⌛ The Real Top 10

There seems to be sufficient interest in this topic to merit its own thread, so for convenience I have started a new thread to collect all such posts.

Let's generate The World's Top 10 Dive Destinations.

Here's the rules:

- Everyone gets one vote for their personal top 3 dive destinations - pls provide the destination names (in order of preference) together with reasons why you rate it so highly.

- Let's define a 'dive destination' as a location where you can go diving, together with the surrounding areas that can be comfortably reached from that same location. So as an example: Apo Island w/be a destination and you could include all the Dauin shore dives in that too, cos they are all easily reached from the same place.

- I'll keep a tally of the votes and publish results periodically, so we can see if Apo really is in this forum's top 10 (may be a little bit of favouritism to be expected in the results, but we'll ignore that ).

Ok, all understand? So, let's get crackin...

 

No Postings on this thread yet? What a shame ...

Okay, well I’ll post mine then to get things started:

1. Banda Islands, Indonesia

The beauty about these islands is that they combine the superb diversity of the Coral Triangle with big schools of fish and lots of pelagics. It has a fantastic variety of marine life, as you’d expect for a destination 300 km from Raja Ampat, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. For me it beats Raja Ampat because it has enormous school of reef fish – triggerfish, and fusiliers in trains so thick that you can’t see through them and so many it takes several minutes for them to pass. And of course, they attract all the hunters and pelagics – big schools of unicornfish, snappers, trevallies, dogtooth tuna, barracudas and sharks too! For Asia, this phenomenon is very rare indeed if not unique (okay, Sipadan has good schooling fish too). Then there’s the other stuff that are rare most places but common here – schools of mobula rays, diving with dolphins and whales.

On top of that, there is superb macro diving at Banda Neira, which has mandarinfish, slipper lobsters, anemone crabs etc, and also the Magic Reef at Gunung Api – a reef that defies belief, a reef on lava-induced steroids!

Banda Islands can easily be combined with Ambon too on a liveaboard – Ambon was the first name in muck diving, and remains one of the best. Home to the eponymous Ambon scorpionfish, but also loads of frogfish, Halimeda ghostpipefish , loads of good stuff.

Altogether a superb combination – hardly anyone else out there too. My No. 1 just now!

2. Inhambane, Mozambique

You ever wanted to know what the reef was like before people stared to fish? Then try this place. Due to the civil war that went on for 17(?) years, there was only subsistence fishing done from the shore line. Get a few kilometres offshore and the reef is just as nature intended! Huge, huge fish – 2m Malabar and Potato groupers, huge bio-masses of fish! Each fish as large as they should be, instead of fished out before they have had the chance to grow fully (trumpet fish over a metre long). And the biggest manta rays I have ever seen! 6/7 metres! Also there is superb shark diving – lots of reef sharks, but also Zambezi (that name again) sharks, tigers, and some oceanics. Also great for big turtles (loggerhead and leatherbacks), large guitar sharks, and whale sharks.

On top of that, well when you visit the place, you feel like you are in another world – a place that time forgot. And the diving is not only like a feeling that no others have dived there before, but no others have been there before!

3. Lembeh Strait, Indonesia

Gotta have this place to get my balance right between big and small! It’s my favourite muck place, and the favourite of many dive professionals and conservation bodies and nature groups too.

The beauty is not just that there are so man crazy critters to see – mimics, stargazers, weedy scorpionfish sea moths, bobbit squid, flamboyant cuttlefish – but that there are so many of them and so easy to find! You first go there thinking you might find one or two, but in Lembeh it’s highly likely you’ll see them all … several times!

Also, just to add variety to Lembeh, there are a couple of wrecks there, and some reefs in the north of the strait. Some of the operators will even take you to Bangka Island, outside the strait if the seas are flat.

So, that’s mine. How about anyone else? Agree or got some other top places that you prefer?

 

my favorites

This is a very hard one for me as I can't remember all the places I have been and dived as it goes back so many years. Frankly I could give a sh*t about photography and the pretty little stuff. Pretty reefs were dazzling but after awhile that would play itself out. I like big fish, wrecks and open water near and off walls. In any event following are some of my favorite not in any order or detail unless I can really remember

Eluthera Bahamas - drift diving in Spanish Wells
Bimini Bahamas - drift diving on the Bimini wall
About 50km north of Jeddah Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea in 1978 - reef and wall diving in water never dived or probably touched by humans before. Unreal beauty and more predator sharks than can be counte
Fuga Island, Philippines

North Miami Beach, FL - a new wreck we just found about 2.5 miles off the beach in early 2005. Lying in 105' a large 80 plus foot cabin cruiser that on any given dive had around 20 -25 black, red and gag groupers ranging up to 40+ pounds. We would take just one to two every other weekend and that would feed us all good filets and steaks for the week. Population NEVER dwindled to this day because of our conservation methods. No one knows our sites
Government Cut Miami Beach - A wall running down the cut to around 45 feet deep. At start of Lobster Season literally hundreds to be had. Within the first month of season I always had about 200 bugs in my freezer. Was the most popular guy on the block. lots of fun catching spiny lobsters

Not very exciting probably to most but for me made my life very happy when i was underwater especially chasing a good fish.

Nevertheless I hope to check out The Kids suggestions in Indonesia as they sound unreal and places that will give me special memories forever I suspect.

thanks kid for sharing.

 

Bali ?? Forget It !!

FROM BALI , Nusa Dua has over 20 !! exporters of life ( more already half dead) marinefish and CORAL for the aquarium trade . Frenchmen Bernard Briuquer ( Bali BLue ) has 400 !! bankas 7 days collecting FISH AND CORAL in bali waters and exports over 1.1000 boxes of fish plus corals to Los Angels , paris and London just to name some distinations. That is a great great deal of animals we are talkign about . Mind you expoorting does not been collecting some 60 perecent or more is killed during collection and "quarantaine"as the refer to call it MY @ss !!!!

They use TUBA which is a "nicer word "then CYANIDE and added chemicals that WIPE out ALL palcton , corals and so on..
In the Phils they still uses Cyanide for sure but only for some 3 !! kinds of fish that they have NOT been able to catch so far by other means... Thes fishes are not very high in command anyway as result of porr survival cchances.
I could write a book , but I have to wrok for my moeny and cannot spend a whole day just writing here .. Want to know more ?? Send me a PM !!!

CORALS are shipped form, Balii ( NEVER EVER ONE !! piece FROM THR PHILS all boxes at manila airport are Double checekd!!) and all importers get BURNED while receing at destination IF they find ONE !! pc forkj the phils inthere.. loosing AT SITE there IMPORT PEREMIT !!

Shiiping form Bali needs CITES PERMIT and that is ALLWAYS given , but also bought and xerox . Philippines has NO CITES and therefor cannot ,wiill not sedn corals .. If you don,t take my word again for this FINE !!! Chevck it with the BFAR in Quezon city !! ALSO NO !!! SEAHORSES ,CLAMS are shipped from the Phils.. But bali.. WAL PROBLEMA ..

 

Never even been to the Caribbean, never mind dived over there, so can't comment at all.

I do have a good colleague of mine though that lives in Saudi (he works in OPC industry) - been there ten years - He's always going on about how wonderful some of the southern remote sites are over there - mostly places I've never heard of, and certainly couldn't spell!

 

Interesting...as I would have been in the same area in '78...north of Obhur Creek (lived in Shorbatly at the time - north end of Jeddah) loved driving along the dirt track (stuck a few times too). Yes, fantastic there....zillions upon zillions of fish...White Tip city, and biggest I've seen (except maybe Jizan)....could count on seeing several everytime. Best experience was having three twirling around me at the same time close enough to touch....worst experience was spearing trevally's and having mr tiger come around...I lived in Jeddah 78-82, came back to Oz for a couple years, and then 84-91 again with Saudia.

So how did you end up diving there...no tourists there...only expat staff and their families..

Speaking of the area...there were some submerged reefs about 500 - 1000 meters off the dropoffs. We used to tow rafts with our gear across the 'very' deep channels to get to them. That was drop-dead...the best diving possible...I know I'll never ever see anything like it again....

By the way, the area is now beach houses and high-rises....virtually nothing left....

 

Jeddah

Don't have clearest memory of it. But, Yea EXACTLY as you described it. white tips. scary sh*t. My stepdad was a builder in Riyadh so I was there for three months just to hang out. Went diving near jeddah EXACTLY as you described and Rod and Reel fishing in Daharan and caught huge King Fish over 50lbs. Incredible. Also surfing down the sand dunes. Very cool suff. I was 22 at the time.

 

Jeddah

Forgot to mention the HUGE Tigers. More scary than the white tips. Wow can't believe the development has wiped it all out in just 30 years. SUCKS. back then only a dirt road all the way up the coast. At 51 I am actually content and very, very grateful that I have been fortunate to see things underwater that can never be seen again. My yet to be born daughter which I will be putting in the water at 6 months and hopefully diving by age 7 will not have the opportunity to see anything close to the stuff I have except in sea aquarium parks. Conservarion needs to get going now.

 

Yes..the things I've seen out there I know I'll never see again..Groupers big enough to easily eat me...wizened old black barracuda ten foot plus...sharks actually feeding on the 'too slow' reef fish...Amazing...if you've seen Star Wars..that's what sharks are like when they are in attack mode. Lightning fast. You can't imagine it until you see it. The water, crystal clear and warm enough to stay all day. Sadly by the mid-80's it was pretty much over north of the creek, and I was out there almost every weekend....I switched to diving south of Jeddah...a long drive south...and it stayed good there until I left. But again, I've been told that it is also beach houses and condos now...the silt and pollution has killed the reefs. Now divers need a good drive towards Jizan...

I miss those days....maybe in very remote areas of the Philippines they could be duplicated...when I get the time I'll try to find out.

 

Yes, PADI refer to it as 'shifting benchmarks' - those newer divers that have no experience of diving in the 70s (and still 80s in some places), will have no personal experience of what bio-mass once was (or could be).

Therefore when newer divers judge sites, their benchmark is significantly lower than older divers. And so the process goes on and on as our seas are emptied.

I find it heart-breaking that there are really so few places left on earth where we can still see big schools of fish and big specimens of particular fish too.