Locations

Thousands of dive sites across the Coral Triangle, from Bali's manta cleaning stations and sunfish upwellings to Komodo's current-swept pinnacles.

Sabah's east coast holds Sipadan — an oceanic pinnacle rising 600 m from the seabed — with the muck and macro of Mabul and Kapalai a few minutes away.

Over 7,000 islands in the heart of the Coral Triangle, with year-round warm water and one of Asia's best-run community whale shark programmes at Donsol.

The Similan and Surin islands, dived from Phuket by liveaboard — granite boulder swim-throughs, and whale sharks and mantas at Richelieu Rock.

Japan's diving heart is the far-southern Yaeyama Islands, where subtropical reefs host one of the most reliable manta encounters on the planet — and, in winter, schooling hammerheads.

Australia's reliable whale shark encounter is at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia — a fringing reef you can swim to from the beach, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Volcanic reef and drop-off diving on the Big Island's Kona Coast, best known for a resident manta ray population and consistently warm, clear water.

Some of the least-dived reef in the Coral Triangle — Milne Bay in the east, Kimbe Bay in the north, and muck sites that rival Lembeh with none of the traffic.

An atoll nation with year-round warm water, the only documented resident whale shark population in the world, and the planet's largest manta aggregation.

A long Indian Ocean coastline built on boat-based pelagic encounters, centred on Tofo's manta cleaning stations — though its famous whale shark numbers have fallen sharply.

Cold, green, plankton-rich water off the Hebrides, and Europe's most reliable summer encounter with basking sharks — the world's second-largest fish.

An archipelago of shallow banks and sudden walls off Florida, known for big-animal shark diving, blue holes, and some of the clearest water in the Atlantic.

A volcanic archipelago 1,000 km off Ecuador where cold currents collide, producing high endemism and some of the largest pelagic shark aggregations on the planet.

Warm Caribbean reefs off Quintana Roo, freshwater cenotes inland, and the cooler, wildlife-rich Sea of Cortez off Baja California Sur.