Scuba diving

Scuba diving is an activity in which you swim underwater for extended periods using self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, hence the acronym scuba. It's become so popular for recreation that in most contexts the simple term "diving" is synonymous with scuba-diving, and is so used on this and related pages.

Diving the wreck of the Zenobia, off Larnaca in Cyprus

Understand

Holding your breath and plunging underwater is an activity as old as humanity, and may be among the first evolutions to distinguish us from the apes. Already by the 4th century BCE diving bells were in use, by the 16th century CE these had renewable air supply pumped down from the surface, and in the 18th / 19th C the bells were miniaturised into the classic "deep-sea diver" outfit of bulbous helmet, massive boots, and snaking supply hose. The 20th C saw self-contained (ie scuba) equipment develop for marine engineering and warfare, as well as for dry-land applications such as fire-fighting and mining rescues. Along with the mechanical advances came better scientific understanding of how diving affected the body, and how its harms could be minimised. These mechanical, industrial and scientific advances continue today, and paved the way for human spaceflight, but in the late 20th C scuba diving expanded into a recreational activity. Pioneers and explorers like Jacques Cousteau and Hans Hass were succeeded by a mass market seeking kit, training, and dive-related resorts and travel, just for the fun of it. Entire nations now depend on diving tourists for their livelihood.

Why bother? - for the view, the activity, the excuse to travel, and - let's not deny it - the tekky challenge. The view is literally an immersive experience. You see terrain and wildlife like nothing on land. Fish allow you to approach much closer than wild land animals will, and the coral life is exotic. It's a surreal, dreamy virgin forest, undeveloped and unfarmed yet maybe within yards of a major highway, where most of the things that look like flowers and ferns are actually bizarre animals. The best of it is usually relatively shallow, where there's sunlight and colour. Deeper down lie wrecks, torn and sculpted by their sinking and by later sea action, often with dark histories. The activity is that you'll be spending your day out on the water, often in great surface scenery, with all the business of getting into and under and subsequently out of the water and back to port. It's seldom aerobically challenging but will leave you ready for an early night, and if diving doesn't improve your mental wellbeing and outlook on life, then maybe it's your mobile phone or job that ought to take a dunk as deep as yours. Travel is a major part of it, since few of us live next to a good dive spot - some destinations and considerations are described below. And there's a challenge even in simple recreational diving, far from the areas that are considered "technical diving", because you're doing things that astronauts have to learn. Configuring and checking your kit, computing air requirements versus depth and time limitations, navigation on the surface and below, and thinking through "what if?" scenarios. You're preparing to venture out to interact with alien life-forms, starting with the motley group of fellow-divers and crew on the dive boat. It's a mental, physical and cultural work-out.

Learn

Is it for you? You don't need to be a strong swimmer or super-fit, but you do need to feel comfortable in the water. Diving will from time to time get you slapped in the face by sea water, which will also get in your eyes, mouth, and any expensive "water-proof" watch or camera you've brought along. If you can cuss and carry on, well done; if the prospect panics you then stay on the glass-bottom boat. If you have long-term medical conditions eg diabetes these need to be very well controlled. Check the medical questionnaire on the websites of the training agencies (listed below). Most people will be fine, with no amber- or red-light responses; a few may need personal medical assessment, advice and sign-off from a doctor; and some people must accept that they shouldn't dive.

Learn to snorkel and buy your own mask and fins. It's not a necessary preliminary, but gives you a good start. Skills you quickly learn from other snorkellers are how to keep your mask clear of water and mist, how to equalise the pressure in your ears on descent, and how to fin along gracefully and economically, without looking like a bear trying to unicycle. Snorkelling will make you more familiar with marine life - much of it is in the shallows, where the light is best - and create an easy holiday activity option. A mask needs to be a good fit, and if you need prescription glasses to admire the flowers in the park (say 4+ dioptre correction) then get a prescription glass fitted to your mask. Fins - proper open-water fins not kiddy-pool flippers - should be chosen for comfort, not for bombastic ads about performance. Mask and fins are all you should buy at this stage, they're inexpensive and lightweight, and your own stuff will suit you better than rental kit.

Take a training course with a competent, recognised training agency. This is crucial: you must acquire certain basic skills, and understanding of what the underwater environment is doing to your body, to avoid serious harm. (In some ways you're at greater risk in the shallows, as the training will help you appreciate; it's not all about "the bends" down in the depths.) A common preliminary step is to do a "try-dive", then set aside 3 to 5 days for the course, preferably in a pleasant warm resort. The course will involve classroom teaching, book- or e-learning, "dry" skills eg kit assembly, pool dives, then a few sheltered sea dives. This should result in a novice qualification recognised world-wide - no point getting some flaky local diploma only recognised by its issuer - and a log book (they're still on paper). You're then qualified to make "open water" dives (ie not just in a pool) but only if accompanied by a dive-buddy of instructor status or higher. No big problem if you can only get part way through the course: they'll issue a "referral" note whereby you can later pick up where you left off at any dive school affiliated to the same training agency.

Build your experience, skills and kit. As and when you can, but an important next step is a follow-on course to what's variously called "rescue", "advanced" or "sport" diver. That means you have the skills to bail out your dive-buddy if he / she gets into difficulties. So you can make a buddy-pair with someone at your own level, and most holiday resort dive trips will now be within your range, but err on the side of caution. There are many further qualifications you could take, eg marine-life identification, but there's a lot of catch-penny merchandising of such courses. The most important qualification is the accumulating wisdom between your ears, not something pasted in your log book. Above all, enjoy your diving while staying safe. Ask around about what sort of kit, if any, to buy considering your likely pattern of diving: for occasional resort dives, rental is fine. If you do intend to buy, an early purchase is a capacious dive-bag, to put it all in and keep wet stuff away from the dry. The next cycle of purchase is the BCD ("buoyancy control jacket"), the regulator to breathe from, and wetsuit to keep you warm; perhaps a few accessories such as dive gloves. That's all you need for a dive trip; they're not cheap, but should last for many years and defray the cost of renting. Only buy air tanks and weights if you'll be diving in your own locality, since these can't travel by air.

Go deeper into advanced and technical diving. The latter could be roughly defined as "anything that was edge-of-the-possible 20 years ago, is fairly common nowadays, and will probably be included in basic training in another 10 years." Some avenues are:

• Dry suits: essential for diving in cold water. You have to buy your own because they must fit precisely so, otherwise the neck seal either garottes you or lets in gouts of freezing water. You need training to use them, and a few simple test-dives under supervision.
• Underwater cameras: are best deferred until you're trained, because they're a major task-loading and distraction from other safety-critical stuff that you don't yet do automatically. That said, it's far easier to teach a photographer to become a competent diver, than to teach a diver to become a competent photographer.
• Mixed gas: this friendly air that you depend upon and breathe from scuba tanks, at greater depth will poison you or give you decompression sickness on the way up. Other gas mixtures reduce these risks, eg Nitrox which has a higher percentage of oxygen than the 21% in air.
• Rebreathers: in conventional "open-circuit" scuba, what you breathe out still contains oxygen but just bubbles away to the surface. Rebreathers instead capture your exhalations, scrub out the carbon dioxide, and recycle the oxygen and nitrogen. So they greatly extend dive times, but they're expensive, and can kill their users even when used carefully.
• Hostile environments: anything deeper than 40 m / 130 ft is beyond standard recreation. Environments that are hostile even when shallow are icy waters, caves, and the interior of wrecks. Touring a shipwreck from the outside is easy, and so is going inside - but getting out again? When the viz has gone because you've kicked up silt, your air supply and torch are failing, and you've lost contact with the person who led you in?
• Instruction and careers: a great way to enhance your own skills is to teach them to others. But becoming an instructor or dive-master is a major commitment of time and money, it's not a cushy way to practise your hobby. The job market is flooded with wannabe instructors who are skilled and committed, but just working for tips and taking side jobs to get by. They have to ply their trade day in day out, and may struggle to remember when diving seemed like fun. They may be in a vulnerable position, working "off the books" in a country with lax labour laws and no protection, but the immediate foreign scapegoat if anything goes wrong. As for industrial diving, that's never ever been fun, just hard graft in a cold dark place, and career opportunities are dwindling as ROV and robot capabilities develop.

Destinations

Two-thirds of this planet are covered by water; there are 193 sovereign member states of the UN, and most (even the landlocked) have scope for diving of some kind. There are scores more dependencies, territories and uninhabited islands with diving prospects. The only nations listed below are those that you might visit for the purpose of diving, because they have dive sites worth travelling to visit plus enough infrastructure for general travel and for recreational diving. Divers of the great frontiers (such as Antarctica) praise those sites, but expedition diving is beyond the scope of this page. For each country, only the key features (eg seasonality) and standout sites are mentioned here. More information may be found on country- or region-specific "Diving in . . . " pages, and on "Do" listings for regions and resorts. The resort pages are the main place to find out how to get there, where to stay and eat, local dive operations, and other things to see and do there.

Your key decision (before budget & time comes into it) is whether the trip will focus on diving, or if it's to be one of several activities in an all-round vacation. A beginner should focus: you need to commit to a week in a single resort to complete a training course, bearing in mind that there might be a day lost to the weather, and that you're advised against flying within 24 hours of diving. If you travel with a non-diving partner, their comfort and amusement affects the choice of resort. An experienced diver may be content with a day or so (and in the Med, frankly that's plenty) between touring the antiquities and other attractions. If so, he / she won't bother lugging kit, but will rent from the dive centre. Or if more extended diving is the point, consider a liveaboard boat, which sails for several days around sites beyond the range of day-boats.

Africa

Africa has a long coastline, and the coastal waters range from the warm tropical Red Sea, to the cool temperate west coast of southern Africa. The east coast of Africa is better known for diving destinations than the west coast or the Mediterranean coast, and there are good diving destinations scattered along the east coast from Egypt to South Africa, wherever accessibility and political stability allow.

The infrastructure varies enormously and is constantly changing. Availability of Nitrox, for example, is known from Egypt and South Africa. In some other places the availability of medical oxygen may be in question. Emergency medical facilities are also variable, and range from world class to non-existent. Don't assume that anything is available at any specific destination. Ask and get written confirmation or book through certified operators and agents.

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands are in the North Atlantic off the coast of West Africa.

• El Condesito is a vessel that sank near Las Galletas on the south coast of Tenerife and is now a well known dive site. The deepest point of the wreck is at 21 m and the shallowest point at 6 m. Visibility can be in excess of 35 m. The hull, engine room and cabin used to be intact with only the bow having been torn away. Shoals of sardines may be seen at the top of the wreck, and large trumpetfish are often found around the propeller. It is not uncommon to spot barracuda, red sea stars, rays, octopus and eels within the wreck. There is a 36 m drop off nearby which is often dived by more experienced divers to see black coral before ascending to the El Condesito to decompress.

Djibouti

Djibouti has a unique ecosystem where the mix of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean results in an abundance of marine life. Between the months of September and January Djibouti is home to resting migrating whale sharks. It is common to see many whale sharks, including juveniles, which tend to stay close to the coast during their visit.

Seven Brothers Islands is a major attraction to Djibouti waters. This breathtaking reef system is north of the Devils Cauldron, and comprises seven islands covering a vast area. Monumental drop-offs with stunning soft corals carpeting the walls, schooling fish and big pelagics can all be expected.

Egypt

Main topic: Diving in Egypt

The Blue Hole at Dahab

Egypt has good diving in the Red Sea, both along its African shore (the biggest resort being Hurghada) and in the Sinai peninsula (mainly at Sharm-el-Sheikh, plus smaller Dahab). It's a year-round destination, but is especially popular with Europeans in winter; in summer the desert heat is fierce. The diving is good for all ranges of ability, from beginners to tekky stuff. Diving is by boat, as the reefs are too far out for shore diving. The main resorts are also bases for liveaboard cruises, to reach the many wrecks and reefs beyond the range of day-boats. Egyptian liveaboards even sail to Sudan, and this is currently the main way to dive in that country, though a Sudan visa is still necessary. It's also possible to dive Egypt's Mediterranean coast off Alexandria, but conditions are tougher and there's less to see. Cheap internal flights and long-distance taxis mean that diving in Egypt can easily be combined with seeing the antiquities of Cairo, Luxor and elsewhere.

Kenya

Kenya is in East Africa with a coast on the tropical western Indian Ocean between Tanzania to the south and Somalia to the northeast. There are five marine parks – Diani-Chale, Kisite-Mpunguti, Kiunga, Malindi, Mombasa, and Watamu – protecting the fringing coral reef. Average sea temperatures range from 25°C in August to 30°C in March, and April and May are the wettest months. The sea is calmest from October to March, and whale sharks and manta rays visit between November and February, while humpback whales can be seen from July to October.

Dive sites include:

• The deep wall at Nyuli where two currents meet
• The Canyon at Watamu Marine Park – also for wall dives
• Galu Reef – for macro photography
• Kinondo Reef – for large pelagics and shoals of smaller fish
• MV Dania – Cargo vessel sunk in as a dive site in 2002
• MFV Funguo – 400 ton fishing trawler sunk as a dive site

Madagascar

Malawi

Malawi is a landlocked country, but it has a long coastline on Lake Malawi, with good freshwater diving.

Mauritius

Mauritius is completely encircled by a coral barrier reef and is home to many sponges, sea anemones and a variety of multi-colored tropical reef fish such as the Damselfish, Trumpetfish, Boxfish, Clownfish and the Mauritian scorpionfish with its unique orange color.

Most of the dive sites are on the west coast around Flic-en-Flac, in the north, at Trou aux Biches or at the Northern Islands.

Besides the coral reefs, there are ship wrecks dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, and ships sunk more recently which create beautiful artificial reefs.

The best time to go diving is from November to April when the visibility is very good.

Some of the popular dive sites of Mauritius are:

• Cathedral — which is off the Flic en Flac on the western coast of Mauritius.
• Whale Rock
• Roche Zozo — an underwater rock pinnacle.
• Ile Ronde — which has a nearby submerged volcanic crater.

Mozambique

Main topic: Diving in Mozambique

A manta ray at Manta Reef

Mozambique is on the southeast coast of Africa. It has a tropical climate with a wet season from October to March and a dry season from April to September. Rainfall is heavy along the coast and decreases in the north and south. Cyclones are common during the wet season. Water temperatures are tropical, ranging between 29˚C in summer and 22˚C in winter, and will seldom be below 24˚C, and visibility can range from 8 to 40 m. Diving is year round, but the drier winter is more comfortable, with fewer mosquitos. The marine ecology is the highly diverse Tropical Indo-Pacific. A wide range of reef building corals, and other coral types can be found here, along with a diverse and colourful fish and invertebrate fauna sharing the shelter and habitat provided by the corals. The region is particularly known its abundance of manta rays, reef sharks, whale sharks and humpback whales.

Major diving destinations include:

• In Maputo municipio: Ponta do Ouro, Ponta Malongane & Ponta Mamoli
• On Manta coast (Inhambane municipio): Guinjata bay & Tofo beach
• Vilanculos & the Bazaruto Archipelago
• In Nampula municipio: Nacala Bay, Memba Bay & Ilha de Mozambique
• Pemba and the Quirimbas Archipelago

Seychelles

The Seychelles are a group of 115 islands, only a few inhabited, in the Indian Ocean that lie off the coast of East Africa, northeast of Madagascar. Scuba diving is popular and can be done almost anywhere in Seychelles. Nitrox is available at a limited number of outlets at around €8 per fill. Diver training is available at various schools.

Diving is possible all year round. The best diving conditions are usually in March, April and May and September, October and November, as these months are when seas are calmest. Visibility can be over 30 metres and water temperatures reach 29'C. Rain, algal blooms, and winds can affect the diving conditions. The Seychelles are not greatly affected by tropical cyclones.

Sites vary in depth and are mostly moderate depth — from 8 to 30 metres. Conditions at most sites are suitable for divers of all skill levels.

The inner island reefs are basically granite formations, supporting soft and hard corals. Offshore dive sites are suitable for more experienced divers and provide a chance of an encounter with whale sharks and giant stingrays.

There are also some wreck sites.

South Africa

Main topic: Diving in South Africa

The cool temperate waters of the Agulhas inshore bioregion are very different to tropical waters, but colourful in their own way

The subtropical Natal inshore bioregion is home to many Indo-Pacific tropical species

South Africa has dive sites spread along its coast that are well known for sharks and other large marine animals, but also have a wide variety of smaller fish and invertebrates. The coastal sites range from tropical coral reefs in the north of KwaZulu-Natal, where the fish are typical Indo-Pacific tropical species, and very colourful, to cool temperate rocky reefs on the West Coast, where the fish life is relatively dull, and the largely endemic invertebrates provide the colour. The cooler subtropical and temperate waters have a higher level of endemism than the tropical areas, where the biota are mostly widespread in the Indo-Pacific waters. There are a large number of wrecks along the coast, several of which are regarded as good dive sites.

The South African coast can be divided into three fairly distinctive regions for diving. Diving on the west coast of South Africa is largely at Cape Town's many dive sites of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay, which provide year round diving on temperate rocky reefs and wrecks in two cool temperate ecoregions. Further east, Gansbaai is mostly popular for white shark cage dives.

The south coast has a large number of wrecks and the highest diversity of endemic species on temperate rocky reefs from Arniston in the west through Mossel Bay, Knysna with it's seahorses, the Tsistsikamma National Park MPA, Port Elizabeth, East London and the Wild Coast. Diving in this region is very weather-dependant and visibility often limited. The annual sardine run through the south coast to the east coast is justly famous, with huge baitballs and a large variety and number of predators, from Bryde's whales down through dolphins, sharks, gamefish and seabirds. Another annual event in this region is the Chokka spawning, near St Francis Bay.

The east coast diving destinations are spread along the coast of KwaZulu-Natal from the tropical coral reefs and coelacanths of Sodwana Bay in the iSimangaliso Marine Protected Area, through the subtropical rocky reefs and wrecks of Durban, the sharks of Aliwal Shoal to the Protea Banks at Margate.

The inland dive sites include fresh water dives in sinkholes and abandoned mines at altitude, variously used for training, deep technical and cave diving.

Sudan

Sudan is the third largest country in Africa, with a coastline on the Red Sea. There is good diving near Port Sudan, either on live-aboards or from the Red Sea Resort north of Port Sudan. The windy season is from November to February and can make the boat ride to the dive sites uncomfortable. The water temperature varies between 20 and 22°C (68 to 71°F) in February and March and between 26 and 28°C (78 to 82°F) in August and September.

• Sanganeb reef
• Abington Reef
• Angarosh Reef — to the south of Port Sudan, 3.2km/2mi from Abington Reef. The name can be translated from Arabic as mother of sharks, and it is likely to see various species, such as hammerheads, grey and whitetip sharks. The reef has a plateau at 25m/82ft and another at 45m/147ft. There are consistently strong currents of about 1 knot. The reef is covered by soft corals and gorgonians. Other fishes which may be seen include barracudas, caranxs, mantas and napoleon wrasse. The depth ranges from 20 to 55m (66 to 180ft), and visibility from 10 to 30m (33 to 99ft)
• Jumna — a reef dive in the Sawakin Archipelago on a wall with deep drop-off. About 29 miles southeast from Port Sudan.
• Merlo — a reef about 3 miles from the lagoon of Shambaia.
• Shaab Rumi — a coral reef about 26 miles from Port Sudan.
• Shaab Amber — a coral barrier reef 33 miles from Port Sudan
• Umbria wreck — an Italian registered cargo vessel scuttled about 3 miles from Port Sudan by the crew to avoid capture at the beginning of WWII. 155 metres long, 18 metres wide, lying on its side in 36m of water. The cargo included bombs, detonators, explosives, concrete, and three Fiat cars.

Tanzania

The best known diving region of Tanzania is at the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, but the less known Mafia Island south of Zanzibar and some parts of the mainland coast also have good dive sites.

Zimbabwe

Political and economic instability mean that Zimbabwe is not recommended as a tourist destination.

There are only two known dive sites:

• Chinhoyi Caves — About 120km from Harare. The caves are mostly water-filled, and are very deep, exceeding 120M depth. The full cave system has not yet been explored. Cave diving certification is required. No diving infrastructure.
• Mutoroshanga Ethel Mine — A flooded asbestos quarry about 120 km by road from Harare. Good visibility and beautiful surroundings, possibly the only dive site in Zimbabwe accessible to recreational divers.

Asia

Scuba diving destinations in Asia are mostly concentrated in the Middle East and South East Asia, where the water is warm and visibility is usually good. These regions mostly have a tropical coral reef ecology, and there are a number of notable wreck diving sites.

Brunei

Brunei offers some great diving, and is one of the best places in S.E. Asia for macro photography.

Marine life and features: — In addition to coral and fish, there are several shipwrecks and many species of nudibranch.

Conditions: — Water temperature is generally around 30°C and visibility is usually in the 10 to 30 meter range, although this can reduce during the monsoon season. As diving in Brunei is not overly developed, the sites, and especially the coral reefs, are unspoiled and in pristine condition. Popular dive sites include:

• The Blue Water Wreck, a 80 m trawler that gets her nickname from the blue water around her and is still completely intact.
• Cement Wreck, a 2,687 ton Japanese freighter that hit a sandbank in 1980 while carrying cement. She has a length of 92 m and a 15 m beam. Easy to penetrate, the freighter lies upright on the bottom at 30nbsp;m.
• Australian Wreck. In 1949 while on a voyage to Manila it struck a mine off Brunei and sank. The wreck lies in 33 m of water and is roughly 85 m long. Experienced divers will enjoy exploring the interior of the wreck.
• Rig Reef, a decommissioned oil rig. There are 9 structures to be explored, each seeming to be home to one dominant group of fish.

Prices average about BN$35–45 per dive depending on how many dives you do and whether you bring your own gear.

Burma

The Mergui Archipelago is a group of islands in far southern Myanmar (Burma) and is part of the Tanintharyi Region. It consists of more than 800 islands, varying in size from very small to hundreds of square kilometres, all lying in the Andaman Sea off the western shore of the Malay Peninsula near its landward (northern) end where it joins the rest of Indochina. Occasionally the islands are referred to as the Pashu Islands because the Malay inhabitants are locally called Pashu.

Geologically, the islands are characterized mainly by limestone and granite. They are generally covered with thick tropical growth, including rainforest, and their shorelines are punctuated by beaches, rocky headlands, and in some places, mangrove swamps. Offshore are extensive coral reefs.

The area was only opened up to foreign tourism in 1997 after negotiations between Burma and dive operators from Phuket in Thailand. The archipelago's isolation is such that much of it has not even yet been thoroughly explored.

Owing to the archipelago's remoteness, a live aboard cruise is the only way for visitors to go diving in areas with names such as Big Bank, Rainbow Reef or Silvertip Bank. Some islands have huge boulders, soft corals and sea fans. Others offer wall diving, caverns, tunnels and drop-offs.

The best diving conditions exist from December to April, with whale sharks and manta rays visiting from February to May.

Photographers are attracted by frogfish, ghost pipefish, ribbon eels and cowries as well as many crustaceans such as lobsters, crabs, and shrimps.

Dive sites include:

• Shark Cave — features grey reef, bull, nurse and whale sharks.
• Black Rock — has manta rays and schools of mobula (devil) rays.

Egypt

Egypt is partly in Asia, but see Diving in Egypt for dive sites on both sides of the Red Sea.

India

India's coasts have tropical climates. Pondicherry’s peak season is January through June and then September through November, although diving in this area may be done all year long. The water temperature varies between 27°C/80°F and 30°C/86°F. The average annual temperature across India is 25°C/77°F.

• Andaman and Nicobar islands: — between India and Thailand, but in the same timezone as India. You can fly there from Chennai or Calcutta, therefore require an Indian visa, which makes it a bit hard to reach. Around Havelock Island there are very good reef dives, with a great variety of sea life and good visibility. The peak season in the Andamans runs from November through April.
• Angria Bank: — a shallow sunken atoll on the continental shelf 105 km (65 mi) west of Vijaydurg, Maharashtra, India. Reported as the largest submerged coral reef of India. Depth approximately 20 m. Access by a two hour boat ride from Malvan, Maharashtra.
• Goa — one of India's most popular dive destinations, but mostly just because it's the easiest to get to — visibility is usually only 5-6 m. Diving at Goa is best from October through May and is not allowed during the monsoons.
• Lakshadweep Islands: — dive sites are clustered around Agati, Kadmat and Bangaram islands. May through November is the best time for diving Lakshadweep.

Indonesia

Main topic: Diving in Indonesia

Indonesia is the biggest archipelago nation in the world with more than 18,000 islands based on satellite count, but only somewhat more than 13,000 islands have been named and registered with the UN. It offers some of the most diverse diving experience in the world from north to south and from west to east; From very-accessible Bali, to extreme wilderness and some of the most diverse marine life in the world in the far-eastern Indonesian islands.

In early 2017, Dive magazine announced best top ten dive sites in the world based on readers' choice, three of them, Raja Ampat, Alor, and Komodo, are in Indonesia. These three sites have strong currents, but more sheltered sites for novices are available.

• Papua: — the archipelago of Raja Ampat, in the waters of the Bird's Head Peninsula in Indonesian Papua, is regarded by Conservation International as the area with the highest marine biodiversity (e.g. 553 species of corals out of the total 798 known species) on earth. Higher than any other areas in the Coral Triangle compound which consists of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Philippines. It is also insanely off-the-beaten-path which greatly helps to preserve its pristine nature, options to visit the area include staying in a liveaboard or staying in one of the few resort islands Misool or Sorido.
• Alor Archipelago: — very off-the-beaten-path diving in the east of Nusa Tenggara.
• Flores and Komodo National Park: —
• Bali: — Menjangan Island in the north-west, and Tulamben (USS Liberty wreck) which separates in 3 parts in different depths in the north-east coast and Amed in the east, offer pleasant and accessible shore diving through wrecks, walls and reefs. Divers visiting Bali often base themselves at Lovina, Candidasa and Amed to access the sites.
  • The offshore island of Nusa Penida may offer the most dramatic diving in Bali while the neighbouring island of Nusa Lembongan is well known as a teaching centre.
• Gili Islands and Lombok: — the three Gili Islands are a major teaching centre and are known for the ease of diving conditions.
• Kalimantan: — Touchable jellyfish in lake on an atoll with not too salty water in Derawan
• Sulawesi: — intermediate to advanced diving, with occasionally strong currents.
  • Wall diving at Bunaken near Manado.
  • World-class diving at an all-inclusive dive resort at the insanely off-the-beaten-path Wakatobi archipelago.
  • Top quality diving in the Gulf of Tomini at the Togian Islands.
• Pulau Weh, Sumatra: —
  

  Gapang beach, Pulau Weh
  accessed from Banda Aceh, north tip of Sumatra. Pulau Weh's reefs are offer something for every level of experience. The bottom topography ranges from large boulders on sandy slopes and deep volcanic pinnacles to craggy wall sections and coral gardens. The house reef at Gapang Beach has a wide range of macro life including rare critters like Frog Fish, Star Gazers and Gurnards. Large pelagics like Mantas, Whale Sharks and Mola Mola also come to feed when the season is right. Pulau Weh offers some of the finest diving in Indonesia, yet it is still very much undeveloped. Can see also under water active volcano with its bubble and sulphuric smell.
• Banda Islands, Maluku: —

Israel

Israel has three seas: Red, Med and Dead. You only want to be in the Red. Locals dive along the Mediterranean coastline, and important marine archaeological finds are being made in these waters, but conditions are more challenging and there's far less to see than in the Red Sea. The Dead Sea has actually been dived, in the sort of kit you'd need to explore Venus, but guess what, there's no coral or fish. And then there's the freshwater Sea of Galilee: simply no reason to dive it.

The Red Sea coast is all of 4 km in the city of Eilat, sandwiched between the Egyptian and Jordanian borders. It's easy reef diving and snorkelling, and the highlight is the Marine Park around Moses Rock. But that's a small coastline to absorb a lot of floundering bodies, and it may get worse now the new airport has made Eilat more accessible for international flights. It's good for learning, but experienced divers will probably only want a couple of days diving here as part of a broader tour of Israel. For a longer dive holiday, skip over the nearby border to Aqaba in Jordan.

Japan

Coral reefs on Ishigaki, Japan

Japan is a country made up of a large number of islands spread over a large range of latitudes, so that dive sites range from cold temperate in the far north to tropical in the far south.

Diving in Honshu:

• Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka prefecture is a popular destination for mainland Japan diving. The East Coast of Atami is most popular with dive operators for its accessibility and infrastructure, while the West Coast's sites are largely unspoiled, safeguarded from weekend crowds by its remoteness and lack of train stations.

Diving in Okinawa:

• The southern islands of Okinawa have great diving, but prices are steep: you can expect to pay upwards of $100 for two dives.

Diving in the Miyako Islands:

Diving in the Yaeyama Islands:

• On Yonaguni-Jima, the westernmost point of Japan: — Manta rays, hammerheads (mainly from February) and mysterious underwater ruins.

Jordan

Jordan is almost landlocked, but has a 15&nbspkm coastline along the Gulf of Aqaba at the tip of the Red Sea; see Aqaba for transport and other practicalities. The area around the city is industrial and under port restrictions, but then the diving stretches south from the disused power station all the way down to "machine-gun reef" on the border with Saudi Arabia. These uninviting names are all excellent healthy reefs, normally done as shore-dives as they're so close in. There are several wrecks, best known being Cedar Pride, and in 2017 a Hercules C-130 was sunk nearby. Jordan is friendly and very accessible for westerners yet gets far fewer divers and other visitors than Egypt, and prices are moderate.

Malaysia

Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia, on the Malay peninsula and northern Borneo. There are over 300 diving sites around Malaysia scattered across many of the islands on the East Coast of the Peninsula and Sabah.

Diving destinations include:

• Perhentian Islands — home of sea turtles and many species of sharks on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Great diving deals because of fierce competition.
• Redang
• Pulau Tioman — Splendid coral, fish, turtles and reef sharks off the Malaysian East Coast
• Sipadan in Malaysian Borneo — Large biodiversity with 3000 species of fish and reef diving on a wall that descends 600m into the ocean. Green and hawksbill turtles mate and nest at Sipadan, and large schools of barracuda and big-eye trevally, and bumphead parrotfish are seen. Pelagic species such as manta rays, eagle rays, scalloped hammerhead sharks and whale sharks also visit Sipidan. An underwater limestone cave with a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers that contains many skeletal remains of turtles that become lost and drown before finding the surface lies under the island.
• Mabul in Sabah, East Malaysia. Muck diving ecosystem.
• The Mantanani Islands — A group of three small islands off the north-west coast of Sabah, opposite the town of Kota Belud, in northern Borneo. Mantanani Besar is the largest island; the other two are Mantanani Kecil and Lungisan. There are three wrecks dating from the Second World War and the area is known for dugongs.
• Pulau Dayang — A less touristy but good dive spot, which can be reached by dive boat from Mersing. Accommodation facilities are very basic. Many dive shops in Singapore organise weekend trips here.
• Sarawak — Great new dive sites are being discovered off the coast of Sarawak
• Tabawan Island, Tabauawan or Pulau Tabauwan is the highest and largest of a group of heavily wooded islands lying in the southwest quadrant of Darvel Bay (Teluk Lahad Datu), Sabah.

Maldives

Main topic: Diving in the Maldives

The Maldives are an archipelago in the Indian Ocean south-southwest of India and are considered part of South Asia. The territory of the Maldives comprises mainly water, with only 1% of the country being land-based. The land is spread over 1,192 islets, each of which forms part of an atoll. In total, there are 26 atolls in the Maldives.

Deep in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the entire country is formed by coral reefs and has some of the best diving on the planet. Prices for accommodation and diving services are expensive, though, and currents can be strong on the outer reefs.

Most holiday resorts in the Maldives have a scuba diving facility and there are a number of liveaboard operators offering scuba diving cruise holidays that take guests to many dive sites all over the Maldives. Whale sharks, manta rays, eagle rays, reef sharks, hammerhead sharks and moray eels, as well as many smaller fish and coral species can be seen.

Diving destinations and sites of Ari Atoll:

• Broken Rock
• Gangehi Kandu
• Hukrueli Faru (Rangali Madivaru)
• Kudarah Thila
• Maalhos Thila
• Maaya Thila
• Mushi Mas Mingili Thila (Fish Head)
• Pannettone (Kalhahandi Kandu)

Dive sites of South Male Atoll:

• Cocoa Corner (Cocoa Thila)
• Guraidhoo Kandu South

Dive sites of North Male Atoll:

• Banana Reef
• Kuda Haa

Oman

The Middle East Sultanate of Oman is on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, on the coast of the gulf of Oman.

Diving destinations include:

• Muscat
• Daymaniyat
• Fahl Island
• Salalah — has sea kelp and coral – an unusual combination of cold and warm sea organisms.

Papua New Guinea

The Independent State of Papua New Guinea comprises the eastern part of the world's largest and highest tropical island, New Guinea, together with many smaller offshore islands.

Philippines

Spotted Moray Eel in Sabang, Philippines

Main topic: Diving in the Philippines

With 7107 islands, 18,000 kilometres of shoreline and 27,000 sq. kilometres of coral reefs, the Philippines lies in the coral triangle which is one of the most bio-diverse marine regions on Earth. These seas are home to over 450 species of hard corals and more than 500 fish families, which include 2000-2500 fish species.

There is a wide variety of dive site types, including reefs, wrecks and underwater caves. The geographic location predisposes the Philippines to typhoons for four months of the year, but the topography and structure of the archipelago make many of the sites accessible throughout the year. The marine ecology is Tropical Indo-Pacific — The ecoregion with highest biodiversity, and possibly also the largest extent. Very large numbers of different species can be found in this huge region, but they are also widespread,and endemicity is relatively low - similar species will be found in adjoining regions.

English is spoken in most parts of the country.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is notoriously difficult to visit, but very well-preserved, and now open to tourists who can book well in advance. Sites include the Farasan Islands, and around Jeddah and Yanbu.

Thailand

Main topic: Diving in Thailand

Thailand has beautiful scenery, generally clear water and Indo-Pacific reef ecology, combined with a tourist orientated recreational diving industry. A popular diving destination suitable for beginners through to experienced divers. All levels of training available through a large number of agencies.

The best time of the year to dive in Thailand is between October and June, but it is possible to dive virtually any day of the year. As Thailand is considered one of the safest destinations for diving and snorkeling in the world, it is suitable for first-timers wanting to try these pastimes out.

The visibility in some places is up to 30 m. One can enjoy splendid sights of underwater mountains, coral gardens, undersea rock formations, hard and soft coral, whale sharks, silver tip sharks, manta rays and even sunken battleships.

There are two diving regions, the Andaman Sea on the west coast and The Gulf of Thailand on the east.

Timor-Leste

Main topic: Diving in East Timor

Timor-Leste is a small country, formerly called East Timor, in south-east Asia, north-north-west of Darwin, Australia.

The country has a tropical climate with a wet season from October to March and a dry season from April to September. Diving is best between March and December.

With a 3000 m deep Wetar Strait just off the north coast, a fantastic array of coral and sea life can be found, most of it straight off the shore. This is a world class dive spot that few know about. It is also a whale hot spot.

Vietnam

Main topic: Diving in Vietnam

Vietnam is a country in South-east Asia with a long coastline and a large number of protected bays and islands. Marine life may not be as prolific as the Red Sea or the Great Barrier Reef, but the variety of species and vivid colours will fascinate and thrill divers and snorkellers, beginners and experienced alike. There are many varieties of fish including paperfish, devil scorpionfish, dragonettes, flying gunard, cowfish, giant moray eels, manta rays, large stingrays. There are also occasional turtles, and a variety of nudibranchs & other reef invertebrates. There are over 400 species of hard coral making it one of the richest hard coral dive regions in the world.

The majority of the dive sites of Hon Mun Island - Marine Park near Nha Trang are within a 1 hour boat ride (or 15 minutes by speedboat) from Nha Trang to the nearby Islands of the marine park.

Dive sites of Hon Mun Marine Park include:

• Bob's House. — 25 metres. Hard & soft corals.
• Debbie's Beach. — 15 metres. Outstanding hard & soft corals.
• Dopey's Ear. — 18 metres. Wall & pinnacles.
• Electric Nose. — 45 metre wall dive. Currents. Advanced only.
• Goat Rock. — Wall dive to 40 metres.
• Hamburger Hill. — 20 metres. Rocky pinnacle with soft corals.
• Hard Rock 1. — Wall & cavern dive to 25 metres.
• Hard Rock 2. — Wall dive to 15 metres. Hard corals.
• Hard Rock 3. — Wall dive to 20 metres. Hard corals.
• Hon Mot East. — 20 metres. Outstanding coral garden.
• Mama Hahn beach. — 18 metres. Hard corals.
• Madonna Rock. — 5–25 metres. Hard corals. Swim thru's.
• Moray beach. — 20 metres. Hard & soft corals. Giant morays.
• Rainbow Reef. — 20 metres. Outstanding hard & soft corals.
• The Range. — Wall dive to 25 metres with caverns.
• Seahorse Bay 1. — 15 metres. 'Muck diving'.
• Seahorse Bay 2. — 18 metres of 'Muck diving'.
• Tiger Wall. — Wall dive to 25 metres.
• Uta bay. — 15 metres. Sandy & rocky.

Europe

Diving destinations in Europe include the more popular international destinations in the Mediterranean and mostly domestic destinations in the rest of Europe. Exceptions include some famous wreck dives at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands and the fjords of Norway

Belgium

Belgium is in western europe, with a short coastline on the North Sea. It is not a diving destination for foreign visitors.

• Nemo 33 in Brussels is the deepest indoor swimming pool in the world. Its maximum depth is 34.5 metres (113 ft). It contains 2.5 million liters of non-chlorinated, highly filtered spring water maintained at 30 °C (86 °F) and holds several simulated underwater caves at the 10 metres (33 ft) depth level. There are numerous underwater windows that allow outside visitors to look into the pools at various depths. The complex was designed by Belgian diving expert John Beernaerts as a multi-purpose diving instruction, recreational, and film production facility in 2004.

Cyprus

The wreck of the Zenobia off Larnaca is among the best and most easily accessed in Europe.

Iceland

Diving in a crack between the continents in water as clear as it can get, being filtered by lava fields for decades.

Italy

• Sardinia — Also known as Sardegna, has a cave system in Alghero, with crystal clear water and astonishing limestone cliffs, it is one of the more significant cave diving destinations in the Mediterranean Sea. Red coral, lobsters, groupers.
• Sicily
• Christ of the Abyss (Italian: "Il Cristo degli Abissi") is a submerged bronze statue of Jesus, off San Fruttuoso between Camogli and Portofino on the Italian Riviera. It was placed in the water on 22 August 1954 at approximately 17 metres depth, and stands c. 2.5 metres tall.

Malta

Main topic: Diving in Malta

Malta is a country in the Mediterranean Sea south of Sicily, Italy. The country is an archipelago, with only the three largest islands being inhabited. Stunning limestone formations, steep dropoffs, several wrecks and good visibility make this one of the best diving destinations in the Mediterranean. Water temperature varies between 15°C (59°F) in summer and 26°C (79°F) in winter, and visibility is generally good.

Portugal

The best diving is on the Atlantic island of Madeira. Stunning rock formations, steep dropoffs and excellent visibility make Ponta de Sao Lourenco one of the best dive area of Madeira.

Madeira's sites include Arco da Badajeira, Farol, Piquinho, Parede do Sardinha, SS Forerunner and Baixa do Lobo. Sesimbra also has a lot of dive centers and sites to choose from.

Sweden

Main topic: Diving in Sweden

Diving in Sweden usually requires a dry suit at all times of the year. The waters are mostly dark with limited visibility. However these conditions have preserved century-old wooden ships, which in warmer waters would have been eroded by marine life. .

Turkey

• İbrice Limanı — on the northern coast of the Saros Bay, an arm of the Aegean Sea, and one of the liveliest bodies of water in terms of marine ecology in the country.

United Kingdom

Main topic: Diving in the United Kingdom

British diving is like Longfellow's Matilda: when it's good, it's very very good . . . and then there's the other 360 days of the year. Its main limitations are first, that it's often cold and dark, so you need a dry suit; second, it's organised around club diving, with groups organising their own boat and equipment, it lacks the kind of resort dive shacks where you show up with little more than a credit card and within the hour you're on the water. These two are linked because a dry suit has to fit just so, else the neck seal either garottes you or lets in gouts of cold water. It's not practical to hire one off the shelf, and you must have training in how to use it, with try-outs in the pool and at an inland site before going out to sea. You can just about get away with wearing a wet suit provided a) it's a chunky toasty affair, say a two-piece 7mm semidry, and b) the water is relatively warm, ie summer and not particularly deep or extended dive time, and c) you only do the one dive then change and get warm. Coming up with blue lips from Dive One and shivering through a surface interval is not a good prelude to Dive Two.

Training: the main agency in UK is BSAC, though PADI certification is widely available. If you're here for an extended period, eg at university, by all means get involved with your college dive club and get trained; this will take several weeks and you'll probably do your first few open-water dives in a chilly quarry. But nowadays most Brits train in warm climates then decide whether they want to brave their cold home seas (and mostly decide against). You'd be mad to travel to Britain for the purpose of initial training. The Bible New Testament describes how a madman was cured by driving out his demons to enter a herd of pigs, who plunged over a cliff into the Sea of Galilee (Mark 5:1-20, Matthew 8:28-34, Luke 8:26-39). If those pigs had instead done the traditional British diver training course, they'd be just about qualified by now.

Starting at the northern tip of the country, because Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands is probably the only dive area for which you'd make a special trip to the UK. When Germany surrendered at the end of World War One, its fleet was disarmed and brought to this enclosed reach of sea. But peace negotiations dragged on and Admiral Reuter believed the British would seize the fleet for their own purposes, so he had them all scuttled. Many were later salvaged, but seven big ships remain (in about 30 m depth) and are regularly dived. The centenary of the sinking is in June 2019 and will be a bit of a circus, so come another time. Orkney also has shallower wrecks and reefs, eg along the "Churchill barrier", the causeway that links several islands.

Continuing clockwise, the northeast coast is scenic, rocky and often suitable for shore diving, especially around the Scottish / English border. Areas include the villages of Dunbar and St Abbs, and further out lie the Farne Islands of Northumberland. To the south, coastal conditions aren't so good, and you have to venture some miles offshore, eg to the wreck of the Polish liner Piłsudski off the Humber estuary.

The English Channel is littered with wrecks. Sites (east to west) include: Chesil Cove and Portland Bill in Dorset, Swanage Pier in Dorset, Fort Bovisand in Devon, the Eddystone Rocks off Plymouth in Cornwall, The Manacles rocks off the Lizard Peninsula of Cornwall, and the archipelago of the Isles of Scilly.

The Bristol Channel lies between Cornwall and Wales, its premier site being the protected island of Lundy. Much of South Wales is industrial, till you reach the more attractive peninsula of Pembrokeshire, eg Martin's Haven. There's another area around the islands of Anglesey and Holy Island.

Further north, there's a lot of river run-off (eg from the Mersey) and the west coast sites are exposed to the weather. There's not much until you get into the Firth of Clyde, with many wrecks, and on Arran the protected area of Lamlash Bay. The seas around the Hebrides are clear of run-off and, whilst often wild, there may be shelter between the islands; the Sound of Mull being a popular example. You will be very lucky if conditions allow a trip out to lonely St Kilda, 40 miles out in the Atlantic.

Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man have diving similar to the Hebrides.

UK inland dive sites are in flooded quarries and lakes. They're generally only dived for training / refreshers, testing kit, or if bad weather has blown out a sea trip. Most dive clubs are within 30 mins drive of their local "muddy puddle". Some bigger centres worth a longer drive include Stoney Cove between Leicester and Coventry, the National Diving and Activity Centre at Chepstow, and Capernwray near Carnforth.

Cave diving (including in old mine workings) in Britain is considered a technique of caving, not a specialty within diving, so it's not covered here. Enough to say that you need to be very good indeed at what you're doing; several of the divers in the Tham Luang cave rescue of 2018 were British.

North America

Including Central America, the Caribbean and Hawaii.

Antigua

Dive sites include Darkwood Reef & Charlotte Reef.

Aruba

Many of the dive shops in Aruba will pick divers up at their hotel and bring them to the dock or dive shop, and drop them off at the dive shop when their dive is over.

Dive sites in Aruba include:

• 🌍 SS Antilla.  
• 🌍 SS Pedernales.  

Barbados

Barbados has mellow reef and wreck diving along its sheltered southwest and western coasts. It's a good place for learning and for novice / intermediate divers; there's nothing ultra-deep or highly technical. Most dive shacks are in Bridgetown, but they pick up from the hotels along the two coastal resort strips, and from the cruise terminal. See Diving in Barbados for descriptions of dive sites and other practicalities.

Bahamas

Blackbeards Cruises docks at 🌍 Nassau Harbour Club Hotel & Marina, East Bay St., New Providence. . They are a liveaboard charter service operating out of Nassau.

Dive sites in the Bahamas include:

• 🌍 Pacman Reef. 
• 🌍 Lost Blue Hole. 
• 🌍 Austin Smith. 
• 🌍 Washing Machine.  The incoming tide through a narrow cut creates strong current. The current can push a diver down to 40 ft, then swell to push a diver to 15 ft. The dive site is off the coast of Highbourne Cay. The drift ends at the Basket Star Reef dive site.

Belize

Coral at the Great Blue Hole

The Belize Barrier Reef is a series of coral reefs straddling the coast of Belize, roughly 300 meters (980 ft) offshore in the north and 40 kilometers (25 mi) in the south within the country limits. The Belize Barrier Reef is a 300 kilometers (190 mi) long section of the 900 kilometers (560 mi) long Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which is continuous from Cancún on the northeast tip of the Yucatán Peninsula through the Riviera Maya up to Honduras making it one of the largest coral reef systems in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the New Caledonia Barrier Reef. It is Belize's top tourist destination, popular for scuba diving and snorkeling. A large portion of the reef is protected by the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, which includes seven marine reserves, 450 cays, and three atolls. It totals 960 square kilometres (370 sq mi) in area, including:

• Glover's Reef Marine Reserve
• Great Blue Hole
• Half Moon Caye Natural Monument
• Hol Chan Marine Reserve, close to Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker. It covers approximately 18 km² (4,448 acres) of coral reefs, seagrass beds, and mangrove forest. Hol Chan is Mayan for "little channel".

Cays include: Ambergris Caye, Caye Caulker, Caye Chapel, St. George's Caye, English Caye, Rendezvous Caye, Gladden Caye, Ranguana Caye, Long Caye, Maho Caye, Blackbird Caye, Three Coner Caye, Northern Caye, Sandbore Caye.

Because of its exceptional natural beauty, significant on-going ecological and biological processes, and the fact that it contains the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, the Reserve System has been designated as a World Heritage Site since 1996.

Despite these protective measures, the reef is under threat from oceanic pollution as well as uncontrolled tourism, shipping, and fishing. The main threats are considered to be hurricanes along with global warming and the resulting increase in ocean temperatures which cause coral bleaching.

Caye Caulker is a popular dive destination for it's local dives as well as it's proximity to The Blue Hole (1.5 hour boat ride away). Prices from one dive shop to another are pretty consistent, but Belize Diving Services has the best amenities (boats, equipment, facilities with a shower) and has the option to pay less if you have your own equipment.

Bequia

Dive sites include Devils Table, North West Point and Boulders.

Bonaire

Bonaire is an island in the Caribbean 80 km north of Venezuela. It's low-lying and arid, with haunting landscapes of salt pans, old slave huts, pink flamingos and wild donkeys. It has shore-diving all along its sheltered west coast, which is the hotel strip - most have a "house reef", and many have jettys so you can step straight onto a boat. Dive boats often visit the reef along the west side of Klein Bonaire, the small desert island just off the main town Kralendijk. The exposed east coast is seldom dived. Bonaire is a good destination for beginners and mellow intermediate divers, it's not tecky. The climate is warm and breezy all year round. See Bonaire for practicalities, including the extra regulations for Washington Slagbaai National Park at the island's north tip.

British Virgin Islands

Main topic: Diving in the British Virgin Islands

The British Virgin Islands comprise some 60 islands and islets, mostly within a few miles of each other. The islands are in relatively shallow water, so most dive sites are shallower than 100 feet / 30 meters. The diving is predominantly based on wrecks and tropical coral reefs. There are 70 dive sites marked by mooring buoys, and several unmarked.

Canada

Main topic: Diving in Canada

Canada is not generally considered a diving destination for visitors from abroad, but there are many divers residing in Canada who travel to the Canadan dive sites. The seas are generally cold temperate to polar. Water temperatures are variable, reaching freezing at the surface in winter and as high as 21°C in the Thousand Islands region in late summer. Both wrecks and rocky reefs are abundant. It is possible to dive with belugas in Manitoba, and on well-preserved wooden wrecks in the Great Lakes.

Cayman Islands

The three Cayman Islands are the exposed tops of an underwater mountain. The underwater sides of this mountain are near vertical in places, sometimes within a few hundred metres from the shore.

In addition to the coral reefs, with their typical Caribbean fish, and invertebrates, the wall diving is an unusual experience for most scuba divers. Scuba diving in the Caymans can be done from a boat, or at some dive sites, from a shore entry.

Visibility is good due to the island's geography. There is very little runoff of silt or fertilizers from the land, and the steep walls result in the reefs being unusually close to deep ocean water.

Grand Cayman

Grand Cayman dive sites may be split into roughly into 4 regions;

• Seven Mile Beach and the Northwest Point
• The North Wall
• The South Side
• The East End

The prevailing south-east winds make it unusual to get to dive the South Side dive sites, though it is done when possible as the sites are really lovely. There are a wide variety of dive sites providing opportunities for all levels of diver.

• Stingray City is a series of shallow sandbars found in the northwest corner of North Sound of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, just inside a natural channel that passes through the barrier reef and consists of a string of sandbars crossing the North Sound from Morgan Harbour to Rum Point. It is a tourist attraction, where southern stingrays are found in abundance and visitors can pet and interact with the animals. It is

Cayman Brac and Little Cayman

These smaller islands are thin strips of land lying roughly east to west, and there are dive sites on both the north and south sides, but the prevailing south-east winds, make it unusual to get to dive on the south sides.

Dive sites on Little Cayman include:

• Bloody Bay Wall
• Jackson Bay

These are both on the north side of the island and are not accessible year-round because of weather conditions.

Cuba

Maria la Gorda — popular scuba diving destination

Dominica

Located in the center of the Caribbean island archipelago, Dominica's dramatic landscape is as spectacular underwater as it is above. Dominica is one of the top dive destinations in the world.

Honduras

Main topic: Diving in Honduras

Honduras in Central America has a short Pacific south coast, and a long Caribbean north coast with good diving. The best developed for diving is Roatán, which is one of the Bay Islands in the Caribbean some 40 km north of the mainland. There are also dive sites on the other Bay Islands of Guanaja, Utila and the Hog Islands (Cayos Cochinos). They all enjoy year-round warm climate and sea, underwater viz of 60 to 100 ft, and it's usually calm. This makes them a good choice for learning to dive. For advanced divers they boast amazing reef formations such as canyons and swim throughs galore. The deep waters minutes away from shore lend themselves for Tec Dive training and exploration.

Martinique

• Saint Pierre : Scuba dive at wrecks in the harbor. During the 1902 volcanic eruption, all but one of the ships in the harbor sank, leaving many wrecks as dive sites.
• The Citadel

Mexico

Main topic: Diving in Mexico

Diving in Mexico includes very good tropical coral reefs on the Caribbean coast, Large pelagics in Baja California in the Sea of Cortez, and the exceptional cave sites of the Yucatán peninsula amongst others.

Baja California, Baja California Sur, The western peninsula, borders the U.S. state of California. Cabo San Lucas — on the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula is a meeting point of reef and blue water fish. While the number of dive sites are limited the variety of species makes up for it as do the viewing of the sand falls. San Pedro Nolasco Island, sometimes called Seal Island, a small and rugged Mexican island in the Gulf of California, is protected as a nature reserve and its coastal waters are well known as a sport fishing and diving site.

Northern Mexico — (Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Nuevo León, Sinaloa, Sonora, Tamaulipas); Includes the expansive deserts and mountains of the border states; mostly ignored by tourists, this is "Unknown Mexico" and has a thermal water filled sinkhole belonging to the Zacatón system, which is the deepest known water-filled sinkhole in the world with a total underwater depth of 319 metres (1,047 ft).

The Pacific Coast — (Chiapas, Colima, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacan, Nayarit, Oaxaca) — has Tropical beaches on the southern coast, and Socorro Island, a small volcanic island in the Revillagigedo Islands, some 600 kilometers offshore, which is a popular scuba diving destination known for underwater encounters with dolphins, sharks, manta rays and other pelagic animals. Since there is no public airport on the island, divers visit here on live-aboard dive vessels. The most popular months are between November and May when the weather and seas are calmer.

The Yucatán Peninsula — (Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Yucatán) — has jungle, cenotes and impressive Mayan archaeological sites along with the Caribbean coast. Cozumel has excellent and very accessible diving making it one of the most popular diving destinations in the northern hemisphere. The area is well known for reef, wall and drift diving as well as for a lively top-side scene. The region includes the Arrecifes de Cozumel National Park, which is is well known for scuba diving and snorkeling. Cancún and Playa del Carmen in Quintana Roo are known for cavern and cave diving and advanced technical diving in the labyrinth of fresh water cenotes. Banco Chinchorro is an atoll reef in the Caribbean Sea off the southeast coast of Quintana Roo, near Belize. There are at least nine shipwrecks on the reef, including two Spanish Galleons.

Nevis

Nevis is the smaller of the two islands that make up the small Caribbean island nation, the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Nevis is not very commercially developed. It is still a very quiet and relaxing island, and a lot safer than many Caribbean islands. The local people who live on Nevis are kind and welcoming, but Nevisians who don't work with tourists on a regular basis tend to be shy at first.

Dive sites include:

• Monkey Shoals

Saba

Saba is a small volcanic island of the Netherlands Antilles south of Saint Martin and differs from other Caribbean islands as it features steep drop-offs and submerged pinnacles that are virtually untouched.

Dive sites include:

• Diamond Rock
• Outer Limits
• Tent Reef, Tent Reef Deep and Tent Reef Wall
• 3rd Encounter
• Man o' War shoals
• Torrens Point
• Twilight Zone
• Core Gut
• Shark shoals
• Green Island
• The John
• Hole in the Corner

Saint-Barthélemy

Dive sites include Ile Fouche, Ile Chevreau, La Baleine and Sugarloaf.

Saint Christopher (St Kitts)

Dive sites include Palmer’s Paradise (Turtle Canyons), Old Road Town Bay, Sandy Point Bay, Mystery Shoal and Popeye’s Corner.

Saint Lucia

Dive sites include:

• Anse Chastanet — A beach north of the town of Soufrière, Saint Lucia, known for excellent scuba diving and snorkeling. Many of the reefs are accessible by swimming out from the beach.

Saint Martin

Dive sites include Hen and Chicks, Moon Hole, Cable Reef, Groupers, The Maze, Alleys, Proselyte Reef, HMS Proselyte Wreck,

United States of America

Main topic: Diving in the United States

Diving destinations include:

California:

Main topic: Diving in California.

California is a state of the US with a coast on the cool temperate North Pacific. It has a relatively long history in scuba diving.

Florida:

Main topic: Diving in Florida

Florida is at the south of the east coast, with a long coastline, many islands and a large number of flooded caves. It is a major diving destination within the US.

Hawaii:

Main topic: Diving in Hawaii

Hawaii is a group of volcanic islands in the central north Pacific, and is an international diving destination.

Michigan:

Lake Michigan offers diving on some of the best preserved shipwrecks in the world.

New York:

Dive sites in the Thousand Island area of New York state can be reached by charter operators in both New York and from Ontario.

North Carolina:

Main topic: Diving in North Carolina

It's sometimes referred to as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" because of the numerous shipwrecks, in diving range to 130 feet. Sand Tiger or Ragged Tooth sharks are often seen.

Utah:

Utah is a landlocked state with a few inland dive sites.

• Ricks Spring is a karst spring, a natural water outflow from a cave in Logan Canyon within the Wasatch-Cache National Forest in northeast Utah. The spring is not an artesian source, but comes from the Logan River. Ricks Spring is the best known of several springs in an underground water network of the area. The local rock is made up of sedimentary layers. Pressure and earthquakes have caused the rock to fold and fracture exposing weak points. Over time water flowing through these points eroded through the limestone creating a path from the river and other inflows at high elevation to flow and emit from the spring. There are two caves at Ricks Spring. An above water cave extends into the rock about 25 feet. The second cave is an extensive network of both wet and dry passages that is only accessible by cave diving. As of 2009, it had been explored to about 2200 feet.

Washington:

Washington's Puget Sound is the nation’s leading producer of farmed bivalve shellfish (clams, geoduck, mussels and oysters), the cool clean waters of Puget Sound provide a rich habitat for marine life and the areas complex coastline carved by glaciers provides a stunning and complex backdrop to the many unique creatures and plants found in this area. Giant Pacific Octopus and friendly wolf eels are common. Colorful sponges, sea cucumbers, sea stars, soft corals, anemones and fish can be seen on nearly every dive.

Oceania

(Note: Hawaii is listed under United States of America in North America)

Diving a wreck off Wake Island

Australia

Divers feeding potato cod at Cod Hole

Main topic: Diving in Australia

The coastline of Australia is very long and includes a considerable range of water temperatures and marine ecologies. The most famous region is the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland, but there's plenty more.

Chuuk

Bow gun of the Fujikawa Maru

Divers next to the mast of the Unkai Maru

Main topic: Diving in Chuuk

Chuuk lagoon is renowned for the huge number of ship and aircraft wrecks from World War II's Operation Hailstorm. Chuuk Lagoon is part of the larger Caroline Islands group. The area consists of eleven major islands and forty-six smaller ones within the lagoon, plus forty-one on the fringing coral reef, and is known today as the Chuuk islands, part of the Federated States of Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean. The islands were originally settled more than 2000 years ago, probably from Pohnpei and Kosrae to the east, based on many legend and language similarities.

During World War II, Truk Lagoon, as it was then known, was the Empire of Japan's main base in the South Pacific theatre. A significant portion of the Japanese fleet was based there. Truk was the base for Japanese operations against Allied forces in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. Due to its heavy fortifications, both natural and manmade, the base at Truk was known to Allied forces as "the Gibraltar of the Pacific".

Operation Hailstone was launched from the Marshall Islands, and the attack on Truk lagoon started in the early morning of February 17, 1944, and culminated in one of the most important naval airstrikes of the war. Twelve Japanese warships, thirty-two merchant ships and 249 aircraft were destroyed making the lagoon the biggest graveyard of ships in the world.

Fiji

Fiji is a Melanesian country in the South Pacific Ocean which includes 322 islands, of which 110 are inhabited, and 522 smaller islets. The capital is Suva on Viti Levu. The Fijian islands have a year-round warm tropical climate. The wet season is from December to March with the average temperature of 30°C/86°F. The colder, drier season is between April and November with the average temperature of 24°C/75°F. Winds are moderate, cyclones may occur once or twice a year. Water temperature ranges between 23-30°C/73-86°F. Visibility ranges between 25-50 m/80-165 ft, and is best from May to October. A network of coral reefs surrounds all the islands and atolls. Blue ribbon eels, trevally, cuttlefish, world's largest parrot fish, lion fish, leaf scorpions, octopus, over 8 species of sharks, huge groupers, rays and many more marine species can be spotted while diving in Fiji. Also, in the waters just off Manta Ray Island, giant manta rays can be seen between May and October.

Nadi International Airport is Fiji's main international airport, but Suva airport also has some international flights. Fiji is a widely known holiday destination with a lot to offer: hiking, lush rainforests, cascading waterfalls, wonderful local people, fabulous beaches and great scuba diving.

Fiji is a good place to discover the scuba diving world. Fiji is known as the 'Soft Coral Capital of the World', 'Best shark dive in the world' and is home to the Great Astrolabe Reef. There are around 1000 species of fish and several hundreds types of coral and sponges at a wide variety of dive sites for divers of all levels, including wall dives, drift dives, swim-throughs, caves, canyons and picturesque reef dives. Dive destinations include Beqa Lagoon, Taveuni, Kadavu, Viti Levu where the best diving is in Rakiraki and on the Coral Coast), and Vanua Levu Islands (their magnificent barrier reef off Savusavu is now a protected marine reserve populated by both soft and hard corals).

• Beqa Lagoon has over 100 dive sites, including pinnacles, bommies and reefs within the lagoon and some walls sporting huge gorgonian fans many feet across and gigantic black coral trees on the outside.
• Taveuni is renowned for the spectacular soft corals seen at sites such as Rainbow Reef and Great White Wall.
• On Kadavu and Ono islands divers will find a wide diversity of diving opportunities with plenty of excellent sites to choose from, though currents and surge in these waters can be fairly strong. On the southern and eastern side of Kadavu there are plenty of sites scattered around the Great Astrolabe Reef, the world’s fourth largest barrier reef.
• Other sites in Fiji worth visiting include Fantasea, Annie's Bommie, Naiqoro Passage, The Supermarket, and others.

Guam

Main topic: Diving in Guam

Guam has some of the best dive sites in the world since there has been minimal tourist impact compared to other better known dive locations. Piti Bomb Holes has been built up as a tourist attraction allowing tourists to descend into an observatory where they can take in the beauty that has grown in a sinkhole. (The name "Bomb Holes" is a misnomer.) Divers may dive around this attraction and feed shoals of fish for the amusement of the tourists inside the subaquatic observatory as much as for the divers' own amusement.

While many of the dive sites can be reached by land, some of these entry points require a long walk over coral or a long surface swim. Also, because so much of the island is controlled by U.S. military bases, many of the dive sites are accessed by land through the military bases.

Niue

Known for having extremely clear water. It is a great scuba diving and snorkelling destination.

New Zealand

Main topic: Diving in New Zealand

New Zealand is a island country in the temperate South Pacific, with an extremely long coasline for its size, and a remarkable number of coastal islands. Much of this coastline is diveable, and some of the sites are really spectacular. New Zealand has a mild and temperate maritime climate with mean annual temperatures ranging from 10°C (50°F) in the south to 16°C (61°F) in the north. The weather is notoriously variable. The expression "four seasons in one day" sums it up quite well. It is positioned across the division between subantarctic and subtropical water masses, and this provides a large range of conditions and habitats which support a wide diversity of marine life.

Palau

Palau has a shark sanctuary and is a known destination for shark-watchers. Its most famous site, the jellyfish lake, doesn't permit divers, you just snorkel among them.

Papua New Guinea

Madang is a town with fine scuba diving.

Saipan

Main topic: Diving in Saipan

Saipan in the Northern Marianas is a popular diving destination in the Pacific. It is a typical middle-aged island composed of ancient fossil-rich coral limestone atop a subsiding, extinct marine volcano. A fringing reef of healthy offshore corals forms an extremely large lagoon and many small shallow lagoons in its larger bays, and a few offshore subsurface coral mounts. Saipan has excellent reefs, white beaches, underwater caves, WWII shipwrecks, underwater munitions dumps, and underwater airplane wrecks which provide diving that will appeal to most divers. Visibility, typically in the 50~90 ft(16~30m) range, varies enormously based on location, tide, and season. Waves seldom exceed 1~2 ft(30~60 cm) in height, except during typhoons and tropical storms.

Vanuatu

Vanuatu is an archipelago nation in the southwest Pacific Ocean, north of New Zealand and east of Australia. It has intermediate level wreck diving, including penetration, on the President Coolidge, and blue hole diving with excellent visibility.

South America

Brazil

Main topic: Diving in Brazil

Brazil has a long coastline, mainly on the South Atlantic, and mostly in the tropics, with a few offshore islands.

Diving destinations include:

• Fernando de Noronha marine park (Pernambuco state), famous for marine life but including shipwrecks
• The many shipwrecks of Recife (capital of Pernambuco)
• Arvoredo marine park (Santa Catarina state)
• Cavern diving at Bonito (Mato Grosso do Sul state)
• Cavern and cave diving in mine at Mariana (visiting Mina da Passagem) (Minas Gerais state)
• Abrolhos marine park and Salvador (Bahia state)
• Parcel de Manoel Luís (Maranhão state)
• Fortaleza (Ceará state) — Pedra da Risca do Meio State Marine Park is about 10 nautical miles from the city of Fortaleza, and covers an area of about 33 km² The park has many underwater reef formations, with an average depth ranging from 16 to 36 meters, and is rich in marine life. The average temperature of the water is about 27°C.
• Maceió & Paripueira (Alagoas state)
• Guarapari (Espírito Santo state)
• Arraial do Cabo, Paraty and Ilha Grande (Rio de Janeiro state)
• Ubatuba and Laje de Santos (São Paulo state).
• Praia Mole, Praia do Santinho, Praia dos Ingleses in Florianopolis (Santa Catarina state).

There are also liveaboards in the Northeastern region.

To dive in public parks (like Fernando de Noronha) one must be certified by one of the agencies recognized by IBAMA (Instituto Brasileiro de Administração do Meio Ambiente), a federal organ.

Colombia

Colombia has some of the cheapest diving in South America. A cheap place to learn is Taganga.

• The islands of Isla Gorgona, San Andrés and Providencia have some really good diving.
• A little known but excellent location for large pelagics (i.e. hammerhead sharks, whale sharks etc.) is Malpelo Island. It is accessible by live aboard only.

Chile

Ecuador

• Galapagos Islands - Darwin and Wolf Islands offer the opportunity to see schools of dozens of hammerhead sharks, while whale sharks and other large sea creatures are also frequently sighted.

Get in

A reef teeming with colorful life

Resort and region "Get in" sections describe the usual options for getting yourself someplace. But some aspects are specific to diving, so this section outlines those, from the time you commit to a destination to the moment you're poised at the water's edge ready to plunge in. In summary these are to stay healthy and current, check your insurance, decide what kit to take, in the resort check in with the dive centre, then travel with them to the specific dive site. The subsequent "Get around" section describes what happens next.

Stay healthy and current

Standard advice on healthy active lifestyles applies to diving as to everything else. You want all-round cross-fitness, stamina and suppleness; there's nothing specific for diving. A steady routine is worth more than a spasm of activity. "Staying current" means not letting your skills decay since your last dive. Resort centres are generally okay if you've dived within the last six months. They become less okay the longer your gap, the lower your previous experience, and the more challenging the intended dive. Consider how you might schedule interim dives, but realistically, a time-poor traveller might only manage a single diving vacation per year. What the centre might do is assign you to a "check-out dive", ie tagged on to the beginners' class. Once the instructor reports back that you looked okay, you'll be restored to the main boat.

Check your insurance

Is it in date, does it cover the destination you're heading for, and include scuba diving? In the Med, is the policy restricted to Europe, or include Anatolian Turkey or Tunisia, and what about Cyprus (part EU, part not)? An annual multi-trip policy is often the best deal and often includes diving without extra charge, within recreational limits and your level of qualification - typically to 30 m / 100 foot max depth. That demonstrates that insurers know that diving is safe, compared say to winter sports for which you'd pay extra. But when it goes wrong, it can go horribly wrong, perhaps in a resource-poor country that simply can't afford to launch a search and rescue operation unless they know who's paying. Then come the medical bills, the onward emergency transfer to a decompression pod, the specialist treatment and rehab before you're stable enough to be repatriated. . . US$1,000,000 is the minimum cover needed against calamities on this scale.

What to take on the trip?

The one absolute essential (beyond your passport and payment cards) is your dive certification and log book. Without these, any reputable diver operator will be forced to regard you as an untrained beginner, and the most they'd allow is a "try-dive" under instructor supervision. If these vital documents go missing in transit, it may be possible for your training agency to fax or email evidence of your qualification. But this is slow, uncertain and may be pricey so if you have them online, email them to yourself just ahead of the trip.

Always take your own mask, fins, and dive computer if you have one, as they're lightweight, along with standard beach items such as towel, swimwear and tote bag.

As to the rest, it's a trade-off between weight, bulk, assurance of knowing your own kit, and quality and cost of rental. (It's not really a choice of buying versus rental, as you may well own one or more sets of kit but opt not to take it.) For a warm water trip, a wetsuit plus regulator and BCD will fit a standard airline 23 kilo bag and leave just about enough room to crush in lightweight clothing for a week's vacation. When were those items last serviced, do you need to sort this before the trip? It's hardly worth lugging full kit for less than 3 days diving. A small camera can go in your hand luggage but an elaborate camera will mean a second checked bag to accommodate all the lighting, mountings and housings, plus security against thieving hands. For a cold water trip, you do need to take your own drysuit plus associated warmwear, and this alone will fill most of one bag. Bearing in mind that you also need thicker, rainproof clothing for such a climate, reckon on a second bag.

You can't fly with weights or tanks, which are readily available at dive centres. If they're not, then the trip becomes an expedition, with a truck to carry the heavy kit overland, probably also with an air compressor for refills, loads of tools and spare parts, and towing your own boat. Something on this scale needs organising by a senior instructor, who will appreciate your offer to take on delegated tasks. You also can't fly with rebreathers.

Check in with the dive centre

Worth checking ahead, especially in a one-centre resort: one risk is they're booked out, but more likely they may have folded, or just gone dormant if business is slack.

On arrival (and they may pick up from hotels), there's paperwork to do. They need to see your certification, log book, and payment card. On insurance they may simply ask you to sign that you've got some, or demand to see the small print about the coverage.

The agency that you trained with may not be one to which the centre is affiliated. It's not a problem so long as you qualified from that training, and that the agency was one recognised worldwide. There are look-up tables that show what any particular qualification would equate to in another agency. As of 2018, the following are recognised:

• ACUC: The American Canadian Underwater Certifications
• ANDI: American Nitrox Divers International,
• BSAC: The British Sub Aqua Club , bases its training on a network of affiliated clubs.
• CMAS: The Italian-based Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques , an amateur non-for-profit international organization that takes a more comprehensive approach than many of the commercial agencies. Training and certification is available from either national diving federations affiliated to CMAS or from specially-accredited dive centres known as CMAS Dive Centers (CDC). Certification from national diving federations and CDCs is considered to be equivalent, however training may vary from CMAS standards due to requirements mandated by a national federation.
• GUE: Global Underwater Explorers , concentrates on technical and cave diving specialities.
• IANTD: International Association of Nitrox Technical Divers.
• IDEA: The International Diving Educators Association
• ISI: The Independent Scuba Instructors
• NAPI: The National Association of Professional Instructors, does not train directly, but issues certification based on recognition of prior learning and experience.
• NAUI: The National Association of Underwater Instructors , US-based, is the oldest recreational scuba certification agency.
• PADI: The Professional Association of Diving Instructors , the largest scuba certification agency, a commercial agency targeted towards recreational divers who want to learn quickly.
• PDIC: The Professional Diving Instructors Corporation
• SDI/TDI: The Scuba Divers International/Technical Divers International , a certification agency designed to train with an emphasis on practical diving skills. SDI focuses on the recreational side of scuba diving and TDI is the mother branch that specializes in Technical Diving.
• SSI: Scuba Schools International , another large commercial agency.

Reaching the dive site

There are three main ways of travelling to the dive site: day-boats, shore dives, and liveaboards where the boat itself is your acccommodation.

Day-boats

On the way to a dive site off Cape Town in a RIB

The majority of tourist, qualified but non-technical diving is from day-boats, as the sites of interest are usually a few miles from the dive centre, and too far from shore to swim to. Day trips typically head out in the morning, when the sea is quieter, for a "two-tank dive" ie two dives with a surface interval between. With short travel times they return to base in that interval, with longer times they make a day of it at sea.

Boats vary greatly in size and facilities, so the newly-arrived visitor should ask about this, to understand what to bring and what not to bring. The most spartan are small boats or RIBs (rigid inflatable boats) with outboard motors. You will already be in your wet- or drysuit on boarding, with kit assembled. Everything is liable to get drenched and there's no space for more than a small tote-bag for sunhat and glasses. Boats for longer trips are progressively roomier, with a wet deck where the kit stays and divers assemble, toilets and showers, and indoor and sun-deck dry areas. They may offer a catered lunch, snacks, and help yourself to coffee. They may carry several parties of experienced divers, trainees, snorkellers and non-diving sunbathers. Note that it's travel time not distance that governs the type of boat: a RIB can go blazing out to reach sites within the hour that a conventional boat would need much of the day to reach and return.

If you suffer travel sickness in cars then best assume you'll feel sick on the boat and take medication, since it generally has to be taken an hour before sailing. Nausea can be reduced by standing up out on deck and fixing on the horizon, and by being midships around the centre of pitch and roll. It will subside underwater as you drop below the wave action and the pressure reduces your gut volume. It will return inexorably as you ascend, bob about in the waves, and try to de-kit in a lurching boat. How to vomit underwater is just another of those skills you'll acquire; fish will surround you to admire your technique and devour its results.

There will be two briefings, listen carefully to both. Once everyone's aboard you get a "boat briefing": wet and dry areas, rules about shoes, firm grip on the stair rails, and never put anything into the toilet that you haven't eaten yourself. The second, approaching the site, is the "site briefing:" underwater topography, things you might see, and intended dive route, depth and duration. You especially need to know the method for exiting the boat, and for getting back aboard.

Even larger boats - liveaboards - are considered below. Some centres use public ferries to reach their sites, connecting with a small boat or shore operation there. Cruise liners often include diving in their excursions, but in effect it's as if an entire resort has become mobile to rendezvous with a dive centre. You dock or transfer by small boat to the centre and carry out the dive just like a land-based visitor.

Shore dives

Shore dives are where you swim out from shore, or dive immediately, onto a nearby site. It's cheaper, avoiding all the business of boats, but it's not necessarily easier. There may be only limited spots where you can get into the water, across slippy rocks or sharp coral, amidst breaking waves. Coming back, those spots may be difficult to locate from the water, or be inaccessible because the tide has dropped and they are now too high. You may be more restricted on timing: the hour after high tide has the minimum current. Even a swim of 100 yards can be difficult, and it's worse coming back - and suppose there was a problem and you were trying to tow your buddy? Would there be a shore watcher looking out for you, and how readily could they assist you, lacking a boat themselves?

Shore diving is the main style in some resorts, eg Aqaba in Jordan, and at inland sites such as lakes and flooded quarries. It's probably at such sites that you'll first find yourself diving truly independently, with a buddy of equally limited experience, and no divemaster supervision. This is where you learn skills around risk assessment, dive planning and logistics, and start to feel the responsibilities that others have till now shouldered for you.

Liveaboards

Liveaboard in the Philippines

Liveaboards are boats with their own sleeping accommodation plus catering. Trips range from a single overnight to a fortnight or more, with 3 to 5 dives per day. At the budget end, accommodation is basic, with 4 people sharing cabins and several cabins sharing shower and toilets. The net cost per dive will be lower, but multiplied by many more dives, so "budget" won't mean cheap. Top end accommodation resembles, and costs like, a luxury cruise. But even on the best boats, there is little escape from engine noise, fellow divers, or the restless sea. It's all about the diving, waking early for the first briefing and completing the last dive at sunset, day after day. Non-diving companions are going to need a really absorbing blockbuster paperback. Although training courses are conducted from liveaboards, the point of them is to reach outlying sites beyond the range of day-boats, where there may be excellent diving but more challenging conditions. Beginners need to concentrate on basic technique and had best defer the liveaboard experience until they've had a few day-boat trips and feel comfortable at sea.

When travelling on a liveaboard:

• bring as little as possible: a few changes of weather-appropriate clothes, sleep gear, toiletries, light-weight entertainment (especially non-electronic) and your dive kit;
• space is always at a premium, and it's easy to get things mixed up and annoy fellow divers, keep your dive gear together in a tub or bag on the deck;
• label your possessions with your name, as they will be mixed up with a lot of similar looking equipment;
• observe the boat's wet / dry protocols, drying off going inside;
• most boats have a limited supply of fresh water for drinking and washing: have short showers.

Get around

Humans have been sploshing around in water for hundreds of thousands of years yet biologically we remain badly adapted to anything beyond a quick dip. All the diving equipment and techniques that we utilise are designed to overcome our serious natural shortcomings, compared to other air-breathing animals that thrive underwater. This page is emphatically not a dive training manual but a travel guide, so the present section considers the very short trip that we take from leaving the surface down to the sea bed, and return. It considers the multiple problems we face and introduces the kit that overcomes each of them. Subsequent sections describe what we might see or do down there.

• We can barely swim, especially when wearing all the essential scuba gear. We compensate first by using a boat (or, for shore-diving, a motor vehicle) to get close to the dive site. Then we avoid fighting rough seas or strong currents: the "slack" hour or two after high tide is usually the quietest. Or we may deliberately drift with the current, while the boat follows the dive leader's surface marker buoy. And third we wear fins, and move them in a measured, efficient way to propel ourselves. Fins may be open-heel (with a rear strap, worn with boots) or full-foot (one piece over bare feet coming up to the ankles). Open-heel are more adaptable, since the strap adjusts, and they're usually worn over boots, very useful for shore diving or in colder water. But they chafe bare feet; full-foot fins are more comfortable here, are more efficient for movement, and a good choice when diving from a boat or jetty in warm water.
• We can't see underwater because we lose the refractive change between air and eye, so focus is impossible. So we wear a mask which creates an air space before the eyes. It also covers the nose (unlike the goggles of swimmers) so we can nasally exhale to equalise the internal pressure and drive out any water that seeps in. The mask can also be fitted with corrective lenses. This restores clear (albeit slightly magnified) vision. But the water also becomes dark and gloomy at depth, and the colour is progressively filtered out, so we might use a torch, plus flash or video light for photography. Other lights (eg strobes and glowsticks) are more to be seen by (ie by other divers, or by the boat on surfacing) than to see by.
• A snorkel is a short curved tube with a mouth grip, so we can breathe at the surface with our face underwater. It may be strapped to the mask or slipped under the strap and is mostly there to solve the "barely swim" problem, by conserving air in the tank while we swim on the surface. Once underwater, obviously we can't breathe from it, and it can be a nuisance in cramped environments since it can snag, either causing the mask to flood or dislodging it altogether. So for some dives it's optional.
• It's cold, and it gets colder. Water is a much better conductor of heat than air, so even in tropical waters, a temperature that would be pleasant in air soon becomes unpleasant, and leads to hypothermia. In deeper waters or at high latitudes it's unpleasantly cold from the start, and naked survival time might be measured in minutes. Even plump humans have nothing like the intrinsic protection of seals. We therefore put on warmwear, the simplest being the wetsuit for warm water. As the name implies, it floods, but provides an insulating layer of foam neoprene or similar material. Effectiveness depends very much on not flushing out the warmed water with cold water when you move. Thickness ranges from 0.5 to 7 mm, and may be a one- or two-piece whole-body design, or a shortie covering down to mid-thigh. 3-5 mm is about right for the tropics, 7 mm is better for the temperate water. Wear your usual swimwear under the suit, and you could add a T-shirt if a rental suit feels loose. The suit also protects against stinging creatures in the water, chafes and scrapes getting in and out, and sunburn on the surface. The thinnest suits are worn primarily for those protections.
• And colder and colder. The water temperature always lags a month or so behind the climate. On a bright day in early summer it looks lovely, everyone rushes to jump in, but the water is between winter and spring and there's a spate of fatal incidents. With a wetsuit you can manage a dive if it isn't too long, but then you come up with blue lips and get even colder on the surface - not a good preparation for a second dive. Cold waters need a drysuit, which doesn't keep us warm. Rather, we put on warmwear like a quilted under-garment, then the drysuit keeps the warmwear dry. It also protects against stings and chafes, and is supplemented by gloves and hood - these are often themselves wet.
• We can't breathe underwater. So we dive with a tank or cylinder of air, which to last long enough while being compact must be highly compressed, typically 230 bars when full. Air is delivered through a two-stage regulator: the first stage, clamped to the tank, takes the pressure down from 230 to 10 bars. The second stage, gripped in the mouth, feeds air on demand at ambient pressure, which is 1 bar at the surface and increases by a bar for every 10 metres depth, as described below. There are also feeds to the buoyancy control jacket, to the secondary mouthpiece to assist another diver, to the tank contents gauge, and where worn to the drysuit. A typical resort dive will turn-about at the 150 bar mark, be approaching the shallows around 100 bar, and surface with 50 bar remaining. Air usage increases inexorably with depth, duration, exertion and body size, but being economical with air consumption is the mark of a good diver.
• We can't speak intelligibly, even with breathing gear. So there's a vocabulary of hand signals to learn, from the routine to the exotic or ribald.
• We're either too buoyant or not buoyant enough. All that kit feels a ton as you stagger across the boat deck, but it's also bulky, and once supported by water, you can't submerge unless you carry extra weight. But at depth the buoyancy is squeezed out of the wetsuit and air filled equipment, you sink, you lose even more buoyancy, and so on down. What we need is neutral buoyancy, floating comfortably amd moving neither up nor down. This is achieved in three stages. The first, macro solution is dive weights, several pounds / kilo of lead which may be on a belt, harness or pouch. The amount is effectively determined by the buoyancy of the equipment, although the divemaster will check the weighting of newcomer divers at the surface, and adjust before descent. He / she may also carry a little extra, to donate underwater to diver's who got it wrong. Enough dive weight must be capable of being jettisoned in an emergency to establish positive buoyancy. Divers may also use small "trim weights" to optimise their balance, eg drysuit divers may use ankle weights to stop their feet floating up. The second, meso solution is a buoyancy control device or BCD: an inflatable jacket or wing that can be topped up from an air feed or deflated. The BCD is how we manage the buoyancy changes as the dive depth changes. (Or mismanage - every beginner will at some point suffer an embarassing runaway ascent, through injecting air at depth and failing to blow it off soon enough on the ascent.) The third, micro solution, which some instructors don't mention, but is universal, is breath control. Never hold your breath underwater, but it's fine to modify the depth of the natural cycle: a hard expiration to help you descend, a little extra breath in to lift clear of the coral you risked snagging.
• We can't withstand pressure, or live without it. On the surface we live under one atmosphere of pressure, one bar or 1000 millibars. Go down just 10 metres (33 ft) and we're under 2 bars. Every air-containing space in our bodies, and the air in our BCD, is compressed to half its surface volume. Continue down to 20 metres (66 ft), a routine diving depth, and it's 3 bars, one third the volume. And so on; something's gotta give. The most sensitive spot is the eardrum, so we pinch the nose and puff to drive air into the middle ear and equalise; defects or weakness of the eardrums is one common barrier to diving. The solution is in the regulator, which feeds us air at ambient pressure. So at 10 metres (33 ft) the air within us is at 2 bar matching the external pressure, and we feel fine, at the price of other problems. One is that we are now consuming the tank contents twice as fast, and at 20 metres (66 ft) feet it will be three times as fast. Another is that with rising pressure, more nitrogen dissolves in the blood stream and tissues, and acts as a narcotic - it's the same biological mechanism as nitrous oxide or Entonox. People's susceptibility varies, but a beginner could reckon on being drunk at 40 metres (130 ft), dead drunk at 50 metres (160 ft), and dead at 60 metres (200 ft). Hence the cautious depth limits for diving. On ascent, even after a relatively shallow dive, the accumulated nitrogen can bubble out again, with potentially disastrous consequences. We minimise these by limiting dive depth and duration, by ascending slowly, and by pausing the ascent around the 3 to 6 metres (9.8 to 19.7 ft) foot mark for a "safety" or decompression stop. Once back on the surface we avoid heavy exertion, wait for perhaps an hour before diving again, plan a shallower second dive, and don't fly or ascend high mountains for 24 hours. The other potential calamity is if in spite of the warnings you did hold your breath while ascending, or had a lung abnormality that obstructed full venting, the air inhaled at depth would remain at much greater pressure than your surrounds. Again, something's gotta give, and bang! it's you.
• Underwater we lack the normal cues for orientation so we need instruments such as a depth gauge, a compass and a watch or timer. These are often integrated into a dive computer, which tracks depth, time and gas consumption and indicates how soon (and how slowly) the diver ought to ascend.
• Other dive accessories include guideline reels, to spool out as you go into a wreck and reel in to find the way back out; a small knife in case you get caught on fishing line or net; a slate to scribble messages to your buddy; a mirror (eg an old CD) and whistle to attract the boat's attention; and a little mesh "goody-bag" for carrying small wet items. General accessories, helpful for any boat-trip, include sun protection (floppy hat, shirt, sunblock, sunglasses), water bottle, flip-flops, and extra layers for the cold evening breeze.

See

Hawksbill Turtle in Sabang, Mindoro

Bull Shark

• Your buddy and the dive guide - where are they? If you can't see them, find them fast.
• Marine life ranges from the minute to the small fry to the "big-safari" beasts, all equally fascinating. Some are rooted to the spot or occupy a fixed niche (eg sea horses), so the dive guide knows their abode and points them out. Others are territorial and in season will always be found in an area - triggerfish hurl themselves against anything that comes close to their eggs. Bigger beasts range over a greater area so an encounter can't be guaranteed: turtles munch away, sharks snooze beneath overhangs, seals and sea-lions may approach and play with you.
• Reefs are shallow areas amid deeper water: so they have an ecosystem of marine life, they are often the cause of shipwrecks, and they may create a shelter on their leeward side that's much calmer than to windward. Thus many dive sites are on reefs. Rocky reefs, found worldwide, are simply that. Cold seas often have a kelp forest and other seaweeds down to about 10 metres (33 ft), or wherever the light gets too dim, then various zones of filter feeders like soft corals, sea squirts and sponges predominating beyond. Coral reefs are found only in clear warm waters (but can't survive hot, so global warming is a serious threat). Here the reef has been built up from the stony skeletons of billions of creatures, with their living descendants forming a riot of colour and structure. The shallow areas tend to have softer and more flexible growth that can withstand wave action. Further down are hard corals, a sculpted Garden of Eden where everything is trying to sting everything else including you, so look but don't touch. Artificial reefs are structures (often obsolete ships) sunk to be an attraction in their own right, and to act as a foundation for colonising marine life. They also include the supports of piers, bridges and marine structures such as oil rigs.
• The sea bed away from reefs tends to be flatter and less obviously interesting, and may be partly or completely covered by loose rock or sediments. But look more closely, especially when you're resting here on a safety stop before surfacing. There are flat fish, crabs and molluscs, sand eels, and small fry foraging for worms. "Whelks" suddenly sprout legs and lumber off as the hermit crab within takes its leave of you. Soft, silty beds look even less attractive but have more varied life, and muck diving is the art of finding it - Indonesia has the most famous collection of species.
• Wrecks have three appeals: fish life, historical interest and technical difficulty. Wrecks that have been sunk for some time become artificial reefs, attracting fish life and coral. The trade-off is that this tends to happen in warmer water, which will also cause the wreck to disintegrate more rapidly. Wrecks in colder water will attract less marine life but retain historical interest, particularly those of ships that were lost at sea rather than stripped of artefacts and scuttled. Wrecks of planes, particularly those shot down in wartime, are also popular. Divers can actually enter some wrecks: however this is relatively hazardous and requires competence well beyond introductory open water training. This competence is usually indicated by certification and logged experience.
• Caverns, arches, swim-throughs and chimneys are natural features that are fun to dive. Caves are a whole different ballgame, requiring specialised diving equipment and skills, and may also require capabilities in dry caving. The definition is, if you can still see daylight and the way out, it's a cavern. If you've blundered in further than intended and kicked up the silt, it's now a cave. Best of luck searching for the way out: this may take the rest of your life.
• Always, always keep looking, you just never know when something interesting or important may swim into view. The underwater world is so poorly explored compared to land-side that even low-experience divers in routine dive sites regularly make discoveries. There are fish behaviours not seen before, exotic species turning up in new waters, and entirely new species found to be hiding in plain sight. The shifting sands may uncover ancient wreckage and artefacts. You may find sunken evidence of a crime. Or someone's wedding ring, or dive computer.

Do

• Have a last wee before kitting up, and maybe a swig of water if you feel dry, but not otherwise. There's mounting evidence that the fashion for "hydration" is harmful. As soon as you plunge into the water, your circulatory system no longer has to combat gravity, and the fluid in your legs shifts into your centre. The skin circulation also reduces, to conserve heat in the cool water, so that fluid also centralises. The central circulation becomes overloaded and the body responds by dumping fluid. You suddenly need to wee, copiously, into a wetsuit that might not belong to you. (Dry suit users . . . well, it's included in the technical training.) Even then, the overload may be harmful. This could affect a healthy young diver who had to swim hard against current, but is more likely with ageing divers. Many incidents previously ascribed to drowning or heart attack are now thought to be due to pulmonary oedema, with over-hydration a contributory factor.
• Stick to the dive plan as set out in the briefing.
• Take pictures or video if you wish, but defer this till you're fully trained - it's a major distraction from other safety-critical tasks. You need good buoyancy control and trim, as you often have to approach very quietly and closely to a photo subject, and risk knocking lumps off the coral. For most divers, these will just be amateur recreational pictures, but even so the expense may be considerable, adding in the various waterproof housings, lights and mounts, and extra baggage costs. You could easily rack up the cost of a car. But what a good photographer can bring to diving is amazing.
• Try a night dive, preferably on a site you've already dived by day, so you're better oriented, and appreciate the contrast. A lot of marine life rests up during the day and comes out to feed at night, so you encounter a different cast of characters. The limited beam of your torch forces you to concentrate and notice things you might otherwise overlook, and its white light restores the intensity and full spectrum of colour that is missing under natural light. Night dives also help build your experience of diving in dark environments.
• Keep snorkelling: it's not just a kiddy-phase to be ditched once you're qualified. It's a good way to recce a shore site, and several "diving" experiences are in fact snorkelling: manatees in Florida, jellyfish in Palau, and many big fish and whale encounters.
• Learn from each and every dive. You do this immediately afterwards by talking through what you've seen and done - it may be a proper debrief, but is usually just an animated chat. Other divers are eager to share experiences, ie to describe all the remarkable things they saw that you somehow missed seeing. Then you write up your log book, and get it counter-signed or stamped by the dive centre.
• Develop specialisms and expertise such as marine life and behaviour (some people spend entire expensive holidays looking for sea-slugs), wreck history, marine archaeology, and underwater survey and mapping. Keep it fun, but you'll be working at the frontier of human knowledge.
• Contribute more widely by publishing descriptions of sites, dive operations and resorts, starting right here on Wikivoyage. (There are templates and guidelines on formats, but if in doubt, plunge forward as you first did from that boat. This article's docents may also assist.) You might also get into dive-related journalism and magazine features, guidebook development, and TV / film documentary.
• Seek advice and expertise even as you build your own. There's a lot of collective wisdom out there, and new angles and techniques in a still-developing sport.

Stay safe

Before the trip

• Medical conditions: these might prevent you from even training, or they may limit the range of diving you can do, or they may deteriorate with age or episodically. Look at the list on the website of your training agency. It's impractical to list them all here, and in any case what usually matters is the severity, and the degree to which it's controlled, rather than the source condition. People dive after heart attacks. Severely disabled people can often dive, and it's used as rehab for injured war veterans. Yet a bad cold that blocks your nose and sinuses is enough to stop you diving. Other temporary problems, that might only manifest as the boat chugs out, are sea-sickness, drowsiness from anti-sea-sickness or other medication, alcohol or recreational drugs or hangovers therefrom, and fever. Note that several countries around the Red Sea have hardened their line on pain-killers, and may prohibit these (and confiscate at customs) even when responsibly prescribed and with the prescription to prove it. Check their embassy website for the current rules.

• Pregnancy: there's very little scientific evidence of harm or of safety. The training agencies have therefore taken a precautionary stance, and advise that you shouldn't dive if you know you are pregnant, or seeking to become pregnant.

• Your insurance is likely to be the arbiter: if it says it won't cover certain conditions, be that land-side or diving, then realistically you can't travel.

• Keep fit, keep current, and keep your kit serviced, as described earlier.

At the dive centre

They'll demand evidence of your skill and qualifications, you might in return have some questions of them.

• What are the qualifications of the skipper and divemaster?
• Are the crew qualified in basic first aid?
• Do they have emergency oxygen aboard, and training in how to use it? What about an Automated External Defibrillator (AED)?
• How is the quality of air fills checked?
• How are seaworthiness of the dive boat and competence of the crew ensured?
• What emergency facilities are available in case of an accident? For search and recovery, medical evacuation, and recompression?
• What is the system for checking divers off the board, and checking them all safely back aboard?

With rental equipment, its quality and fit are always somewhat unknown, and the net effect on your buoyancy. Plan the first day as "shake-down" diving, mellow stuff before you venture into anything challenging.

On the boat

The boat operator knows the area and is in touch with other boats, and will usually make a sensible call on whether it's okay to go out. But you too have a decision. If conditions are marginal, ask yourself whether you'd rather be stood on the jetty wishing you'd gone out, or be on the boat wishing you'd stayed on the jetty?

Heading out to sea, does it still feel right? The sea conditions, the darkening horizon, the boat & crew, the state of your head? Is what was pitched as a routine dive escalating into something at the edge of your capabilities? Your buddy, who you've only just met - technically they're qualified, but what do you know about their skills and experience, and how confident are you about mutual assistance? Do you understand their kit configuration, and they yours?

Be proactive in sorting problems before they grow, on board and in the water. The narrative of incidents often describes a gradual slide into a pit. There was something not quite right with the equipment, but it seemed minor and was let go. Some slackness in boat procedure, but they got by. Some limitation of training or rustiness of skill. And ample time to remedy any of these . . . then something else happened, and the standard back-up drills couldn't work because because, it's now a full emergency, and the victims are being sucked into a vortex of danger.

Pay attention to the briefings; know the dive plan, and stick to it.

In the water

Beware boats, including your own. Reckless jet-skiers and speedboats can appear out of nowhere, always be ready for a rapid evasive descent.

Plan the dive and dive the plan, always with "what if?" in mind.

Much of what's down there is either sharp or stingy or both. Look but don't touch. Jellyfish alas ignore this rule, their stings may trail for some distance behind the main blob that you saw and avoided, and they'll swipe across your unprotected face.

Narcosis and gas toxicity at depth, and pressure barotrauma on ascent, are uncommon problems but can be rapidly fatal.

If things are going badly, any diver has the right and responsibility to end the dive.

The dive's not over until you're safely back on the boat with kit off and towelling yourself dry. Take great care against tumbles and pratfalls coming back aboard, including other divers tumbling onto you.

Afterwards

Observe your interval / decompression rules. This probably means an hour before diving again, and 12-24 hours before flying.

Do you feel off-colour? It could be something and nothing, or it may be the early subtle signs of decompression sickness, even if you've dived within the recommended pattern. Or something else unrelated. Use your commonsense, but tell someone: you ought not to be the sole judge of how bad you are.

Self-sufficiency

During training you'll be under the direct supervision of an instructor, and taught to dive in a buddy-pair. Once qualified, many of your resort dives will be under the eye of a dive guide or leader, perhaps paired up or in a looser group. Or the divemaster may simply point out the area to dive, and tell you to go enjoy and be back at the boat by a certain time. The buddy system has great advantages in increasing the resilience of the pair. But it may be illusory if neither diver is particularly skilled, it can double the tragedy if one diver goes beyond their limits (eg too deep) in a futile attempt at rescue, and threesomes are a notorious cause of confusion: "but I thought you were . . . "

There is an ongoing debate, which will not be entered into here, about whether to train for or promote solo diving. Some diving is undoubtedly solo, in lacking an effective buddy. Instructors dive with complete beginners who would be unable to assist them, photographers are often away from other divers as they search for subjects, and divers in tight environments might not be able to reach or be reached by their buddy. But these are skilled, experienced divers who have back-up within their own kit, eg a second independent air source, and have the judgement to know how far to go. What seems reasonable to promote is self-sufficiency. It's always primarily your own responsibility to avoid getting into trouble, and to extricate yourself from it. Assume that any mishap that befalls you will be just as your buddy is some ways distant, or your dive guide is pre-occupied with some worse mishap to another. Could you deal with it?

Respect

• Look but don't touch, be it the bottom, coral, marine life or wrecks.
• Don't take souvenirs as everything you take is one less thing for future divers to look at, one less home for sea creatures, and one less piece of the eco-system. To paraphrase the "leave no trace" motto: "take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but bubbles."
• Learn good buoyancy control and trim, to avoid accidental damage to site and self from crashing into things.
• Don't feed the fish, as it alters their natural feeding patterns. You might get bitten, more likely you'll get mobbed, and see nothing but yellowtail for the rest of the day.

These rules may be enforced by law, but should be followed anyway, and encouraged among your fellow divers. Be aware of any specific local rules that apply to marine parks or protected wrecks and war graves.