The world"s great diving adventures

Best for: underwater scenery

Lea Lea’s Lookout, Bloody Bay, Little Cayman

Little Cayman is a sandy dot of perfection south-west of Cuba. Home to the

Bloody Bay Marine Park, it has arguably the healthiest coral reefs left in

the entire Caribbean. Lea Lea’s Lookout is typical of the wall-diving here,

a shallow (5m/16ft) reef top cut through with tunnels and sand chutes that

lead downwards and out on to the sheer vertical reef wall. Cayman has the

best underwater visibility in the world, and the abyss plunges into an

infinity of dizzying blue. I’ve seen seahorses, inquisitive Caribbean reef

sharks, hawksbill turtles and bolshie Nassau groupers here, and some of the

biggest giant sponges in the world.

Diver level: Beginners and beyond with good buoyancy control
Season: Year round
Booking: Book direct with the Southern Cross Club (southerncrossclub.com).

Six nights’ accommodation and diving will cost around £1,300 in summer.

Diving is possible year round. Direct flights with British Airways to Grand

Cayman cost around £942

Best for: diving with sharks

The Tiputa Pass, Rangiroa, Polynesia

Rangiroa means “endless sky” and is one of the most romantic parts of

Polynesia. Underwater there is a sense of raw vitality, and at Tiputa I

dived repeatedly with large schools of grey reef sharks, turtles, manta rays

and, on one occasion, all of the above within view while dolphins passed

overhead. The pass is one of just two entrances into the vast interior

lagoon and dives have to be conducted on an incoming tide to avoid divers

being swept out into the Pacific.

Diver level: Experienced
Season: any time except December-January. September is best for sharks.
Booking: Dive Worldwide (0845 130 6980; diveworldwide.com)

can arrange 10 nights via Los Angeles and domestic flights Tahiti-Rangiroa:

from £3,595 per person b  b, with 10 boat dives.

A kaleidoscope of colours in the Maldives

Best for: wreck diving

Wreck of the Giannis D, Abu Nuhas, Egypt

The Giannis D cargo ship struck the coral reef en route from Croatia to Saudi

Arabia 30 years ago. It’s not the world’s most dramatic, nor one of the

largest underwater wrecks, but it’s very atmospheric and gives even

inexperienced divers a taste of the adventure that makes wreck diving

appealing. The topmost parts of the ship are only about 20ft below the

surface, with the stern sitting on sand at about 100ft. Thanks to the

proximity of the reef and the age of the wreck there is always a lot of

marine life, and the site of the stern resting on the seabed with the funnel

still upright makes for eerie, poignant photographs.

Diver level: All levels
Season: Year round
Booking: Seven nights’ b  b at the Elysees Hotel in

Hurghada costs from £371, including flights and transfers. Five days’ diving

costs £80 with Divers’ Lodge. The dive to Abu Nuhas costs £70 as it’s a

long-range one.

Best for: colourful marine life

Noonu Atoll, the Maldives

This little gem of a reef is teeming with life: unicorn fish, mantis shrimps,

big groupers and numerous varieties of tiny nudibranchs. Large shoals of

hunters such as unicorn fish and tuna come hurtling from the open water to

pick off the myriad schools of golden anthias that swirl in dense clouds

above the healthy hard coral. It’s a tiny reef with ledges and overhangs

covered in bright cup corals and feathery gorgonians.

Diver level: All levels
Season: Year round, though November-March may be better for visibility.
Booking: Noonu Atoll is accessible via a 10-night live-aboard dive

cruise out of Malé with a northern extension itinerary: £2,749 per person,

to include return charter flight from Gatwick, full board and up to three

dives per day, through Regal Diving (01353 659 999; regal-diving.co.uk)

The clear seas of Baa Attoll, Maldives

Kakani Thila, Baa Atoll, the Maldives

Thanks to a vast number of islands and atolls, the Maldives has become one of

my favourite overall diving areas, so not surprisingly I believe it deserves

mention for more than one specific site. This reef always delivers one of my

favourites – with the ungainly but brilliant scarlet or yellow frogfish,

stingrays lurking in caverns and clownfish nestling in crimson anemones. And

the beauty of the Maldives is that year round there is a good chance of

encountering those majestic underwater fliers, the mantas, which are found

here in higher numbers than almost anywhere else. And soft corals, waving

exotically tinted fingers in the current, bring another profusion of colour

to the tableau.

Diver level: Moderate experience required
Season: December to April for the best visibility, but June-October for

the mantas.
Booking: Ten nights, with flights and 20 dives, costs from £2,255 with

Divequest (01254 826322; divequest-travel.com).

Best for: weird and wonderful dives

Bradford Shoals, Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea

Kimbe Bay is a vast area on the northern edge of New Britain and home to about

two thirds of all the fish species in the Indo-Pacific. With hundreds of

reefs, it’s hard to name a single site, but Bradford Shoals is as good

as any: an oceanic pinnacle surrounded by deep, deep water. Large schools of

barracuda can form into tornado-shaped clouds of life, silvertip sharks can

spiral up from the depths and there will almost inevitably be dolphins off

the bow at some time of the day.

Diver level: Experienced
Season: April-November
Booking: Original Diving (020 7978 0505; originaldiving.com)

can arrange a trip from £2,500 per person for seven nights at Walindi

Plantation Resort in a Plantation House Room on a full-board basis,

including return international flight from Britain via Singapore, domestic

flights and a package of six dives.

A diver gets close to soft coral in Papua New Guinea

Best for: remote adventure

Neptune’s Arm, Vamizi Island, Mozambique

Several miles offshore, and with no clue on the surface to what lies below,

this submarine plateau holds a precious secret. A deep vertical wall, rock

gulleys encrusted with coral and a promontory swept by deep-water currents

combine to attract marine life. When conditions are right there will be

thousands of large snappers, dozens of sharks, plus eagle rays and turtles

in this isolated spot. Currents can be fierce, but this is an underwater

heaven that only a few lucky divers will ever see.

Diver level: Moderate to advanced
Season: Mid-August-December
Booking Original Diving (020 7978 0505; originaldiving.com)

offers seven nights, fully inclusive, in a luxury villa with a package of

eight dives (including Neptune’s Arm), return international flight from

Britain to Dar es Salaam, return charter flight from Dar es Salaam to Vamizi

and a complimentary massage, for £4,950 per person. This is part of a diving

special offer and includes one free night, eight dives for the price of five

and a free massage, so represents a significant saving.

• Tim Ecott is the author of Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World
  
  (Penguin)

The world"s great diving adventures