The dive
Sandy, rubbly, and nearly coral-free — muck diving in its purest form. What Awas offers instead of scenery is density: mottled sand and seagrass patches concealing a community that rewards the slow, low, patient style of diving Mabul teaches.
Residents
Fingered dragonets and flying gurnards moving across the open sand; skeleton shrimp, ghost pipefish and juvenile frogfish hiding in the seagrass; pharaoh cuttlefish running flashy, choreographed mating displays in season. Add anemones, sea fans and feather stars, shrimp from banded coral to tiger to mantis, morays, trumpetfish, passing barracuda — divers regularly log twenty-plus species a dive, from a community likely running into the hundreds.
Conditions and level
- Terrain: shallow sand, rubble and seagrass — classic muck
- Suits: everyone, but it converts photographers into repeat visitors
- Technique note: fin control matters — silt hangs here, and a careless kick fogs the site for everyone behind you
Next door and equally muck-royal: Crocodile Avenue.