Gili Trawangan Diving: The Daily Park Ticket, Three Core Zones and the Sites Around Them

Gili Trawangan diving has been under the fisheries ministry since 2009

The reefs were not always a fisheries matter. The decree that made these waters a national marine conservation area, KEP.67/MEN/2009, signed on 3 September 2009, cites a handover record of 4 March 2009 transferring nature reserve and nature conservation areas from the Department of Forestry to the Department of Marine Affairs and Fisheries. It named the area a Taman Wisata Perairan, a marine tourism park, of about 2,954 hectares, and spelled the first island “Gili Ayer”.

That decree is no longer the one in force. Minister’s Decree 34 of 2022, set on 23 May 2022, declares the waters around Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan the Kawasan Konservasi Pulau Gili Air, Gili Meno, dan Gili Trawangan, managed as a Taman di Perairan, a park in the waters, of 2,268.59 hectares. Its sixth clause revokes the 2009 decree, and its preamble gives the reason: the area’s size and zoning had changed.

One detail is worth knowing if you look the decrees up yourself. The ministry’s legal database still lists the 2009 decree as in force and dates it to 8 March 2009, while the signed text carries 3 September 2009 and the 2022 decree says in its own words that the old one is “dicabut dan dinyatakan tidak berlaku”, revoked and declared no longer valid. The decree is the one to go by.

The 2022 decree hands management to the directorate general responsible for marine spatial management. On the water that means its technical unit in Kupang, long known as BKKPN Kupang, whose ministry information pages now carry the name Balai Pengelolaan Kelautan Kupang. “Gili Matra”, the ministry’s shorthand, simply joins the three island names. Where to live while you dive here is covered in the Gili Islands base guide, and whether to base here or on Bali’s east coast in Amed vs Gili; this page repeats neither.

Since 4 October 2024 the same water carries a second, international label. IMO resolution MEPC.396(82) designates the Nusa Penida Islands and Gili Matra Islands in Lombok Strait as one Particularly Sensitive Sea Area, and its four Gili corner points are exactly the outer boundary points of the 2022 decree. The protective measure attached to it is the Lombok Strait traffic separation scheme for ships, so it changes nothing about a dive; it is the reason the Gilis and Nusa Penida now share an instrument while being managed apart.

Three core zones around Gili Trawangan, Meno and Air are closed to recreational diving

The 2022 decree divides its 2,268.59 hectares three ways. The core zone covers 101.95 hectares, the limited-use zone 2,003.64 hectares, and 163.00 hectares are “other zones”: a rehabilitation zone of 46.43 hectares, a zone for buildings and marine installations of 56.69 hectares and a port and mooring zone of 59.88 hectares. The decree’s map draws the core zone as three patches, off the west coast of Gili Trawangan, off the north-west of Gili Meno and off the south-west of Gili Air.

What you may do in each zone is set by Regulation 31 of 2020 on managing conservation areas. Its annex tabulates activities zone by zone for a park-category area, and for kegiatan pariwisata alam perairan, nature tourism in the water, the entries read: core zone, not permitted; limited-use zone, permitted with conditions; other zones, not permitted. Research is the one use listed as permitted with conditions in all three. The rehabilitation and harbor zones are closed to tourism by the same row of the table, not only the core.

The conditions sit in the same annex. Water tourism must take place in the tourism subzone of the limited-use zone, at the locations designated for each activity, with the required permit, with safety equipment suited to the activity, and by people with the ability the activity demands. It must be “accompanied by a local tour guide or the conservation area manager”, and visitor numbers may not exceed the area’s carrying capacity.

On the published coordinates, the Trawangan core zone is a strip of the island’s west coast. The management plan’s entry and exit points put Shark Point just north of it and Sunset Reef, sold as Manta Point, just south of it, so two named west-side sites bracket water where no recreational dive is permitted. Ask where the boundary runs before a drift carries you along that coast.

Off Gili Meno the overlap looks direct. The plan gives the entry point of Meno Wall, one of its priority dive sites, as 8°20′30.4″ S, 116°03′04.6″ E. Plotted against points 11 to 18 of the decree, which outline the Gili Meno core zone, that point falls inside the polygon, about 140 meters from its nearest corner. That is a calculation from two published coordinate tables, not a statement by the park authority, and the plan’s table swaps its latitude and longitude headings. Ask your operator where a Meno Wall dive starts.

Two numbers do not agree. Indonesia’s submission annexed to the IMO resolution describes the Gili Matra core zone as 94.81 hectares of water and “a no-entry zone”; the decree gives 101.95 hectares, and the regulation is written as a list of permitted and prohibited activities rather than an entry ban. This page follows the decree. The zoning is enforced against other water sports too: on 8 May 2025 the Kupang unit told five jet-ski businesses in Senggigi that the zoning rules bar jet skis inside the area.

The Gili Trawangan park ticket is Rp100,000 a day for foreign divers, not once per stay

The charge dive shops add to the bill is a state entry ticket, the karcis masuk, and it is non-tax state revenue priced by Government Regulation 85 of 2021. Its annex has two bands. In a Category A area the daily ticket is Rp200,000 for a foreign visitor and Rp20,000 for an Indonesian; in Category B it is Rp100,000 and Rp10,000. The annual ticket is Rp1,000,000 for a foreigner in Category A and Rp500,000 in Category B.

Which band applies is set elsewhere. The directorate general’s 2024 technical guidance on issuing these tickets works an example for this park and states that, under Director General’s Decree 12 of 2024 amending Decree 7 of 2017, “TWP Gili Matra masuk dalam Kategori B”: Gili Matra is Category B. Its sample group of ten foreign snorkelers on 27 February 2024 pays Rp1,000,000 in tickets, ten at Rp100,000.

The unit in the regulation is per person per day. Several shops describe it as a one-off: one Trawangan dive center’s price page says all divers pay “a one-off Marine Park fee of IDR 100.000”. The rulebook version is a daily ticket, and at Category B rates the annual ticket costs the same as five daily ones. For six or more days in the water in a year, the annual ticket is cheaper.

The ticket is compulsory. Regulation 7 of 2025 on using conservation areas, set on 28 February 2025, requires every person carrying out nature tourism in a conservation area to hold one of its listed permits, the entry ticket among them, and exposes anyone without one to administrative sanctions. Water transport and customary or religious rituals are the listed exemptions. Tickets are issued through the ministry’s SEAPARK system, and the application asks for nationality and a valid identity document.

Equipment is priced on top. The same annex charges Rp15,000 a day per scuba set, Rp10,000 per snorkel set, Rp20,000 per underwater camera and Rp35,000 per underwater video camera. A tourist boat for fewer than 50 passengers costs Rp2,000,000 a day, but the guidance exempts boats named in the business license of an operator licensed for water-tourism services, and does not charge the ticket to that operator’s crew and guides. That is where an operator’s license shows up in your price.

The pandemic rate no longer drives the guidance. Regulation 35 of 2021 set the entry ticket at 25 percent of the tariff until six months after the end of the Covid-19 emergency response period as determined by the government, and the 2024 guidance calculates at the full rate.

The Gili Eco Trust charge on a Gili Trawangan dive bill is not a state fee

The second line many shops add goes to a foundation. The same Trawangan price page lists “a Gili Eco Trust funding of IDR 50.000” next to the park ticket. The Gili Eco Trust, Yayasan Ekosistem Gili Indah, traces its origin to reef damage in the 1997 to 1998 El Niño and to dynamite and cyanide fishing.

In 1999 local fishermen set up SATGAS to patrol the waters around the three islands, and the islands’ main dive shops then founded the trust to support it; its pages date that to 2000 on one page and 2001 on another.

Neither the 2021 tariff regulation nor the 2025 regulation on using conservation areas mentions it. The trust itself says it “relies on donations, grants and money we earn through our conservation and education projects”, and its donation page names mooring buoys, Biorock reef restoration, beach clean-ups and animal clinics among the uses. Paying it supports that work. Whether it is added to your bill is the dive shop’s pricing, not a requirement of Indonesian law.

Biorock on Gili Trawangan: what has been measured, and where

Biorock is the restoration method the trust is known for: steel frames carrying a low-voltage current, on which limestone minerals grow and to which corals are attached. On its own pages the trust counts 200 Biorock reef structures and dates the project to 2004. Those are the trust’s figures, and the photograph at the top of this page shows a green turtle resting on one of the frames.

The peer-reviewed record for this island is thinner than the reputation. A 2022 review in Frontiers in Marine Science by Thomas Goreau, who coined the name Biorock, uses Gili Trawangan for its photographs of healing: broken coral fragments collected one afternoon had polyps “fully expanded” after one night on an electrified mesh, and damaged tissue was regrowing after three and eight months in 2021. Those are observations, not measurements.

The one growth measurement in the same paper, corals growing 4.01 times faster than controls, comes from Pemuteran on Bali, and the paper itself calls it an underestimate because the controls also sat in the electrical field. The paper discloses that its author is chief scientist of Blue Regeneration, which it says holds the copyright on Biorock, and president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance. It also cites a 2012 book chapter on the Gili Trawangan project by Bakti and colleagues, which this guide did not read.

The management plan treats Biorock Reef Garden off Gili Trawangan as an ordinary dive site: fringing reef, hard coral cover of 10 to 20 percent, visibility of 5 to 10 meters, moderate current, suitable for all levels, and a ceiling of 366 divers a day, which it sets at half of the site’s computed carrying capacity.

Gili Trawangan dive sites in the 2023 management plan, from Shark Point to Deep Halik

Director General’s Decree 62 of 2023, set on 1 December 2023, adopts a management plan for 2023 to 2042, and it is the official document that describes the dive sites by name. It picks ten priority sites for high dive traffic, popularity and, at some, suspected reef decline from tourism: Shark Point and Glenn Nusa Wreck, Halik Reef, Sunset Reef, Bounty Wreck, Meno Wall, Turtle Heaven, Meno Slope, Shallow Turbo, Hans Reef and Air Wall. It then describes eight more.

Off Gili Trawangan, Shark Point runs to 25 meters; below 20 meters the plan records whitetip and blacktip reef sharks sheltering in crevices, and bumphead parrotfish schooling around the full moon. Halik Reef slopes to about 20 meters and is used for drift dives, with a deeper part to 40 meters for advanced divers. Deep Turbo, north-east of the island, drops from 16 to 32 meters. Deep Halik reaches about 45 meters, and the plan recommends it for Advanced divers at minimum.

Two names promise more than the text does. Sunset Reef, sold as Manta Point, averages 15 meters, and the plan says manta rays are “sometimes” found there in the rainy season from December to March. Bounty Wreck, off Gili Meno, is in the plan’s words not a shipwreck at all but sunken parts of a pier structure, to a maximum of 15 meters. It is a good dive, just not a wreck.

Current is what the plan repeats most. It rates it moderate to strong at Deep Turbo, Shallow Turbo and Deep Halik, and moderate to very strong at Simon’s Reef, Meno Corner, Mirko’s Reef and Air Slope, with water around 28°C. Simon’s Reef, north of Gili Meno, averages 25 to 40 meters, where the plan says divers usually use nitrox, and it is for Advanced divers. The drift diving guide covers what that kind of water asks of you.

Divers share the limited-use zone with small-scale fishing, and the plan says the two are divided “by agreement and by a time mechanism” because several dive spots overlap fishing grounds. The park’s own monitoring logged 900 water-tourism activities against 150 fishing activities in 23 rounds between February and December 2015, and 116 against 270 in 42 rounds between January and November 2020, the year tourism stopped.

Where turtles turned up in the 2020 Gili Trawangan survey

The park unit surveyed turtles in April, July and November 2020 and recorded 61 sightings of two species, green turtle and hawksbill, at 14 observation sites. Turtle Heaven, north of Gili Meno, accounted for 35 of them; Shark Point off Gili Trawangan for one. The turtles were at 5 to 15 meters, green turtles outnumbered hawksbills, and the survey built a photo-identification set of 48 images. The plan lists turtles under protected marine life.

Indonesia’s submission to the IMO names Gili Meno as the favorite of the three for nesting and feeding, because seagrass covers more than half its circumference. It puts seagrass at 58.5 hectares across the islands, 32.83 of them at Meno, and coral reef at 696.09 hectares, 287.02 of them around Gili Trawangan. On land, the trust’s Proyek Penyu project tracks nesting turtles and monitors nests until the hatchlings reach the sea.

The written rules that touch turtles are about behavior around them. Regulation 31 of 2020 bars water tourism that damages the ecosystem or endangers protected species, and tells boats to slow down and change course when a protected species crosses their path. The turtle swimming guide compares other places where the same etiquette applies.

Gili Trawangan divers: two hyperbaric chambers published on Lombok

Two public hospitals on Lombok publish a hyperbaric chamber on their own sites. RSUD Kabupaten Lombok Utara, in Tanjung, in the North Lombok regency that the Gilis belong to, lists a hyperbaric chamber among its services. RSUD H. Moh. Ruslan in Mataram describes hyperbaric oxygen as the main therapy for diving illness, naming decompression sickness and arterial gas embolism, and prices a US Navy Table 5 treatment for foreign patients at Rp2,598,750.

Neither page says whether the chamber is staffed around the clock. That is a question for your operator’s emergency plan and your insurer’s assistance line before the first dive, not after it; the dive insurance guide covers what a policy has to include for evacuation and chamber time.

Gili Trawangan dive operators: 22 listed, two assessed in person by Green Fins

The Gili Trawangan operator list holds 22 dive businesses, read on 21 September 2026. Twenty are published by SSI in its register of affiliated centers. Two are Green Fins members assessed in person within the last 12 months: Divine Divers as a Certified Gold Member and Gili Conservation Dive Center as a Certified Silver Member. Twenty-one of the 22 publish a website.

The list reaches beyond the island. Of the 20 SSI entries, the register’s town field names Gili Trawangan for four and Gili Air for four; the rest are filed under North Lombok, Lombok, Pemenang, Mataram, the province or the village of Gili Indah. SSI rates seven for Freediving and three for Extended Range, which describes the listing, not a course running this season.

Whether an operator holds the business license that exempts its boats from the daily boat charge is worth asking directly. Which registers can be read sets out what each source can and cannot prove.