World's best places to dive?

[Penguinboy]

Hey,

Doing this post more just to see where people would recommend and also because I need a good holiday soon too

Where do we reckon are the best places in the world to dive? This can be wrecks, reefs, anywhere you have had a good experience and seen some great stuff! Obviously the Great Barrier Reef and Red Sea are going to feature but anywhere more specific?

Penguin

 

[cmalinowski]

underwater

 

[Penguinboy]

underwater

I knew some smart guy would say that your bathtub doesn't count though

 

[Packhorse]

Poor Knights New Zealand.

 

[Soggy]

Thousand Islands region in the St. Lawrence Seaway....

 

[TheRedHead]

Bonaire is the diver's paradise. Dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, dive, eat, sleep on your own schedule. There is not a bad place to dive on the entire island. I think KLM flies direct to Bonaire from the Netherlands.

 

[Penguinboy]

Bonaire is the diver's paradise. Dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, dive, eat, sleep on your own schedule. There is not a bad place to dive on the entire island. I think KLM flies direct to Bonaire from the Netherlands.

Honestly hadn't ever heard of Bonaire before now checked it out on Google and looks lovely - although i haven't yet seen a place in the carribean that didn't!

 

[TheRedHead]

Honestly hadn't ever heard of Bonaire before now checked it out on Google and looks lovely - although i haven't yet seen a place in the carribean that didn't!

From just about any Bonaire resort, you can step off the dock and be instantly on a beautiful reef and most have "drive and dive." Bonaire has markers throughout the island designating dive sites. You get a pickup truck as part of the package and unlimited tanks. When you're bored with the "house reef," pack up the tanks and drive around the island and dive 24/7! Almost everyone on the entire island dives.

 

[boulderjohn]

Of course, people will tend to recommend the best places they themselves have dived, and their analysis will be colored by personal experiences that may or may not be the fault of the site.

Some places have well established reputations, but sometimes those reputations are not all that well deserved. A lot of people will tell you that the Great Blue Hole in Belize is highly overrated, for example. (I did a survey on this dive, and found that only about half of the people who have done the dive would recommend it.)

Some places are so huge that even visiting gives only a glimpse of the possibilities. For example, my 12 dives on the Great Barrier Reef represent a tiny portion of the possibilities. I did them on a liveabord on the ribbon reefs that form the true barrier, so my experience would be vastly different from someone who only did the patch reefs closer to shore. (I had a great experience, BTW.)

My week in Fiji similarly only touches on the potential of that enormous reef system, and my experience was clouded by the miserable weather I had while there.

Cozumel has a great reputation, and I have had many wonderful dives there. On the other hand, I have had a few poor dives due to combinations of high current and lousy DMs (one actually led the dive into current until he finally had to face the fact and turn around when we met another group head on.) What if I had only been there once and had the bad experience?

I had a lot less fun than I should have in Bonaire because I was a single diver who some really terrible luck working out buddies for shore dives.

In addition to those places, I have also experienced a few other "name" places, including Thailand, all the Caymans, Belize, Aruba, Curaçao, Florida, and a few others. I will get to Yap and Chuuk later in the year. All these places have their charms, and although I prefer some above the others, I don't think there is any point trying to do any kind of qualitative analysis. I would be happy to do any of them again.

Even if I were to decide whaich of those places I liked best, how can I compare them to the thousands of sites I have never visited?

 

[AlexMDiver]

Maldives
Little Cayman