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France Mediterranean SeaThe wreck of this cargo ship is 50+ meteres to the bottom. It is covered in red and yellow coral which is unusual for the med.
more info about Donater - Porquerolles including maps, reviews, and ratings...
GrenadaThis is the wreck of an Italian Ocean Liner that burnt and sank in the 1960's. She is 600 feet long and very deep (the top is reached at 30m - the bottom at 50+) It is covered in coral and is home to lots of small marine life.
more info about Bianca C including maps, reviews, and ratings...
BahamasThis site is a 40 mins. fast boat ride from New Providence Island.
You go in to find the start of the reef wall at 10 metres. There is a large population of female caribean reef sharks that are very big. They used to feed them here (not so much now) and this has made them very used to divers (you can see the hair up their nostrils - if they had any!!) so allowing for easy photographing.
more info about Sharp Wall - Tongue of the Ocean - New Providence Island including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Papua New Guinea PacificNot a lot of divers go to this site as it is very hard for boats to anchor. This makes the coral virtually untouched.
There are a lot of oriental species of fish including the Lacy scorpion fish. The water is quite cold but a lot of things to photograph. I had used up all my film in 20 minutes.
more info about Susies Bommy - Loloata including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Indonesia Banda SeaThis is the number one macro dive.
You swim down to what looks like the contents of a full ashtray, grey crap. All the rubbish that people have thrown into the Strait over the last hundred years. Or is it?
When you really start to look you find what looks like a piece of rubbish, but is actually a fish in disguise.
Sea Urchins as large as footballs seem to gang up and flash their neon lights at each other in a magnificent display.
Our guide told us that if we did not see a seahorse that he would refund the cost of our holiday! There were so many that we began to be blase about them.
There are thousands of nudibranch. I, of course, had gone in with wide angle - but still managed to come back with some fantastic shots.
more info about Somebody's Hairball (Lembeh Strait) including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Maldives Indian OceanA bit of a current here. Saw grey sharks and some large Napoleon Wrasse and resident turtles that came up to nosey around. They seemed quite tame.
more info about Mushi Mash Magili (South Ari Atoll) including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Maldives Indian OceanShort boat ride to the dive. This is a cleaning station for Manta Rays when the current is running. There were nurse sharks but we were to busy photographing the Mantas!
more info about Rangali Madivaru including maps, reviews, and ratings...
French Polynesia PacificA short Zodiac ride gets you to the site where there are Turtles, dolphins, and very boring coral (very dull).
The exciting part of this dive is the many grey sharks that are being hunted by the resident hammerhead and tiger shark.
more info about Tiputa Pass - Rangiroa including maps, reviews, and ratings...
French Polynesia PacificThis dive is for the experienced diver only. The dive site is a narrow canyon where there are very strong currents. We went in when the tide was running in, found a place to hang on (making sure that all our kit was attached) and then photographed the thousands of grey reef sharks that seemed to be just hanging in the current.
more info about North Channel (Apataki-Tuomotos) including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Cocos Islands PacificOn the Oceanus Agressor live aboard. This is a dive that has quite strong currents. There are lots of large creatures to photograph including sharks, whale sharks, dolphins etc. It is a very exposed site and can get very busy with live aboards and divers.
more info about Baja Alcyone including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Costa Rica PacificOn the Sea Hunter Liveaboard. Dirty rock is a dive site near to Cocos Island which attracts large species: Mantas, Whale Sharks, Hammerheads, Killer Whales, False Killer Whales, Dolphins and large shoals of Jacks. Because it is round, you can stay in the same place and photograph the same animal/s several times as they swim round and round the rock.
more info about Roca Socio (Dirty Rock) including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Cocos Islands PacificI went on the Sea Hunter Liveaboard. They were very photo friendly. We did a night dive at this site and were confronted with many white tip sharks. They have, aparently, learnt to follow the torches of the divers so there is obviously no feeding of them here! It took one and a half days from Costa Rica to get here.
more info about Manuelita Island including maps, reviews, and ratings...
United Kingdom AtlanticSt Kilda is widely regarded as the best diving in the UK, and rightly so. It has the wildest, woolliest marine life and, being mid ocean, the sea is blue not the usual UK murky gray!
Kilda is a small group of largely uninhabited islands 150 miles off the West coast of Scotland. There’s a small Military presence in Nissan huts, a couple of million Puffins, and little else.
Kilda is not for most recreational divers. You need an expedition mentality and a good liveaboard to get there. We were on the Jean De La Lune and can highly recommend it. It’s a three masted 100 foot schooner that is ocean worthy. You can dive straight off it most of the time as the walls are sheer the skipper can get in close. You must time your entry with the swell so that the gunwhales are at their lowest. There’s no handing cameras down. Just jump in holding them over your head and hope for the best.
A typical Kilda dive is rugged scenery with boulders the size of houses. There are canyons and caves, the walls of which are covered in jewel anemones (so take a torch). There are sea-mounts and drop-offs. You do a lot of deco diving and hanging on to kelp at 5 metres in swell can be a bit hairy! Delayed SMB’s are the order of the day. Don’t get lost or next stop is Rockall (isolated sea-mount) then Canada!
I remember hearing distant Killer Whales on dives, and once being surrounded by a massive shoal of Mackerel. It was the weirdest low viz situation I’ve had. Usually the viz is 10-20M, as evidenced by the kelp growing down to 30M+.
Fishing here means dangling a line in the water and reeling it in. You get a dozen fish out every cast, even without bait! That’s how profuse the life is. It gets big too. Lobsters too large for your goody bag (too large to wrestle even).
Seals that like to nibble your fins often buzz you. They don’t see many divers. If you’re looking for Best Of British – this is it!
more info about St Kilda including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Turks and Caicos islands Caribbean SeaMy first impression of my first dive in the Turks and Caicos was this site. I had heard that Caribbean diving was inferior. However, I thought the diving here was on a par with the Red Sea. The viz, the corals, the marine life were all as profuse.
This site is a long boat ride away from Provo. We dived with Art Pickering and he has a fine and comfortable boat. Fast too. They trawled lines hoping to catch a Marlin (but didn't). An ever-full cooler and pleasant company passed the 40 or so minutes it took to get there.
West Caicos is well worth the journey. Being remote and undived it is pristine.
We dropped into an Eagle Ray and a turtle that the local guide held so I could photograph. I asked him not too. In the end I pretended to take the shot just to make him let go. Actually, it came out alright but I could't show it! You are not supposed to hold Turtles, they breath air and get very stressed. Just imagine your out of air situation!
Anyway, I also had a loopy grouper who kept banging into my dome port. Must have fell in love with his (her?) own reflection.
There was a large barracuda under the boat to finish my film on.
Great dive. How many times can you say that!
more info about West Caicos Wall including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Egypt Red SeaYou really need to be in first to apprecaite this wreck.
It is a massive big upturned hull that you enter from the back and swim through (so lights needed). There's not much inside.
Your bubbles dislodge all manner of creatures (hence the get in first idea). Some of these are pricly so wear your hood (or keep moving).
It's relatively safe. You can see you exit through the broken hull midships at all times. there's huge schools of glassfish here so your photographers will find some good shots here.
Once out you can follow the reef back up at your leisure to finish the dive. you'll easy get an hour in all.
more info about Dunraven including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Gibraltar Mediterranean SeaThere's not many dives you can do that give you two wrecks for the price of one!
We did this as an intro dive. We all wanted a shallow wreck.
This dive can be done from the shore but we did it as a boat. We headed south along the sea wall and basically where it finished we went in! You could easily find it from shore using the same rules.
There's a telegraphic cable you can conveniently follow to find the wrecks.
I was pleasantly surprised by the profuse marine life. Loads of small stuff but with plenty of fish too. The species here are hybrid Med/Atlantic.
The wrecks are both upright and small enough to explore in their entirety in one dive.
Nothing tricky or dangerous on this dive. Ideal to try out your gear before exploring one of Gib's other larger wrecks.
more info about Two wrecks including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Sri Lanka Indian OceanDiving is ideal for beginners. You will find some hard and soft corals and marine life mostly small species. The diving is not very good but it is not as bad as you can think, this is probably the only diving spot in Sri Lanka during summer. go to Trincomalee an then you have to go north to Pidgeon Island. It is better to go in the morning to get the best visibiliy.
more info about pidgeon island including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Cyprus Aegean SeaThe Vera K is a medium size freighter sitting upright in 10 metres. It is an ideal dive to introduce beginners to wreck diving. It is sunk in a crater so, as a site, it is well defined. It has an intact wheelhouse but the rest of the wreck is in various states of collapse.
It takes a short boat ride (10 minutes) from Paphos harbor, where there are a couple of dive operations (Cydive being the most established).
It takes a good 45 minutes to explore the wreck and surrounding crater. There are caves that are very safe for a swim through and, if you are lucky, you will see Big George. He's a massive grouper (cow sized!) and I have no idea how he got that big in the Mediterranean but he is not a myth. I've seen him! He's understandably shy of divers and you won't get close enough to photograph him, let alone touch him.
See Also
website more info about Vera K including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Bermuda AtlanticThis was a deliberate sinking in the mid 80's. I haven't seen it recently but when I was on it there was not a lot of coral growth.
The boat has been stripped clean but there is still plenty of photogenic machinery inside. There's plenty to explore and worth a couple of dives. It is a most requested wreck on the south shore as it is the biggest and most intact (unless you know different).
The deck is around 60 foot so start deep and ascend later, leaving the wheelhouse till a quick swim thro at last.
There are loads of other wrecks nearby for a second dive. I'll tell you about them when I gety time!
Bermuda is a cracking place. Everything revolves around Hamiltion. Apparently there are more people per square mile than anywhere else (and most are well heeled).
It's a popular place with NY divers as it is the nearest bit of decent diving and the shortest flight. Steer clear in May/June as the humidity is opressive.
more info about The Hermes including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Kenya Indian OceanIt took about 30 minutes to this dive site. The wreck is an old steel shrimp boat which is about 120 feet long. My camera was kept busy with an octopus, rock cod, a moray and shoals of batfish. The wreck is quite incrusted so a good opportunity for macro.
more info about Mida Wreck including maps, reviews, and ratings...
