Top 10 dive sites of the world From the weird micro-creatures at the bottom of the Bismarck Sea to shark feeding frenzies off Cocos Island, Tim Ecott reveals where to experience the thrills of the deep Tim Ecott guardian.co.uk, Thursday 14 December 2006 13.13 GMT larger | smaller Dive school ... sites offering the greatest marine biodiversity are scattered throughout the world. Photograph: Corbis 1. Rocktail Bay, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa The water in the Maputaland Marine Reserve can be on the cool side, but there are plenty of tropical fish and excellent chances of seeing some really big pelagic species. Rocktail Bay Lodge has the only dive boat on this stretch of fabulous coast, and I even saw bottle-nosed dolphins and humpback whales on the way to the dive site. Clive and Darryl, the dive team, now send me regular emails detailing their encounters with everything from whale sharks and even tiger sharks, as well the more endearing species such as clownfish and manta rays. Between November and February you will see nesting leatherback turtles along the wild sandy shores of Manzengwenya. Dive details: The Lodge costs from £125pp a night including all meals, with diving around £35 a dive. More information from Wilderness Safaris. 2. Rangiroa, Polynesia Few places have captured my imagination like Polynesia, and the beautiful islands of the Tuamotu Archipelago about 250 miles from Tahiti felt incredibly remote. Rangiroa means “Long Sky” and it is the second largest atoll in the world. Two passes, or channels, named Tiputa and Avatoru, allow the Pacific into and out of the lagoon twice daily when the tides turn. I remember being carried through by the incoming tide and sharing the ride with scores of grey reef sharks, dolphins, mantas and sometimes large hammerhead sharks, too. It is high adrenalin diving, but above water, the atoll is one of the most laidback places in the world. Dive details: Dive with The Six Passengers and stay in a locally run pension such as the Tuanake for around £50pp a night. 3. Sulawesi, Indonesia The dive sites around the small cluster of islands off the tip of Sulawesi have some of the greatest marine biodiversity on Earth. I spent most of my time here looking for pygmy seahorses, but there are more fish, nudibranchs, flat worms and healthy corals than anyone can name, not to mention the chance of bigger things swimming in from the blue. The Bunaken National Marine Park is a world leader in sustainable tourism with every diver paying a park fee that is shared among local communities. Staying with the eccentric but lovable fish-obsessed Christianne Muller and her team at Froggies Divers on Bunaken is unforgettable, with communal dinners each night where everyone talks about the day’s diving, fish, sharks and where they will dive tomorrow. Dive details: Froggies Divers from £15pp a night and expect to pay £40 for a two tank dive with a maximum of two divers per guide. More information from Dive North Sulawesi.
4. The Maldives The best way to see the Maldives is on a dedicated live-aboard boat: you get as many as four dives a day and it works out good value for money. From May until September (during the south-west monsoon) you are pretty much guaranteed to see manta rays but they are there all year round. North Male atoll and South Ari atoll provide reliably good diving around the atoll walls, with healthy numbers of sharks, turtles and schooling game fish as well as all the small colourful reef life you expect to see. The Maldives still have the best all-round diving in the Indian Ocean, and I feel the adventure begins the minute I get picked up from the airport for a speedboat ride to the dive boat. Dive details: Maldives Scuba Tours run two excellent live-aboards – MV Sea Spirit and MV Sea Queen with some special expeditions where divers can help with manta ray research - from £1,350 for a week’s all inclusive diving including airfares from London. 5. Little Cayman, British West Indies Most Caribbean diving is not what it once was, having fallen prey to pollution caused by overdevelopment, golf courses and general overfishing, but Little Cayman still has a special atmosphere. The island is small – about ten miles long – with just 200 permanent residents. On the northern shore there is the spectacular Bloody Bay Wall and Jackson’s Point, where a sheer coral cliff drops 2,000 metres (7,000ft) into a submarine trench. The wall made me feel dizzy the first time I swam over the edge because the water is so miraculously clear. It is not where I would go to see big fish or loads of sharks, but for relaxing warm water diving in fairly easy conditions this is very hard to beat. Dive details: Unspoiled diving does not come cheap this close to the USA, so expect to pay around £1,500 for a week’s diving and accommodation. The best place to stay on Little Cayman is the Southern Cross Club. 6. Cocos and Malpelo, Eastern Pacific These two isolated islands are visited only by divers and members of the Costa Rican and Colombian coast guard. I have never heard of anyone going to Cocos and not seeing schools of hammerhead sharks, nocturnal feeding frenzies by white tip reef sharks and silky sharks. Both islands are marine reserves and have their own endemic land and marine species. The islands are stunningly beautiful, and their isolation gives them a degree of protection. Big schools of tuna and jacks come swooping in from the blue and there are more than two dozen endemic fish species on Cocos alone, including the weird looking redlipped batfish. The only way to visit the islands is on a dedicated safari boat such as the Undersea Hunter. Dive details: Undersea Hunter around £2,500 for a 13-day voyage visiting both islands. 7. The Bismarck Sea, Papua New Guinea I happen to like coral and sponges and sea slugs and all the weirdly shaped micro-creatures that crawl, slither and hop along the reefs. That is why I love the “fertile triangle” of the Philippines, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea (PNG), where marine biodiversity is the highest on the planet. Getting to PNG from Europe is a long slog, and once in Port Moresby you need to fly on to New Britain Island, but the diving makes up for it. Night diving on the offshore sea mounts rising from the abyss in the Bismarck Sea cured me of my fear of being in the sea at night. Apart from the big stuff, you will see squat lobsters and sponge crabs, dwarf scorpion fish and pygmy seahorses. Some of the best shore diving in the world is accessible from the Walindi
Plantation Resort in Kimbe Bay, where biologists have identified more than 800 marine species. Dive details: Walindi Plantation Resort - around £100 a night on full board. 8. Sipadan Island, Malaysian Borneo Malaysia’s only oceanic island is a tiny dot in the South China Sea. Underwater it is a magnet for fish: schools of barracuda, trevally and horse-eye jacks swarm over the reefs, which are also home to dozens of breeding hawksbill and green turtles. The turtles are accustomed to divers and I have never found a better place to get up close to these gentlest of reptiles. Shark encounters are reliably good here, though the currents can be strong and I would not recommend Sipadan for inexperienced divers. Close by, the reefs of Mabul and Kapalai are fantastic for spotting rare mandarin fish (I saw them mating at dusk), sea wasps and lots of nudibranchs. Dive details: Dive Worldwide offers seven nights at Kapalai Resort from £1,603 (full board) including flights via Singapore with up to three boat dives a day and unlimited shore diving. 9. Surin and Similan Islands, Thailand Close to the border between Thai and Burmese waters lie a string of islands in the Andaman Sea. There is an element of “wilderness diving” hereabouts and a huge choice of little visited dive sites. At Koh Bon, the pinnacle rises from the ocean depths and attracts groups of feeding game-fish as well as whale sharks, mantas and leopard sharks. Richelieu Rock is a similarly rich site, world famous among experienced divers for the plethora of macro-life inhabiting its coral encrusted slopes. Dive details: The best way to visit the islands is on the luxury liveaboard Ocean Rover - £1,270 for seven-night cruises departing from Phuket. 10. Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands This is shipwreck heaven. I am not a big fan of wreck diving but I would still put Bikini Atoll very near the top of my wishlist. Halfway between Australia and Honolulu, the Marshall Islands have some of the least explored diving sites on the planet. Bikini Atoll, famously used as an atomic test site in the 1950s is the resting place of several warships including the USS Saratoga – an aircraft carrier longer than the Titanic. Because the island itself is uninhabited (contaminated by radiation), Bikini lagoon has become an unofficial marine reserve where the fish life is stunning. For 10 years a small number of scuba divers have been allowed to dive on the sunken war ships – including a Japanese submarine and several US Navy destroyers. It is the kind of place divers dream of – at a price. Dive details: Expect to pay around £3,500 for a week’s diving and airfares via Honolulu, Majuro and Bikini. More information from Scuba Safaris. • Tim Ecott is the author of Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World (Penguin £7.99) and Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Luscious Substance (Penguin £7.99).
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