Personal Top Ten?

[robint]

This is a hard one...........
I feel TOPSIDE out of the water experiences greatly affect my overall ratings on ever destination.

1. Palau (we did a liveaboard - best overall experiences in the water we ever had)
2. California Channel Islands (several trips there, never get tired of kelp diving)
3. Cozumel - Scuba Club Cozumel (great dive resort, best variety of diving and fishlife in Carib)
4. Roatan - CocoView Resort (BEST rustic dive resort, easy shore and boat diving)
5. Bonaire (best shore diving though dive sites and fishlife are pretty much same everywhere on island)
6. North Carolina (rough seas and deep dives - but incredible fishlife and WWII wrecks and sharks)
7. Bahamas on a liveaboard (just easy dive dive dive in crystal clear water)

all these are places we have been, some places multiple times. We have been other places to dive, but most of them we will no repeat as there just wasn't anything special about it... all diving is good, but some diving is GREAT. My list above gives my GREAT DIVING trip list.

 

[asha]

My current favorites:
California (duh, I moved here for the diving) - kelp, muck, deep wrecks, nudibranchs, pelagics; what's not to love?
North Carolina - historical wrecks, and the best shark dives I've ever been on (better than the staged feedings in Bahamas, Fiji, etc., and all natural!)
Sydney in the winter (not GBR, which was underwhelming) - migratory Antarctic life
Bligh Waters, Fiji - amazing soft corals and the healthiest warm-water reefs I've ever seen
Curacao - consistently good, easy diving; favorite diving in the Caribbean
Caves - only managed to get through the cavern course before TS Debby shut down North Florida, but I will definitely be back... and eventually to Mexico
Isle of Shoals, NH - playing with hundreds of friendly seals

On my bucket list:
British Columbia
Muck diving in Indonesia
Socorro Islands
Truk Lagoon

 

[pughio83]

Galapagos - sharks, seals, dolphins, mantas, whalesharks
cocos islands - sharks, sharks, sharks
revillagigedos - massive friendly mantas, dolphins, sharks
cenotes - crystal clear cave/cavern
sogod bay- southern Leyte, philippines - macro, muck, whale sharks
Panagatan- Philippines - sharks, mantas, whalesharks
nusa penida/lembongan - mola mola, mantas
PNG- biodiversity central
palau, yap, truuk - sharks, mantas, wrecks respectively
South Africa- protea, aliwaal, gaansbai - shark fest

 

[pezgrande]

Palau definitely, Philippines ~ really inexpensive diving, all macro critters, Bahamas shark diving via Stuart Cove

 

[thankfulforlife]

i love indonesia....many,many world class diving spots...
pulau wey,island top of sumatra
bali...many places...
manado area,togean island...north sulawesi
komodo area,near flores
ambon and district in the mullucu islands....
alor
biak in irian jyia
and there are many more places there i have not been that are great.....

---------- Post Merged at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 02:08 PM ----------

also julien rocks off byron bay central east coast of australia

 

[kathydee]

Probably my favorite beginner location is either Apo Island Philippines or Tulamben in Bali Indonesia -- both offer gentle beautiful dives .

 

[Deefstes]

Which reminds me of the ancient Chinese proverb:
"He who makes only a single post to the forum, most likely has only spam to offer."

 

[Diver0001]

Evening gang,

I registered here a long time ago before I went to Mexico to do my PADI OW. Unfortunately, I had a bad experience and SCUBA and I fell out before I managed to finish the course. Cut a long story short, I've been snorkelling since in Egypt and the Maldives twice since and went on a discover SCUBA dive and loved it. I've fallen back in love again!!

I think we want to hear the long story!

Well Neil, my personal top 10 isn't going to be what you're looking for. The only place I can really recommend where you'll see endless amounts of coral is the southern Red Sea. There's a place called Marsa Shagra, which is about 50km from Marsa Alam airport, where you can fly either directly or via Hurghada from the UK. The house reef is simply fantastic and because it's a dive camp and not a resort everything revolves around diving. Accommodation is basic but perfectly good, the food is good and you'll have a lot of freedom to either do your own thing or to join groups with a guide. IN my profile there is a picture of me swimming with a dolphin that was taken on that house reef. So in terms of advice you can use, that's it.

As for the rest of my top 10... I'm actually not going to give you a whole 10, but here are a couple that I really liked

- HMCS Cape Breton, probably the best purpose sunk wreck I've ever seen
- The Elba, one of my favorite authentic wrecks
- Cenote dives in the Yucatan
- The E36, which isn't a fantastic dive. It's only a 55m long submarine laying upright on a featureless sandy bottom in 27m in the middle of the North Sea but is on my personal favorites list because it's the only "unknown" wreck I've ever been able to identify by doing research
- Lake Malawi because of the many species of ciclides unique to that one location
- Actually I'm going to list the West Coast of British Columbia as a whole. The sunshine coast and anywhere up and down the coast from Nanaimo is fantastic no matter where you get in the water.

But like I said, none of that is going to appeal to you (or to most people for that matter)

R..

 

[ShaneAdamsz]

I mention a few places that first I prefer,

Palau
Bali
Wakotobi
Manado
Sri Lanka
Maldives
Seychells

 

[wsims57]

My list:
Fiji
Socorro's Islands
North Sulawesi
Philippines
Maldives
Sea of Cortez
Roatan
Utila
Bonaire
Cozumel