittle and irreplaceable as a scientific record; fin well clear of the shallows.