Sea Walk at Bali Island

The Seawalker is an experience walking underwater, rather than swimming, diving or snorkeling. As a safe and exciting underwater adventure, it is a unique diving system providing an opportunity to observe the underwater world up to a depth of 15 feet without certification, and without getting your hair wet. The equipment to use is a special "astronaut helmet" which is really heavy about 32 KG on the ground. It is so heavy that one be put on to us while we have to be part in the water so we could bear it’s the weight that become only 5 KG in underwater.

prepare to dive at Puri Santrian Bali

It does not need a certain skill of swimming or any previous training or experience, even if it’s your first experience in the ocean.  When you are submerging just remember to breathe normally, however you should not look down as water will come inside your helmet. You can still keep your eye glasses to have a great sightseeing , feeding and interact with the fish  in the underwater.

The seawalker at Puri Santrian Bali

There are some places to experience the seawalker, one of them is at Puri Santrian Hotel, Bali.  It is situated along the coast of upscale Sanur on the peaceful southeastern end of the Bali island.  You would be greeted by the friendly staff member then brought inside for a sitdown of a 15 minutes briefing on what the seawalker is, the manual procedures and how to conduct it by watching their video and signing a paper about safety and others (the usual legal stuff).  The video instruction was quite useful in giving tips on how to equalize the pressure between your ear and the high pressure air coming into the helmet.

Seawalker - play with exotic fish at Puri Santrian Bali

After changing into the usual swimming attire and put our valuable staffs at locker, we were given towel and rubber shoes for the seawalking. We are asked to get in a small boat and in about 5 minutes we reach the main boat, where the helmets and air supply generator were.  Again, they would give us brief instructions and always remind us about the hand code for safety.  Rise your thumb if you want to quit and go up, down your thumb to go down, put your thumb at your ear if your ear got heavy air pressure like you are at airplane and circle on your finger if you are OK and have fun.

We were given this little vest of foam to protect our body from direct contact with the helmet, then step down the ladder into the water,  put the helmet on and further down to seabed to enjoy the seawalker.

walking on the seabed - Puri Santrian Bali

In the water, instructors checked to see how we were feeling every few minutes. We get directed to beautiful coral reefs with numerous exotic fish and sea life. At the time most of the fish are kakaktua fish or parrot fish. We kneel on a metal bar where we have the chance to play with the fish, they gave us fish food to attract as many fish as possible.

feeding the fish at seawalker Puri Santrian Bali

It’s around 30 minutes of walking on the seabed, sightseeing, feeding and interact with the fish and have the chance to touch the reef, and furthermore no need to worry about losing any moments, because there will be staff ready to capture our moments into a photo or video during the seawalker

coral reef at seawalker - Puri Santrian Bali

Tips:
The underwater video (for  all the participants in the group, not individual) was quite pricey but I suggest to get it anyway if you don't have a waterproof camera. Should definitely get it for a keepsake!

Children under 9 years old cannot join with the seawalker, but instead they can wait while playing on the sea (with the guide provided) while their parents are diving.

enjoy your seawalker!