The USAT Liberty wreck at Tulamben: how to dive it from Amed

A 120-metre ship, a swim from the sand

Walk in off the black sand at Tulamben and the ship is right there. The stern rises to about 5 metres, shallow enough that snorkelers hang over it. The bow lies deeper, at 28 to 30 metres, with gorgonian coral on the plates at 12 to 14 metres and a deck cannon still sitting under its turret at 28. ^{1, 8}

Accounts put the hull 25 to 40 metres out from the beach, about what you would expect of a 120-metre wreck lying at an angle to the shore. ^{1, 6, 7} There is no boat ride, no harbour and no mooring. Tanks go down to the water on the shoulders of the porters who work the beach, and you stride in.

So the planning question here is the hour, not the access. By about 10 a.m. the day-trippers from south Bali are in the water, and the site stays busy through the afternoon. ⁵ Everything below is built around that clock, with prices from three named shops in Amed and Tulamben and the figures they publish themselves. ^{2, 3, 11}

How deep is the Liberty wreck?

Five sources, read on 26 September 2026, and the one that disagrees with all of them.

Plan for 5 to 30 metres and you have planned for the whole ship. Wikipedia's account, which carries the US Navy's own ship-history text, puts the highest point at about 5 metres and the lowest at about 30. Dive Concepts, a Bali operator that runs the site, says 5 to 28 metres and describes the wreck lying on its right flank. ^{1, 8}

That range buys two different dives on one beach. A newly certified diver can spend a whole tank between 5 and 14 metres on the stern and the coral-covered plates. A deeper dive reaches the bow and the cannon at 28 metres. ⁸ Ask which part of the wreck your card covers when you book, because the answer decides how many dives you need to see the ship.

Why dive the Liberty before 10 a.m.?

Three unrelated accounts give the same advice: get in early. ZuBlu, Doris Gone Diving and Stingy Nomads each describe better visibility and more marine-life activity at first light, an uncrowded site until around 10 a.m., and a wreck that fills up once the vans arrive from the south. It quiets again in the late afternoon and for night dives. ^{5, 6, 7}

That is the strongest piece of unpriced advice on this page, because it comes from three places with no reason to copy each other. It also sets your body clock for the trip. A 6 a.m. pickup in Amed feels early on the first morning and obvious by the third.

1. 01

   Book the pickup, not just the dive

   Shops based in Amed set the collection time when you book. Eco Dive Bali includes hotel pickup from Amed or Tulamben in its dive price, so the drive is the shop's job and not a line you settle separately. ²

2. 02

   Leave Amed in the dark

   The road north is 15 km and about 36 minutes on a routing calculator's estimate, so a pickup at first light has you kitted up on the beach with the site to yourself. ¹⁰

3. 03

   Hand the tanks to the porters

   Full tanks weigh about 15 kg and the carry runs 300 to 500 metres over rocky beach from the parking area. The porters of Koperasi Sekar Baruna have done that work since about 1983. ¹³

4. 04

   Dive the deep end first

   The bow and the cannon sit at about 28 metres. ⁸ Take that part of the wreck on the first dive of the morning and the shallow stern on the second, which is also the shape of a sensible surface interval.

5. 05

   Be out before the day boats and vans

   By around 10 a.m. the site is busy. Move to another site in the area, then come back late in the afternoon or for a night dive once it has emptied. ⁵

How did a US Army ship end up on a Bali beach?

The Liberty wreck's history in three dates: a 1942 torpedo, a beaching the same week, and the 1963 eruption that put the ship underwater.

A Japanese submarine torpedoed the Liberty on 11 January 1942, about 10 nautical miles southwest of the Lombok Strait, while she carried railway parts and rubber from Australia toward the Philippines. ¹ Wikipedia's text names the submarine I-66. ZuBlu names it I-166. The two accounts disagree and the page below carries both. ^{1, 5}

Two destroyers took the damaged ship in tow, the American Paul Jones and the Dutch Van Ghent, heading for the port of Singaraja on Bali's north coast. She was taking on too much water to make it. The crews beached her on the eastern shore at Tulamben instead, so the cargo and fittings could be salvaged. ¹

For twenty-one years she sat in the surf line. Then Mount Agung erupted in 1963, and the tremors slid the hull off the beach and onto the sand slope where it lies today. ¹ ZuBlu's account adds that the same shaking split the hull in two, which is why divers talk about bow and stern sections instead of one ship. ⁵

What does a dive on the Liberty cost from Amed?

Three named shops, their own published prices on 26 September 2026, rupiah converted at Bank Indonesia's reference rate.

Two dives on the wreck cost $75 from Eco Dive Bali in Amed, with hotel pickup, full equipment and a guide included. ² Let's Dive Tulamben, the shop in the village whose beach the ship sits off, prices two dives at 1,000,000 IDR, about $56 at Bank Indonesia's reference rate of Rp17,917 to the dollar on 25 September 2026. ^{3, 4}

Amed is the base that makes the arithmetic work. Rooms, food and a month of shore diving are priced in MMT's Amed diving month budget, and the Indonesia travel guide covers the visa and the tourist levy that come before any of it. If you are buying a course instead of fun dives, what a certification really costs splits tuition from the open-water fees.

Is it cheaper to stay in Tulamben or dive from Amed?

Amed gives you a village to come home to; Tulamben puts you a few hundred metres from the ship. The two are 15 km apart, about 36 minutes by road. ¹⁰ Shops based in Amed collect from hotels in both places, so the choice is about mornings and evenings, not about which shop you can reach. ²

Packages hide the comparison, which is the usual trouble with them. Two Fish Divers' seven-night package works out at $42.79 a dive with a budget room included, against $37.50 a dive on Eco Dive Bali's two-dive price with no bed at all. ^{11, 2, 4} MMT's guide to reading a dive package sets out the lines to ask about before you compare two of them.

Who carries the tanks at Tulamben?

A women's cooperative, Koperasi Sekar Baruna, has carried divers' tanks up this beach since about 1983. The group formed informally among porters moving full tanks of about 15 kg and gear 300 to 500 metres over rock from the parking area, and registered as a cooperative around 1990. Reporting in November 2021 counted 29 members. ^{13, 14}

Their own rules set the split. Five percent of each fee goes to the customary village, the desa adat, and five percent to the group's fund, and the rest is divided evenly among the women working that day. The rate had climbed from 500 rupiah a tank at the start to 10,000 rupiah by late 2021. That is a five-year-old figure now, so ask your guide what it is today. ¹³

Tulamben's guides organised too. A 2015 report counted about 70 local dive guides and around 30 shops working this shore, and that year they formed the Organisasi Pemandu Selam Tulamben, which runs clean-ups along the 500 metres of coast in front of the wreck and campaigns under the tag SaveLibertyWreck about coral damage and corrosion from heavy traffic. ^{15, 16}

• Carry small rupiah notes for the porters. The reported rate was 10,000 IDR a tank in November 2021 and has had five years to move. ¹³
• Keep your fins off the plates. The same reporting cited about 100 divers a day at Tulamben, rising to 100 to 150 a day in the holiday high season, and named that traffic as the reason the guides organised. ^{16, 15}
• Book the deep morning dive with a guide who knows the cannon. Dive Concepts places it under its turret at 28 metres, on a wreck where 400-odd fish species make the same structure hard to read. ^{8, 5}

Two things to settle before you fly

Two things are worth sorting before you fly. Settle them now and the trip has one less unknown once you land.

1. 01

   Cover and kit

   Dive insurance and whether to fly with your own gear are separate sums with their own arithmetic: what dive insurance covers and buying against renting gear.

Then book the first pickup of the day and go to bed early. The ship has been down there since 1963, and the people who dive it well are the ones on the beach while the road from the south is still quiet. ^{1, 5}