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Egypt Red SeaHouse reef at Hilton Coral Hotel - very easy sloping sandy entry. Some sea grass areas before you get to the reef. Reef head is beautiful - treaming with life. Top of reef at about 8m. There are probably hundreds of lion fish at this site. Great night dive too...
more info about Abou Lou Lou - Nuweiba including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Indonesia Bali SeaThe reef of Sanur is a largely underestimated and overlooked area for Scuba diving in Bali and not many divers go there. Depending on the tides and some other factors, the visibility can range from fairly good to quiet low and moderate current can occur. The reef is slowly sloping down and best from around 7 - 20 metres, a sandy bottom with many small coral boomies and a great variety of marine life. Some things that can be encountered here are: Nudibranch, Octopus (occasionally blue ring), Shrimp, Lobster, Reef sharks and much more. You will dive from a local boat (Jukung) or with one of the Sanur dive operators boats.
more info about Sanur including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Fiji PacificReally nice site with large fishing boat wreck, lots of soft coral, and close to many swim throughs.
177°58'27.59"E 18°22'6.50"S more info about Seven Sisters including maps, reviews, and ratings...
South Africa Indian OceanNice Reef inside the bay, long gullys covered with fans and False Lace coral and many other polyps and sponges.
more info about Phillips Reef, Port Elizabeth including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Thailand Andaman SeaBest site for big pelagics on the western side and macro on the eastern and centre of the rocks.
more info about Richellieu Rock including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Marshall Islands PacificOne of the few places on earth where these aircraft still exist in any numbers.......amazing photo opportunities.
more info about Aircraft Graveyard Kwajalein Lagoon including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Mauritius Indian OceanNorth of Mauritius Island
more info about Mauritius Island, North including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Australia PacificReflection
more info about Flynn Reef including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Maldives Indian OceanSun set
more info about Ari atoll, Elaidu including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Mexico Caribbean SeaOne of Cozumel's advanced dives sites, mostly because of the boat ride. The site is very far south, even past Punta Sur (the south point of the island), and can be a very choppy ride as you cross over the area where the open sea meets the semi-protected channel. Once past the "mixing area" as I call it the seas usually calm down some, but it can still be a choppy entrance.
Once you manage to get underwater it's all worth it, this is a beautiful dive! The dive site is a pristine reef system layed out in parallel finger like ridges moving slightly off perpendicular to the island. One of the most untouched reefs on Cozumel, Chun Chacaab is teeming with turtles, in April of '08 I made 2 dives in a week there and saw no less than 6-8 Hawksbill turtles on each dive. Wonderful, easy, shallow, yet tons of marine life - lots of divers on the site, but Cozumel divemasters do a great job of not making the place look like it's overdive. I dive Cozumel often and have found most of the dive outfitters to be professional and reasonably priced
more info about Paradise Reef including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Mexico Caribbean SeaOne of Cozumel's advanced dives sites, mostly because of the boat ride. The site is very far south, even past Punta Sur (the south point of the island), and can be a very choppy ride as you cross over the area where the open sea meets the semi-protected channel. Once past the "mixing area" as I call it the seas usually calm down some, but it can still be a choppy entrance.
Once you manage to get underwater it's all worth it, this is a beautiful dive! The dive site is a pristine reef system layed out in parallel finger like ridges moving slightly off perpendicular to the island. One of the most untouched reefs on Cozumel, Chun Chacaab is teeming with turtles, in April of '08 I made 2 dives in a week there and saw no less than 6-8 Hawksbill turtles on each dive.
I also ran accross a 'school' of mature trunk fish, each well over 6" long, hanging over one reef head. In one of my photos I counted 15 of these shy creatures one usually finds in a solitary existance.
Currents can be heavy, but discuss this with the divers on board and if everyone cooperates, it's easy to drop down into crevices and between coral heads to get out of the current and do some exploring without getting too seperated.
more info about Chun Chacaab including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Indonesia PacificFantastic outer reef wall falling down in absolute verticality
more info about Mandolin reef including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Egypt Red SeaThis reef is one of the most spectular diving sites in the northern Red Sea.
more info about Thomas Reef including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Egypt Red Seaamazing light. Nice coral formations
more info about St Johns including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Indonesia Bali SeaJust offshore, starts @1 meter below surface, lots of corals and gorgonians, nudibranchs, and fish. Nasty currents occasionally.
more info about Japanese Wreck, Lipah Bay, Bali including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Mexico Caribbean SeaPalancar Horseshoe, one of the 4 Palancar dive sites on Cozumel. Starting with the northern most one Palancar Gardens, ¾ of the way down the island along the channel side or the resort side if you will. Horseshoe is next, followed by Palancar Caves and finally Bricks at the south. Palancar Bricks is named for the actual bricks still found scattered about from a shipwreck back in the ‘50’s.
The general idea for this dive is drop down in the sandy bottom of the natural u-shaped coral formation from which the site gets its name, from at around 40’ and then move down the sandy slope to the wall decending to a max. depth of between 80'-100' depending on experience and the dive profile.
This dive has it all, swim-thrus, the wall, pinnicles, covered with colorful hard and soft corals and sponges, Cozumel's wide variety of fish, large Grey, French & Queen angels, damsels, parrot fish, grouper, Southern, yellow singrays and the occaitonal eagle ray, nurse shark and a variety of eels can all be found on this stretch of paradise.
more info about Palancar Horseshoe, Cozumel including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Saint Lucia Caribbean SeaBest time of year to dive this site is March because there is a 90% chance of seeing a seahorse and a frog fish.
more info about Rosemond's Trench including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Iran (Islamic Republic of) Caspian SeaQESHM ISLAND (Jazira-ye Qešm, Ar. Jazira-al-Ṭawila); the largest island (ca. 122 km long, 18 km wide on average, 1,445 sq km) in the Persian Gulf, about 22 km south of Bandar-e ʿAbbās (q.v.). Separated from the mainland by the straits of Ḵurān (Clarence Strait), Qeshm runs virtually parallel to the Persian coast between Bandar-e ʿAbbās in the east and Bandar-(e) Lenga in the west (Sailing directions for the Persian Gulf, p. 123; Handbuch des Persischen Golfs, p. 155).
The toponomy of the island has varied greatly over time. Nearchus referred to an island near the mouth of the Persian Gulf as Oaracta (e.g., Geog. 16.3.7; Pliny, Natural History 6.98), where, in Arrian’s account, Nearchus was shown the tomb of Erythras (Goukowsky, p. 120), after whom the Erythraean Sea was thought to have been named (Arrian, Indica 27; cf. Oracta, Ooracta, Doracta). Portuguese sources refer to the island as Queiximi/ Queixome /Queixume (Tomaschek, p. 48; cf. Quesomo in Jean de Thévenot, and the Kichmichs of Sir John Chardin [Curzon, II, p. 410]), in which we easily recognize Qeshm. They also mention Broco/Boroch/Beroho/Brocto (Tomaschek, p. 48), which scholars have long (e.g., d’Anville, p. 149; Stein) identified with Greek Oaracta. (Curzon, II, p. 410, noted a village called “Brukth/Urukth” on Qeshm).
The Aḵbār al-Ṣin wa’l-Hend (851 CE) mentions the island of Abarkāwān (see ABARKĀVĀN) in the eastern Persian Gulf, between Sirāf and Muscat (Sauvaget, p. 7). This is identical to the island of Bani Kāwān, assigned by Abu Esḥāq Eṣṭaḵri to the district of Ardašir-ḵorra (q.v.; Eṣṭaḵri, pp. 106-7), also known to Eṣṭaḵri, Masʿudi and Ebn Ḥawqal as Lāft, (Schwarz, p. 82, n. 13). For Yāqut (Schwarz, p. 83) the isles of Kāwān and Lāft (or Lāfet) were one and the same; and Lāft survives as the name of the second largest town, historically, on Qeshm (Curzon, II, p. 411). According to Balāḏori, Abarkāwān/Qeshm was reckoned part of Kermān, rather than Fārs, prior to the Islamic conquest, a point made plausible by the fact that when ʿOṯmān b. al-ʿAṣ landed there at the beginning of the Islamic conquest, he encountered a margrave of Kermān (Schwarz, p. 83). Later lexicographers explained Abarkāwān as a corruption of Jazira-ye gāvān, (cow island); this is a folk etymology, which is reflected in Ṭabari’s story of a commander in Khorasan who accused his soldiers of having ridden only cattle and donkeys on the isle of Banu Kāwān before he had turned them into competent cavalrymen (Schwarz, p. 83). Ebn Ḵordāḏbeh identified the island of Banu Kāwān as a station between Kish and Hormuz on the sea-route to India and China and described its inhabitants as belonging to the ʿEbādi sect (Sprenger, p. 79; Schwarz, p. 83).
In 1301, the ruler of Hormuz, Bahāʾ-al-Din Ayāz, moved his court and a large portion of his population to Qeshm following a Tartar attack (Piacentini, p. 112; Wilson, p. 104). From this period onward the island was an important dependency of the Kingdom of Hormuz, often providing drinking water to Hormuz itself (Steensgaard, pp. 195, 297). When the king of Hormuz, Qoṭb-al-Din Tahamtan III Firuz Shah, abdicated in favor of his son, Ṣaif-al-Din (1417-36) in 1417, he retired to Qeshm (Piacentini, p. 99). Qeshm’s status as a major Hormuzi mercantile center is shown by the fact that, in late September1552, the Turkish commander Piri Reʾis raided it, seizing “a great quantity of goods, of gold and silver, and of cash … the richest prize that could be found in all the world,” according to a contemporary account (Özbaran, p. 81; Ökte, p. 157).
In January 1619, Ruy Freire de Andrade left Lisbon for the Persian Gulf with orders to disperse the English, who had established a factory at Jāsk in 1616 (Boxer, p. 58), and to put pressure on the Persians, in part by dislodging the Persian garrison on Qeshm and building a Portuguese fort there (Boxer, p. 71; Slot, p. 107; Steensgaard, p. 312). Two thousand Portuguese soldiers, supported by 1,000 Hormuzi t
more info about qeshm island including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Saint Lucia Caribbean SeaIt is a shallow dive, maximum depth 30 ft. It has a couple of underwater caves with lots of seahorses and frog fish. Best time to dive the site is March, that is when you are more likely to see the frog fish.This is one of the best dive site in St-Lucia for Underwater Photography. You can see Turtles, Sea Horse and Frog fish on this site. The best time of year to dive this site is in March, April or May.
more info about Rosemand's Trench including maps, reviews, and ratings...
Indonesia PacificI love this site. Frogfish, turtles, pygmy seahorse. Just great!
more info about Batu Niti, near Tulamben, Bali including maps, reviews, and ratings...