The Slope — Amphitheatre Reef & Shrimp Central at Havelock Island (Swaraj Dweep)
The Slope dive site is located on the northwest side of Havelock Island, directly in front of the Havelock lighthouse. It's a 15-minute speedboat ride from the Govind Nagar training point and a neighbouring site to The Wall (the first dive site ever discovered on Havelock, in 2004). The Slope is a large site — to see it fully, you need to dive it more than once. Many divers who visit once return specifically to explore the sections they didn't cover.
The site rewards certified divers across the whole range of experience: the shallow amphitheatre sections (4–10m) suit divers earlier in their certified journey, while the deeper ridge sections and sandy base reward more advanced divers with different species and cleaner water movement.
Overview of The Slope (Quick Facts)
About The Slope Dive Site
The Slope is also known as Shrimp Central for its cleaning stations — it has more shrimp species in one location than almost any other site in Havelock, including banded boxer shrimps, Durban dancer shrimps, and peacock mantis shrimps occupying different sections of the ridge formations. At a cleaning station, a grouper or sometimes a sweetlips, barracuda, or Napoleon wrasse hovers motionless above the ridge with its gills and mouth open, while shrimps move across the fish's body picking off parasites, dead skin, and food debris.
The fish that would normally prey on these shrimps stay still during the cleaning process for a few minutes. Watching this happen at close range, with three or four groupers queued in the water column above the same ridge waiting their turn, is genuinely one of the most memorable experiences available at any Havelock certified-diver site.
Topography
The Slope looks unlike any other Havelock dive site from the moment you reach the reef top. Long parallel ridges run across the slope like rows of seats in an amphitheatre, each one stepping down to the next in a structured, almost architectural cascade from the shallowest entry point at 4 metres to the sandy base at 18–20 metres. The ridges are not solid walls but textured formations with coral growth on their surfaces and sandy channels running between them — and it's in the crevices of these ridges that The Slope's most extraordinary residents live.
Best Time to Dive
October to May is the main season to dive The Slope, with dive slots running from 5:10am to 1:30pm. The Slope is a protected site with mild to very mild currents in most conditions — its channel position near the lighthouse provides some movement that concentrates marine life without creating the strong current experienced at The Wall next door. Visibility typically reaches 15–20 metres in season, with December to February offering the most consistent clarity. Water temperature stays 27–30°C year-round.
Marine Life at The Slope
Beyond the shrimp and cleaning station community, The Slope supports an unusually diverse fish and invertebrate population across its ridge zones. Bannerfish, triggerfish, angelfish, and parrotfish are present throughout, while schools of fusiliers and cardinalfish fill the mid-water above the shallower ridges. Trumpetfish drift vertically alongside the ridge faces, scorpionfish rest in near-perfect camouflage on the ridge surfaces, and boxfish and surgeonfish occupy the coral sections. Rainbow wrasse dart between coral formations, barracuda appear in the deeper open water sections, and groupers and sweetlips concentrate around the cleaning stations.
On the sandy sections between ridges and at the base, a few species of sea stars are present along with sea cucumbers distributed across the sand. Crocodilefish rest flat on the sandy bottom in the deeper zone, their camouflage nearly indistinguishable from the sand surface. Manta rays are an occasional sighting at depth in the open sandy sections, and octopuses and squid appear occasionally.
Cost & What's Included
Included:
- Full scuba equipment (tank, regulator, BCD, wetsuit, fins, mask, booties, weight belt, SPG)
- Power masks available (-2 to -8) on request
- Dive computer and torch included with your rental kit for this site
- Certified SSI dive guide throughout
Bring yourself:
- Certification card (digital is fine)
- Swimsuit to wear under the wetsuit
- Small towel
- Reef-safe sunscreen
- Optional extras: underwater camera, surface marker buoy
Getting There
The Slope dive reef is easily accessible by a short boat ride from Govind Nagar Beach (Training point), lying 4km northwest off the coast of Havelock Island. We offer complimentary pickup and drop-off within a 5km radius of our dive shop.
Emergency & Safety Information
DAN Global Emergency: +1-919-684-9111
FAQs
The Slope gets the amphitheatre comparison because of how its ridges are arranged. Rather than a single uniform incline from shallow to deep, the reef is structured as a series of long parallel ridges running across the slope. The ridges themselves are textured formations with coral growth on their surfaces, and sandy channels run between them, giving the landscape a repeating, almost architectural quality.
A cleaning station is a specific location on a reef where small shrimps provide grooming services to larger fish, removing parasites, dead tissue, and food debris from the larger fish's scales, gills, and mouth. The large fish recognises the cleaning signal and hovers motionless with gills and mouth open, suppressing its predatory instinct while the cleaning service is performed.
The Slope is a certified-divers-only site, Open Water qualified and above, suitable across that whole range of experience. The shallow zone (4-10m) is the most productive section for coral and fish life, well-lit with natural light, and manageable with mild current, making it comfortable for divers earlier in their certified diving experience. More experienced certified divers explore the mid-amphitheatre (10-20m), where the most active cleaning stations are concentrated and the shrimp species diversity peaks. At the sandy base, crocodilefish and open-water barracuda add species available in the deeper sections.
The Slope and The Wall are immediate neighbours on the northwest side of Havelock Island. The Wall was the first dive site ever discovered on Havelock Island (in 2004) and is characterised by a dramatic drop from 10-12 metres down to 55+ metres, a completely different experience from The Slope's amphitheatre structure. In terms of proximity, The Slope is The Wall's closest neighbour, but despite the nearness, the topography is completely different.
Certified divers (Open Water or above) pay INR 3,500 + 18% GST per person.
Your dive includes a scuba tank, weight belt, regulator, submersible pressure gauge, buoyancy compensator, wetsuit, mask (power masks -2 to -8 available on request), fins, booties, a dive computer, and a torch. Bring your own swimwear to wear under the wetsuit, a small towel, and reef-safe sunscreen. An underwater camera and surface marker buoy are optional extras worth carrying if you have them.
Ready to Dive The Slope?
An amphitheatre of parallel ridges, one of Havelock's densest shrimp cleaning-station communities, and enough reef to justify diving it more than once.