Destinations
The world's great dive trips.
Structured guides to the planet's premier liveaboard destinations — 32 regions, thousands of dive sites, each with depth, conditions, marine life and the season to go.
Maldives
Manta rays, whale sharks and pristine atolls — hand-written guides to the classic Indian Ocean liveaboard destination.
Red Sea (Egypt)
The world's busiest liveaboard scene — reef walls, WWII-era wrecks like the Thistlegorm, and shark-rich offshore reefs (Brothers, Daedalus, Elphinstone).
Sudan Red Sea
Remote, pristine Red Sea reefs — Sanganeb atoll and Sha'ab Rumi (Cousteau's Conshelf II), reached almost exclusively by liveaboard.
Raja Ampat
The epicentre of marine biodiversity — soft-coral walls, reef mantas, and current-swept ridges in West Papua, dived mostly by liveaboard.
Komodo
A national park of roaring currents — reef mantas, sharks and technicolour reefs in the north, cool nutrient-rich water and macro in the south.
Banda Sea
A deep-water liveaboard crossing — hammerhead schools, sea snakes by the dozen, and pristine remote reefs between Indonesia's spice islands.
Galápagos
Big-animal diving at the edge of the world — schooling hammerheads, whale sharks, mantas and sea lions in cold, current-swept water. Liveaboard only for the north.
Socorro (Revillagigedo)
Mexico's 'little Galápagos' — oceanic giant mantas that seek out divers, plus sharks, dolphins and wintering humpback whales. Liveaboard only.
Cocos Island
A remote Costa Rican seamount famous for its schooling scalloped hammerheads — a 36-hour liveaboard crossing to one of the planet's great shark dives.
Palau
Micronesian channels and drop-offs — grey reef shark aggregations at Blue Corner, manta cleaning at German Channel, and WWII wrecks.
Tubbataha Reefs
A UNESCO World Heritage atoll reef in the middle of the Sulu Sea — sheer walls, sharks and turtles, accessible only by liveaboard during a short season.
Similan Islands
Andaman Sea granite boulders and reefs off Thailand — easy day-boat and liveaboard diving, with mantas and whale sharks at Richelieu Rock in season.
Chuuk (Truk) Lagoon
The greatest wreck-diving site on Earth — a WWII Japanese fleet sunk in a sheltered Micronesian lagoon, now coral-encrusted and diveable year-round.
French Polynesia
Pass diving in the Tuamotus — Fakarava's "wall of sharks" and Rangiroa's Tiputa Pass, where hundreds of grey reef sharks hang in the current.
Great Barrier Reef
The Ribbon Reefs and Coral Sea off Queensland — Cod Hole's giant potato cod, dwarf minke whales in winter, and remote liveaboard-only bommies.
Bahamas
Shark diving central — tiger sharks at Tiger Beach, great hammerheads off Bimini, plus reef sharks, blue holes and wrecks across the islands.
Fiji
The soft coral capital of the world — Rainbow Reef and the Somosomo Strait blaze with colour, and Beqa Lagoon runs one of the best bull-shark dives anywhere.
Sipadan
Malaysia's oceanic island off Borneo — turtles everywhere, a tornado of barracuda and big-eye jacks at Barracuda Point, and a wall dropping into the blue. Permit-limited.
Bali
Indonesian variety in one island — the USAT Liberty wreck at Tulamben, reef mantas and seasonal mola mola at Nusa Penida, and macro on volcanic black sand.
Lembeh Strait
The muck-diving capital of the world — a volcanic strait off Sulawesi where black sand hides frogfish, blue-ringed octopus, mimic octopus and every weird critter a macro shooter dreams of.
Manado & Bunaken
Sulawesi's wall diving — Bunaken Marine Park's sheer drop-offs plunge past turtles, reef sharks and clouds of fish into deep blue water.
Cozumel
Mexico's Caribbean drift-diving classic — effortless current rides along Palancar and Santa Rosa reefs, with the endemic splendid toadfish tucked under the coral.
Bonaire
The shore-diving capital of the Caribbean — a fringing reef you can walk into from almost anywhere on the island, protected as a marine park since 1979.
Cayman Islands
Caribbean wall diving at its finest — Little Cayman's Bloody Bay Wall drops from 6 m to the abyss, plus Stingray City and easy reef dives off Grand Cayman.
Malapascua
The only place in the world with near-daily thresher shark encounters — pelagic threshers rise to the Monad Shoal cleaning station at dawn, right off a tiny Philippine island.
Anilao
The Philippines' macro and muck heartland — a short drive from Manila, Anilao's volcanic slopes are a nudibranch and critter paradise beloved by underwater photographers.
Ningaloo Reef
Western Australia's fringing reef where whale sharks gather in numbers — swim alongside the ocean's largest fish after the autumn coral spawn, plus humpbacks and mantas.
Azores
Mid-Atlantic volcanic seamounts off Portugal — summer brings blue sharks, makos and schools of mobula rays in deep blue oceanic water.
Roatán
The largest of Honduras's Bay Islands — a huge, accessible Mesoamerican Barrier Reef of walls, canyons and easy shallow reefs, with a wreck or two thrown in.
Utila
Honduras's budget-diving island and a whale-shark hotspot — one of the cheapest places on Earth to learn to dive, with year-round chances at whale sharks off the north shore.
Palawan (Coron)
The Philippines' wreck-diving jewel — a WWII Japanese fleet sunk in Coron Bay, shallow enough for recreational divers and now cloaked in coral and fish.
Sangalaki (Derawan)
Indonesia's Derawan archipelago off Borneo — reef mantas circling Sangalaki, a stingless jellyfish lake on Kakaban, and turtle-rich reefs.