DIVING AT TIOMAN ISLAND MALAYSIA

My Guide to Diving at Tioman Island, Malaysia

Approach to Salang Bay, Tioman Island, Malaysia

diving at Tioman Island

Divers at Soyak Island, just off shore Salang Bay

Tioman’s scuba diving is greatly eclipsed in fame by Malaysia’s northern Perentian Islands which are promoted heavily by budget guidebooks. This detoured promotion has both advantages and disadvantages for Tioman’s diving scene.

Tioman dive shops are unfortunately suffering. Year by year business continues Decreasing rather than increasing due to little fault of their own. Ironically, that’s a bonus for visiting divers: dive shops and sites are quite Uncrowded. Customers receive excellent service in small groups for both courses and dive tours.

turtles are commonly sighted at Tioman

Although Tioman hasn’t received due recognition like the Perentians, it offers superb diving: gorgeous hard coral sites, astounding sea fans, shipwrecks, a huge abundance and variety of fish, great macro life, and frequent sitings of turtles and sharks. I personally rank several Tioman dive sites as the most gorgeous hard coral and sea fan sites I’ve yet to encounter.

clown fish in anemone at Tioman

Tioman also offers fantastic night diving right off Salang beach. In addition, Tioman’s calm clear shallow waters present great opportunities to start diving or take advanced courses all the way up to DiveMaster, Instructor and Technical Specialist.

gorgeous Blue-Ringed Angelfish at Tioman

About 12 regularly visited dive sites are located a mere 5-15 minutes by comfortable diving speedboats from Salang Beach. Those dives are also accessed from several other beaches / dive shops on Tioman’s west coast, particularly ABC Beach.

Lash night diving at Tioman

In June to September, 2005, I worked at Salang as a Dive Master guiding certified divers on Tioman’s beautiful reefs. Salang is also where I first took up night diving, now one of my favorite diving activities.

Night diving at Salang is super easy. Just walk in from the beach to dive Salang’s shallow house reef or walk 100M along the boat jetty, jump in and explore the jetty’s intriguing underside. Roger’s Wreck, a wooden fishing boat just offshore, also makes an excellent night dive with some amazing mysterious creatures that I’ve yet to identify!

Pulau Soyak, just off shore Salang Beach

My favorite dive sites at Tioman include:

Soyak Island, just off Salang Beach, for its astounding shallow hard coral reef and plentiful fish.
Ringus Island and Malang, a bit further afield, for more stunning hard coral reefs.
Chebeh for beautiful and abundant sea fans.
Roger’s Wreck, a wooden fishing boat complete with mast, just offshore at Salang.
Fan Canyon, Labas, and Tiger Reef for rocky canyons/crevices with abundant nudibranches and sea fans.
Salang Beach and Jetty for night diving.

Batu Malang with Tioman in background

Malaysia’s National Marine Park based at Tioman has a multiple-wreck site. They’ve sunk a group of about 7 variously-sized ships and strung them together with ropes for navigation. Visibility is generally quite poor, which makes exploring the group of wrecks even more fun and mysterious.

If you’re traveling through SE Asia and want to experience excellent diving at a laid-back tropical paradise island, skip over-rated jam-packed Perentian Islands and venture out to Tioman instead. You won’t be disappointed.

While working at Tioman as a Dive Master, I  met and worked with fellow PADI Master Scuba Instructor and underwater photographer, Grahame Massicks. Grahame has now been teaching courses at Tioman for over 10 years. (and see his photos in this article.)

If you’re thinking of diving there, I highly recommend Grahame, who I can personally vouch for as a dedicated, professional PADI Instructor with excellent customer service. Find out all about Grahame and his courses on his website Scuba Guru.

Soyak at sunset from Salang Beach

DIVING DETAILS:

LOCATION: East coast of Peninsular Malaysia, far south coast, fairly close to Singapore
DIVE SEASON: Feb to end Oct. * Feb and March can be choppy seas but with great viz.
WATER TEMPS: 28°- 30°C Occasionally may drop to 25°C in thermoclines or rare weather conditions
DIVE DEPTHS: 3 M- 30M+
DIVE LEVELS: all levels from beginner to technical diver, specific to dive site
GETTING THERE: 1. FLIGHT: Tioman has a small airport.. From there you can catch a boat to the bay/beach you wish to stay at.
OVERLAND: From Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, take a long distance bus (~5 hours) to Mersing. From there catch one of many ferries to your selected beach. 1 to 2 hour trip. You can also catch a bus to Mersing from Singapore or Johor Baru, Malaysia.