How I rank the diving.
I favour trips with sharks and other big animals, healthy reefs and enough variety for a week of diving. These scores reflect those preferences. If you prefer wrecks or small marine life, your list will look different.
What moves a place up
- Big animals that turn up often enough to plan around.Sharks, mantas, tuna, whale sharks, dolphins and other pelagics carry more weight than macro life.
- A reef worth looking at between encounters.The quality of the other dives matters, even on a trip built around one shark site.
- What is happening now.Recent dive logs, reef reports, season guides and trip footage help show what the diving is like.
- A complete week of diving.A choice of good sites matters more than one memorable dive.
- How often the animals are seen.Wildlife is never guaranteed. The score reflects how much has to go right for the trip to work.
Scores assume the best months.
A destination with a short good season can still rank highly. The calendar shows the best time to dive each destination, rather than every month diving is possible.
Price and travel time.
Price and flight time do not affect the score. Neither does difficulty on its own. Check the experience level and conditions on each guide to decide whether a trip suits you.
What the sources tell us.
The guides draw on operator season advice, park and tourism information, dive reports and trip videos. These sources help with planning, but they cannot predict the conditions or sightings on your trip.
Footage from dive trips.
The videos give a sense of the sites and conditions. Remember that even a long trip video usually shows the highlights.
How to read a number out of ten
- 9.5–9.9
- The strongest choices for big-animal encounters and a varied itinerary.
- 9.0–9.4
- Excellent diving, with less consistent sightings or less variety than the highest-ranked trips.
- 8.5–8.9
- Very good diving, with tradeoffs in reef condition, sightings or variety.
- 7.9–8.4
- Good trips, often better suited to a particular interest than to this list’s big-animal priorities.
- 10.0
- No destination currently has a perfect score. Conditions and sightings always vary.
When the list changes
Scores change when new information warrants a review: reef condition, repeated dive reports, changes in sightings or firsthand advice from operators. A wording or design update does not change the dive-information review date.
Each destination links to a season guide. Photos link to their source pages, and videos name their creators. Ask an operator for recent dive logs before booking.