Sam’s Tours and Paddling Palau offer a range of above water and below-surface expeditions. “Nothing compares to watching sharks hunting in front of you while a resident Napoleon wrasse photobombs like a puppy dog of the sea.” “Palau is hands down the best place we’ve ever been diving,” says diver Frances Gulick, of Dallas, Texas, who usually takes several dive trips a year with her husband. Local Palau wildlife guide, marine biologist and diver Ron Leidich has called Blue Corner an “underwater Serengeti,” so riveting is the experience of diving in such an abundant confluence of marine life.ĭivers use a “reef hook” at sites like Blue Corner to tether themselves to rocks to watch the spectacle of passing reef sharks and clouds of tropical fish in what are often strong currents. And you can enjoy their incredible grace and power as they glide through the water, ignoring the divers around them.”Īfter admiring one of the most impressive and reliable shark aggregations in the world, let the current push you into the atoll’s calm, turquoise lagoon, where you might spot a manta ray winging its way across the pristine coral beds. “Some 75 feet down on the reef, hundreds of grey reef sharks surround you. “The adrenalin kicks in as soon as you jump from the boat into the clear, warm water,” says Bali-based underwater photographer Mike Veitch. When you enter the water on the incoming tide to dive through the passages on atolls like Rangiroa and Fakarava (the latter is designated a UNESCO Biosphere reserve), a very sharky experience unfolds. Leave Bora Bora to the honeymooning, overwater bungalow crowd and hop a flight northeast from Papeete in Tahiti to get to the Tuamotu Atolls instead – a chain of 80 islands and atolls that look, from the air, like coral ring life preservers tossed across an expanse of water that could blanket most of Western Europe The world’s most intriguing dive destinations take intrepid to the next level.Ī blacktip reef shark swims alongside a school of one-spot snappers in French Polynesia. “But when we dive beneath the water, our attention is captivated by absorbing experiences of entering another world.”ĭepending where you descend, that might mean finning through a “Christmas tree forest” of baby corals off the Florida Keys, coming face to face with a wall of sharks on a French Polynesia atoll or having a stare-down with a giant Pacific octopus in the cold waters of British Columbia. “In modern life, we are constantly pulled into the past, present and future through our ability to think,” she says. “There are so many aspects of scuba diving that may be beneficial in directing our minds away from worries, stresses and daily demands,” says clinical psychologist and PADI scuba diving instructor Laura Walton, who has dived everywhere from the South Pacific to Scotland. Until it’s finally safe to get out exploring the world again, however, you can dream of where to dive beneath the surface of the ocean for the most wonder-inducing views on the planet. Then scuba diving would be just the antidote the world needed right now. If only salt water – sweat, tears and the sea – really was the cure for everything, as Danish author Isak Dinesen once said.
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