Scuba diving destinations around the world

Choosing a destination

How to choose between scuba diving destinations

The best destination is the one that matches your experience and the kind of diving you enjoy. Glossy photos make every reef look the same. These are the questions that separate them.

How experienced are you?

New divers do best where the water is calm and shallow, and where dive centers are used to teaching. Shore diving from a sheltered coast, or short boat dives on a fringing reef, lets you build confidence without currents or depth. Places with strong currents, open-ocean conditions or deep walls are better saved until you have more dives and, often, an advanced certification. Each regional page notes which destinations suit beginners and which expect experience.

How warm do you want the water?

Tropical reefs are warm enough for a thin wetsuit all year, while California, New Zealand and the Atlantic islands call for a thick wetsuit or a drysuit. Cold water is no reason to skip a destination: kelp forests and temperate reefs are some of the most beautiful diving there is. But it changes what you pack and how long you will be comfortable underwater. Our scuba gear guide explains wetsuit thickness and when a drysuit makes sense.

What do you want to see?

• Colorful reefs and small life: the Coral Triangle in Indonesia and Malaysia, the Red Sea and the southern Caribbean.
• Sharks and big animals: the Galápagos, the Bahamas, French Polynesia, Costa Rica's offshore islands and parts of southern Africa.
• Wrecks: the Red Sea, Bermuda, the Florida Keys, Barbados and the lagoons of the Marshall Islands.
• Walls and drop-offs: the Cayman Islands, Belize and Cozumel.
• Kelp forests and cold-water life: California and New Zealand.

When can you travel?

Many destinations have a best season, set by rain, wind, water temperature or animal migrations. Hurricane season in the Caribbean and the Atlantic runs from June to November. Monsoon seasons close some dive areas in Southeast Asia for part of the year. And some encounters, such as humpback whales or the southern African sardine run, happen only in certain months. Check the season in each destination guide before you book flights.

How far do you want to travel?

A long-haul trip to a remote atoll suits a week or two of diving. A long weekend suits a destination with direct flights and dive centers close to the hotels. Liveaboards, boats you sleep on for a week while diving remote sites, reach places day boats cannot, but they expect you to be comfortable doing three or four dives a day.

How it works

How our destination guides work

DiveHaus and the destination guides work as a team. The four region pages above compare destinations side by side: what the water is like, what you are likely to see, who each place suits and when to go. Once you have a shortlist, each destination guide goes into the detail for that one place: individual dive sites, local dive shops and resorts, seasons, and how to plan the trip.

Splitting it this way keeps each page focused. A single page cannot do justice to Bonaire's dozens of shore dives, the reefs of Raja Ampat and the wrecks of the Red Sea at once. You can read more about DiveHaus and the network.

A few terms you will see

• Shore diving: walking or swimming in from the beach or rocks instead of diving from a boat.
• Drift diving: letting a current carry you along a reef while the boat follows your bubbles.
• Wall diving: diving along a reef that drops steeply into deep water.
• Muck diving: searching sandy or silty slopes for unusual small creatures.
• Liveaboard: a boat you live on for several days while it takes you to remote dive sites.