Why Wakatobi Resort is a must-visit for avid snorkelers

When snorkeling becomes a passion, a quick excursion off a resort beach or a crowded boat tour to a generic site isn’t enough. Avid snorkeling enthusiasts want pristine reefs away from the crowds, where ideal conditions and diverse ecosystems provide hours of in-water enjoyment. This is exactly what they find at Wakatobi Resort.

Wakatobi is a beachfront oasis located on a small island in Indonesia’s Southeast Sulawesi region, home to some of the world’s most pristine and bio-diverse coral reefs. The resort is surrounded by a private marine preserve that is widely known as a premier diving destination. But unlike some SCUBA-centric meccas, Wakatobi is equally attractive to avid snorkelers.

To understand Wakatobi’s appeal to snorkelers, you don’t need to look beyond the beach. Directly in front of the resort, a swath of shallow water stretches for more than a mile to the left and right of the dive center. This is the famous House Reef, which has been named the World’s Number One Shore Dive.

This House Reef encompasses several hundred acres of sand flats, grass beds and patch reefs that hold thousands of unique species of marine life, from fascinating subjects like grazing sea turtles to treasured finds such as pygmy seahorses and pipefish. Snorkelers have 24-hour access to this shallow-water playground, with easy entries from the beach or from the resort’s jetty. Because the House Reef is both easily accessible and monitored by Wakatobi’s attentive staff, it is an excellent option for novice snorkelers and children alike.

Snorkelers can also take advantage of Wakatobi’s Taxi boat service. This fleet of small launches carries guests to and from the more distant areas of the House Reef. The shallows of the House Reef extend some 200 feet from shore, at which point the marine landscape suddenly plummets into the ocean’s depths. Here, steep coral and sponge-encrusted slopes and ocean walls transport snorkelers into an entirely different world where creatures such as frogfish, stonefish, crocodilefish, blue-ringed octopus, moray eels, blue-spotted stingrays, ghost pipefish, shrimp, and goby pairs can be seen along the upper lip of the drop-off.

The resort’s jetty is a great place to kick off snorkeling adventures on the House Reef, as it provides easy access to the water regardless of tide conditions, and a shelter for a wide variety of marine life. It’s not uncommon to see giant clams and…