Raja Ampat · Indonesia · Wall
Friwen Wall
Soft corals, black coral and gorgonians from 26 m to 2 m
Area photo: Buena Ventura · CC BY 3.0
A wall off Friwen island in the Dampier Strait, covered in soft corals, black corals and gorgonians, with a profile of 2 to 26 metres. It usually dives easy, which leaves time to work slowly along the wall looking for small things; when the current picks up the same wall turns into a straightforward drift.
Where it is and how deep
0.4736° S, 130.6912° EApproximate position — the dashed circle shows where the site lies; your operator's briefing has the mooring.
The dive
The wall runs from 26 metres up to 2, so the usual shape of the dive is to drop to the deeper end early and work steadily shallower along the face. Soft corals, black corals and gorgonians cover it, and on a normal day the current is light enough that you can stop, hold position and search a fan or an overhang properly rather than being pushed past it. It is one of the few true wall dives in the Dampier Strait.
That easy pace is what the site is known for: time to look for macro. When the current does get up, the same wall becomes a good drift instead, and the dive changes from a search to a ride along the face with the fans passing. Either way the shallow end at 2 metres gives somewhere unhurried to finish. The two published positions for the wall lie more than a kilometre apart, so it is charted here against Friwen island rather than as a single pin, and visibility and water temperature specific to the site are not published.
Marine life and season
- Macro critters
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime | Prime | Prime | Prime | Good | Good | Fair | Fair | Fair | Good | Prime | Prime |
Season follows Raja Ampat: October to April is the drier stretch and November to April the manta season at Manta Ridge; July to mid-September can bring strong winds and rough seas.
Questions divers ask
How deep is Friwen Wall?+
The wall is dived between 2 and 26 metres, and most of the interest is on the shallower half of that range where the soft corals and fans sit.
Where exactly is Friwen Wall?+
It sits off Friwen island in the Dampier Strait. The two published listings for the wall give positions more than a kilometre apart, so the map shows an approximate area around the island rather than a precise point.
Sources
- Friwen Wall dive site — ScubaGo
- Friwen Wall, Raja Ampat dive site — ScubaGo
- Friwen, Raja Ampat — OpenStreetMap
In The Logbook
- The best wall dives in the worldWalls & drop-offs · 11 min read
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