scubafans.com

Great American Days, unbelievable gifts, amazing experiences

By Sarah Freeland

After scuba diving for many years, I became enthralled with the sport and decided to search out the world’s best places to scuba dive. The options of great scuba diving destinations are endless, but here are my top three diving sites.

Beginning with the Red Sea in Egypt, there is no other scuba diving like this place. It is one of the best places to scuba dive I’ve found. The water is incredibly clear and with the right scuba gear, you can dive and see some amazing sea life.

The next best place to scuba dive is in Malta. This place offers great visibility as well, but the diving with scuba gear is protected by the Maltese Island government. When you scuba dive in this amazing place, you will see octopus and rays of every kind.

Finally, the third best place to scuba dive is in Costa Rica. I can’t believe the fish I saw in my dive off the shores of Costa Rica. Scuba diving in the world’s best water is a hobby of mine, so I’ve seen some fabulous fish, but none like the underwater life I saw here. Keep up the great scuba diving and enjoy these wonderful scuba diving locations.

 By Mark J Burns

Whilst scuba diving in Thailand undoubtedly offers plentiful opportunities for both novice and more experienced scuba divers, one site stands alone, and is widely considered to be the best dive site in Thailand.

Richelieu Rock is a small series of limestone outcrops which are located in the Surin Islands, just a short distance from the Myanmar border. Acknowledged as by far the best dive in Thailand for whale sharks, Richelieu Rock also offers a wide array of forna which forms a rich tapestry of marine life on the walls of these famous rocks. Large colonies of sea anenomes adorn the rocks in a wide variety of different colours, ensuring that the fans of diving with the whale sharks are not the only ones to fully appreciate the majesty that is the Richelieu Rock dive site.

A huge amount of marine life has made its home at Richelieu Rock, and yellow boxfish, white eyed morays, nurse sharks can also be seen here. Richelieu Rock is also a good dive site for manta rays, and there are a decent number of manta sightings here on a regular basis.

Richelieu Rock is an advanced dive, and visibility can often be limited. As the rock is located in the open sea, currents here can often be very strong, and surface conditions quite choppy.

The diving season at Richelieu Rock is from November through to April, although if you are hoping to dive with the whale sharks at Richelieu Rocks, then it would be advisable to concentrate your diving between February and May.

Richelieu Rock fully justifies its position as one of the worlds best dive sites, and every year, large numbers of divers make the long journey out to these small limestone outcrops.

By Dennis Chafin

The Scuba diving community’s obsession with Belize has created crowded dive sites, driven up cost, and put a lot of pressure on the precious natural resources. A new gem has emerged in Central America for scuba divers. Panama has become the destination for scuba divers looking for relatively unexplored dive sites, warm tropical waters, and low travel costs.

Panama offers scuba diving opportunities in both the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. It is even possible to book a trip through scuba shops in Panama City to dive both oceans the same day as well as an eerie low visibility dive in the Panama Canal the next day. In one of the indigenous languages, the name Panama itself means “abundance of fish.” The waters around Panama definitely live up to the name.

The clear Caribbean waters offer beautiful corals and ample tropical fish, but the best scuba diving in Panama may very well be the unexplored Pacific waters off the coast of Santa Catalina. Offering excellent local dives just a 15 minute boat ride from Santa Catalina Beach, the variety of fish and the shear numbers and size of the fish is amazing. It is not unusual on a single dive to see dozens of eels, sea turtles, large schools of jacks, barracuda, snapper and reef and nurse sharks.

What you will not see is other dive parties or dive related damage to the reefs. There is currently only one land based dive operator out of Santa Catalina. It is Scuba Coiba, owned by Austrian Herbie Sunk. The Scuba Coiba operation is very safety conscious. They keep their rental gear in good shape and are very diligent in protecting their natural resources.

Further out in the Gulf of Chiriqui, is Isla Coiba. A little over an hour boat ride out of Santa Catalina, Isla Coiba offers incredible variety including a large number of pelagics. Isla Coiba has been favorably compared to Galapagos and Cocos islands for its diversity of sea life as well as ecological diversity on land.

Isla Coiba and the waters and islands around it create the Isla Coiba National Park. Scuba diving and accessing the islands require a permit from the rangers. This is highly enforced and should help protect the waters and the natural resources they harbor in pristine condition.

Scuba Coiba offers day trips from Santa Catalina to Isla Coiba, but a worthwhile experience is their 2 to 3 day trips which combine diving with ecotours of the islands. To protect the island, overnight accommodations are only available at the ranger station.

The Pacific waters around Santa Catalina are warm year round, although currents around the deeper waters of Isla Coiba can create cooler thermal layers. Don’t expect the 100+ feet of visibility of the Caribbean, but 50+ is common and ample to see the awesome sites.

Santa Catalina is definitely off the beaten path, even for Panama. But its remoteness is what has kept it protected from the throngs of casual weekend warriors. Santa Catalina is located on the Pacific coast, a 5 to 6 hour drive from either Panama City or David. The road was recently paved all the way into town making driving there an easier proposition. Airport transfers can be arranged with some of the local hotels. For the truly budget minded, the public bus system is also an option.

Divers that want to be amongst the first to explore unspoiled sites and an abundant fishery, should have Santa Catalina, Panama on their short list of scuba diving vacations. It takes a little extra effort to get to Santa Catalina, but great and unique experiences usually do.

By Fred Tittle 

Maui’s best scuba diving is Molokini crater located about 20 minutes by fast boat off the coast of Maui has to be one of the best scuba diving sites in Hawaii and the world. It offers great snorkeling and scuba diving on the inside of the crater with over 100 different species of fish at depths that most free divers can get to, and with the visibility all most always in the 40 to 50 meter range you can see everything from the top making this a truly special place. We did our Maui scuba diving adventure with Ed Robinsons a little expensive but worth the money for the level of attention and overall quality of the experience

For scuba divers the backside wall is awesome with the dive being done as a drift dive on most days. You can really get the feeling of clear water vertigo here when you are looking away from the wall for some of the big stuff that can come by like oceanic manta rays or turtles returning to the surface for some air. Before the first dive we sat on the boat looking over the side into the water and we could see the sharks circling on the bottom at almost 70 meters. As you are swimming on the wall you will see pyramid bluenose and reticulated butterfly’s which are not extremely rare but you really need to look for them in other places in Hawaii if you want to see them. White tip sharks hide out in hole in the wall. We were very fortunate that we witnessed for over10 minutes 2 oceanic manta rays getting cleaned by a school of tang these magnificent graceful creatures get to the be the size of Volkswagens and are fantastic to watch as they swoop and turn while feeding.

After the dives at Molokini crater we went into the area around little Makena beach which is little more famous for being a nude beach, than a premier Hawaii scuba diving site and were rewarded with a find of a dragon moray, arguably the 2 second most beautiful eel behind the blue ribbon eel, which is not found in Hawaii. We saw many other things as well and this dive alone would be worth a dive trip with or without the nudists.

By Max Walker 

Scuba diving is, for those who take part regularly, the ultimate escape from the world you leave behind. You can escape and take yourself on an adventure to see things which you otherwise never would. You enter an hostile environment in relative safety. You see marine life and artefacts which you would never really experience otherwise.One of the best dives that I have done recently was off the shore of Grand Cayman. Stingray City is the nickname of the site. I was taken there by Divers Down, who also offer a Charter service for small groups or groups of up to 16 people. They also take you to much quieter areas, where you will not encounter so many cruise ship passengers causing mayhem. The fish were amazing. If you plan to do any Scuba diving in Grand Cayman then Stingray city is a must. Just a ten minute boat ride across the beautiful Grand Cayman Northsound, will take you to this world famous dive site. In only 12 feet of clear warm turquoise water-protected by the barrier reef-you can interact with dozens of friendly Southern Stingrays. After the short boat ride out to Stingray City, the staff briefed us on how to interact with these gentle playful and cheeky stingrays. They come right up to you, and you must hold your nerve! They come and nibble food right out of your hand. Apparently this happens nowhere else on Earth as these fish are normally timid and are not normally so trustworthy.