hawaii

World’s Best Cave, Cavern and Grotto Dive Sites

Why do the Top 100 Readers Choice Awards, now in their 23rd year, still matter to divers? Because these are your picks, based on thousands of votes from the most experienced dive travelers on the planet. Why do they matter to us? Because every month you hear from our editors on what we think matters in the world of dive travel. For the January/February issue of Scuba Diving we get to listen to you, and we’re taking notes.

Here, we proudly present the No. 1 ranking destinations in the Best Cave/Cavern/Grotto Diving category of the awards. The full list of winning destinations is below.

Caribbean and Atlantic

1 MEXICO

An explosion in eco-adventure tourism has made the Mayan frontier an attractive destination for avid cave divers. Caverns as measureless as the imagination offer unique opportunities for novices, and miles of fresh exploration line present new adventures for seasoned explorers. Glass factories of intricate calcite ornaments fill passages with eye candy. Massive speleothems are stacked like wedding cakes left melting in the tropical heat. Swimming through nature’s time capsule, you’ll spot the exploration-line arrows of diving legends, and perhaps a few artifacts of cultures lost. Refreshing water and endless tunnels present hours of soak time every day. Accessible adventure, extraordinary beauty and a warm culture of colorful hospitality make Mexico the top of the list for cave divers. — Jill Heinerth

Go Now: visitmexico.com

2 Cayman Islands

3 Bay Islands

4 Belize

5 Bonaire

Pacific and Indian Oceans

1 PALAU

Adventurous (and properly trained) divers know that Palau harbors dark secrets ripe for exploration. Over the eons, salt-water erosion carved caverns, tunnels and other exciting structures into the Micronesian archipelago’s limestone geography. At such world-famous sites as Chandelier Cave, Siaes Tunnel and Blue Holes, those brave enough to enter will find thrills and mysteries galore.
Eric Michael

Go Now: pristineparadisepalau.com

2 Hawaii

3 Australia

4 Malaysia

5 Thailand

North America

1 FLORIDA

With crystal-clear water, Florida’s springs offer alluring portals that beckon divers into labyrinthine museums of natural history. Cathedral-size galleries, pristine fossilized remains and a playground of the natural variety make Florida’s caves a seductive attraction for cave divers. The freshening flow, tepid water and easy dive access make a return visit mandatory.
Jill Heinerth

Go Now: visitflorida.com

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The World’s Best Destinations for Wreck Diving

Why do the Top 100 Readers Choice Awards, now in their 23rd year, still matter to divers? Because these are your picks, based on thousands of votes from the most experienced dive travelers on the planet. Why do they matter to us? Because every month you hear from our editors on what we think matters in the world of dive travel. For the January/February issue of Scuba Diving we get to listen to you, and we’re taking notes.

Here, we proudly present the No. 1 ranking destinations in the Best Wreck Diving category of the awards. The full list of winning destinations is below.

Pacific and Indian Oceans

1) CHUUCK

Many places boast a few shipwrecks as gee-whiz alternatives to biological reefs, but there’s only one Chuuk, also known as Truk. More than 50 Japanese ships, planes, subs and all manner of machinery, weaponry and fascinating (and sobering) wartime history are on display, the result of America’s deadly aerial barrage on the Japanese fleet in February 1944. This warm, calm lagoon in Micronesia holds a World War II mari- time museum without equal. The 433-foot-long Fujikawa Maru is superb, both for military and marine-life attractions — Zero fighter planes in the hold, deck guns draped in soft corals — and is shallow enough for novices. Tec divers descend 175 feet onto the phenomenal San Francisco to see tanks, trucks and bombs. Shinkoku offers bright invertebrates and school- ing fish; inside, a soldier’s bones rest in sick bay. Chuuk is also a mass grave, a testament to the tragedy of war. — Brandon Cole

Go Now: visittruk.com

2) Red Sea

3) Palau

4) Thailand

5) Hawaii

North America

1) NORTH CAROLINA

Diving North Carolina’s wrecks doesn’t force you to choose between swimming the top deck alongside sand tiger sharks or penetrating. At a handful of sites, including the USS Indra and the tanker Atlas, drop inside tight quarters to navigate alongside these big fish. — Brooke Morton

Go Now: visitnc.com

2) Florida and Florida Springs

3) Washington

4) California

5) Great Lakes

Caribbean and Atlantic

1) BAHAMAS

You might expect that a nation of 700 islands would boast a massive collection of downed ships — and it does. Your favorite might change to whichever one you dived last, be it the shallow and marine-life-rich SS Sapona cargo steamer off Bimini or Edward Williams off New Providence, where you’ll likely come face to face with Caribbean reef sharks and goliath grouper. — Brooke Morton

Go Now: bahamas.com

2) Cayman Islands

3) Bay Islands

4) Curacao

5) Bonaire

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Hawaii 2.0: A Beautiful Underwater Photo Gallery from the Big Island

Here are 20 images I captured in September 2015, while diving off the west coast of Hawaii’s Big Island from a liveaboard boat.

Last month I shared a gallery from the incredible manta night dive. The images in this gallery are daytime captures of reef and critters. I will be doing one more gallery from this trip, from night dives, which were great!

I hadn’t been diving in Hawaii since I was a newbie, way back in 1997 — long before I even dreamed of becoming an underwater photographer. I was pleasantly surprised to find some very pretty reef structure on some of the sites we dived, and an interesting array of marine animals to photograph. Although Hawaii does not have the amazing biodiversity of destinations like Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, etc., it does have a significant number of endemic species — that is, stuff that is only found in Hawaiian waters, and an impressive population of eels! I saw several varieties on this trip that I had not seen anywhere before.

Hawaii is an easy five-hour flight from hubs on the west coast. Our group chartered the Kona Aggressor, and had a fine time cruising up and down the west coast of Hawaii, enjoying the five dives a day on offer. The Kona Aggressor has an excellent crew, and is well set up for live boat diving (so no transferring self and gear to dinghies to get to the dive sites — all dives are done off the main vessel). The Kona Aggressor has also set moorings on the sites that they regularly dive, which is really great, as they are not damaging any reefs by repetitively dropping a big anchor on them. This is a standard that all live aboard and day boats should aspire to.


Judy G is a traveling underwater photographer. Check out her blog HERE and follow her on Facebook: Judy G Diver

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Hawaii 2.0: A Beautiful Underwater Photo Gallery from the Big Island Read More »

Black Magic: Night Diving with Manta Rays in Kona, Hawaii

Nothing in life is guaranteed. Mantas are (gorgeous) wild animals, and they dance to their own tune. But on the west coast of Hawaii Island, mantas have been showing up to the party with fairly predictable regularity at a dive site just north of Kona Kailua, near the airport.

Imagine this: The fiery sun sets on the horizon. Soon, a flotilla of day boats arrives in the twilight, with their loads of divers and snorkelers nervously gearing up on their decks. These operators send down their divemasters to place some bright lights on the ocean floor, to shine up toward the surface. They also shine down lights from the boats, setting the stage for what is not unlike a light show at a rock concert. The site itself is a rubbly amphitheater on the flats, just above a pretty dive site called Garden Eel Cove.

The numerous divers and snorkelers start splashing into the ocean as darkness descends. The divers drop down to perch on the bottom in about 35 feet of water, lining up behind the lights, while the snorkelers orbit above.

And then, if you are lucky, the mantas show up.

They arrive in squadrons. Sometimes just a handful of animals come to thrill, sometimes a bounty. We hit the jackpot on our manta dive in September 2015, with at least 18 gorgeous, otherworldly rays being counted.

The Kona Aggressor has a great routine for this very special night dive. The boat anchors on its usual mooring for the site, and its passengers have dinner and then leisurely get ready for the dive. Meanwhile, the masses from the many day boats are already enjoying their manta experience. As those divers and snorkelers begin to be wrangled back onto their boats, the Aggressor’s divers jump in off the dive deck, descend, and swim towards the glow of lights in the distance.

And what a scene it is. As I said above, it was not unlike a rock concert, only strangely silent — many beams of light traveling up and down, through the water, lighting up the virtual stage, and the clouds of plankton. Huge stealth bomber-like, black-and-white beasts soaring and zooming and doing tight barrel rolls in front of and over the audience, at times bumping into each other, and occasionally into the divers perched on the bottom. It is beautiful chaos.

It is hard to describe the absolute joy, and awe, of being in the water with these massive, graceful animals. I have been very fortunate and have seen mantas in several locations in my dive travels, besides this recent trip to Hawaii — in Australia, Indonesia, Palau and Thailand. They awe with their size, their sheer poetry of motion, their incredible agility (they can turn on a dime, and give a nickel in change), their strangely beautiful eyes, set far apart on the sides of their wide heads, their gaping mouths as they vacuum up the tiny zooplankton that are attracted to the lights, and their odd cephalic (chin) fins which they can roll up when cruising — or deploy when they are feeding to help to direct the plankton to their mouths. They are truly weird and wonderful critters.

Manta rays are filter feeders (so no big teeth!) and have no other defense mechanism (unlike their cousin the stingray with its treacherous tail), other than their large size — they can grow more than 20 feet in wing span! They feed by opening their cavernous mouths, taking in huge volumes of water and its tiny inhabitants, and filtering out the food through a large amount of spongy tissue in the back of their gullets, while the water passes over their gills.

They come to the site at Garden Eel Cove because of the lights. The nearby night-lit airport, and the added lights from boats and divers, attracts the zooplankton, which makes for fairly easy pickings for the mantas.

And so, unlike seeing mantas beautifully winging their way down a reef, or seeing mantas coming to a cleaning station on a reef to be de-loused (both are also great experiences), the manta night dive in Kona is pretty much a feeding frenzy. It is an exhilarating dive, and the 90 minutes or so that we had to enjoy the show passed so quickly. As we were the last divers in the water, and took our lights with us when we left, several of the mantas actually followed us back to the boat, and hung around off the swim grid for several hours, taking advantage of the lights shining off the stern of the boat to keep the food coming.

So, three final words about the Kona Manta Night Dive: Just Do It. Hawaii diving is lovely, if not hugely diverse. I will be writing more about the nice reef diving and endemic critters, and sharing pictures of both of these in an upcoming article. Kona’s easy accessibility from the west coast of North America makes it a good dive destination. The Manta Night Dive makes it a great one.

Judy G is a traveling underwater photographer. Check out her blog HERE and follow her on Facebook: Judy G Diver

More from Judy G

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Black Magic: Night Diving with Manta Rays in Kona, Hawaii Read More »

Blue Water Series: The Dive Behind the Photo – Part 2

Giant Pacific Manta and Diver by David Valencia “Giant Pacific Mantas are graceful in every turn. It’s no wonder divers fly all over the world to see these gentle giants. However, mantas are listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN (International … Continue reading

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