Mangel Halto is a shallow lagoon near Pos Chikito, designated a marine reserve within the Marine Park Aruba in 2019. An easy beach entry leads to a sheltered sand bowl used for training and to a reef that slopes away to deeper water, which makes it a site for snorkellers, students and night divers alike.
Also known as Mangel Halto Reef, Mangel Halto Beach.
Where it is and how deep
12.4649° N, 69.9695° WApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
The entry is an easy one from the shore. Behind the reef lies a sheltered sand bowl at 16 m that serves as a training site, with the small steel boat Kappel sunk in it. The reef itself slopes from about 5 m (15 ft) down to 34 m (110 ft), so a dive can stay shallow on the upper slope or follow it deeper, and the site is also dived at night.
Marine life and season
- Sea turtles
- Barracuda
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good |
Season follows Aruba: Diving runs year-round, and the island sits south of the hurricane belt, so no month stands out as a peak.
Photos from Mangel Halto
Caribiana · CC BY-SA 4.0
Dive videos
Diving Mangel Halto, Aruba | The Shore Dive Collection | TropicLens · TropicLens on YouTube
Sources
- Mangel Halto Reef — ScubaGo
- Mangel Halto — Wikipedia
- Aruba – Isle of wrecks — Divernet
Photo credits
- A yellow-striped grunt hovers over pale sand beneath a low, algae-covered rock ledge in clear shallow water. by Ginelly.Q, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
- A narrow channel of shallow water and white sand runs out to sea through a tunnel of mangrove roots and branches. by Caribiana, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
More dive sites in Aruba
Wreck
A sunken fuel barge lying right alongside Malmok reef
Wreck
An upright cement carrier crusted in sponges and black gorgonians
Wreck
Scattered steel of a 1942 U-boat victim, alive with small critters
A wartime German freighter lying on its side in Malmok Bay
Similar dives elsewhere
A small coral island with a vertical wall, to 19 m
Hundreds of garden eels on the sand below a leeward coral reef
An old Spanish anchor in the sand between coral heads
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A strong south-to-north drift over shallow reef, to 17 m