Cayman Brac in the Cayman Islands is considered one of the world’s premier scuba diving vacation destinations and is home to hundreds of varieties of fish, corals, and marine life. The pristine beauty of the warm Caribbean Sea provides a spectacular marine environment for reef, wall, and wreck diving. One of the interesting dives is a 330-foot (100-m) Russian Ko...

Jellyfish Lake is a marine lake located on Eil Malk island in Palau. Eil Malk is part of the Rock Islands, a group of small, rocky, mostly uninhabited islands in Palau's Southern Lagoon, between Koror and Peleliu. There are about 70 other marine lakes located throughout the Rock Islands. Jellyfish Lake is one of Palau's most famous dive (snorkeling only) sites. It is ...

The Peacock Springs Cave system in Florida is one of the largest underwater caves in the continental United States with over 28,000 feet (8,500 m) of explored passageway. The cave system consists of seven major springs and sink holes, six of which are located within Peacock Springs State Park. Peacock Springs is a popular destination for cave divers all over the world...

The Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument is a U.S. National Monument located off Saint John, Virgin Islands. The clear waters surrounding Saint John support a diverse and complex system of coral reefs. The health of these reefs is closely tied to its component plants and animals as well as adjacent non-coral marine environments such as sandy bottoms, seagrass b...

The Tobago Cays are an archipelago comprising five small uninhabited islands - Petit Rameau, Petit Bateau, Baradol, Petit Tobac and Jamesby - located in the Southern Grenadines. The Tobago Cays are now the key element of the Tobago Cays Marine Park, a national park and wildlife preserve run by the St.Vincent and the Grenadines government. The Tobago Cays Marine Park c...

Ningaloo Reef is a fringing coral reef located off the west coast of Australia, approximately 1200 km north of Perth. The reef is 260 km long and is Australia's largest fringing coral reef and the only large reef positioned very close to a landmass. It is known for its seasonal feeding concentrations of the whale shark, and the conservation debate surrounding its pote...

Occasionally man and nature interact in a way that creates opportunities that would not otherwise be possible. On the Big Island of Hawaii’s Kona Coast hotels shine flood lights on the water after sunset to the delight of their guests. Over the years these lights have attracted schools of plankton which in turn have beckoned giant Manta Rays (in a natural comple...

Cozumel is an island in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Cozumel is a tourist destination for its balnearios, scuba diving, and snorkeling. In 1960, Jacques Cousteau was introduced by locals to the extent and beauty of Palancar Reef, the coral reefs at the south of Cozumel and publicized it as one of the best places to go scuba di...

The Great Blue Hole is a large underwater sinkhole off the coast of Belize. It lies near the center of Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 70 kilometres (43 mi) from the mainland and Belize City. The hole is circular in shape, over 300 metres (984 ft) across and 124 metres (407 ft) deep. It was formed during several episodes of Quaternary glaciation when sea levels were mu...

Gansbaai ("bay of geese," sometimes referred to as Gans Bay) is a fishing village and popular tourist destination in the Overberg District Municipality, Western Cape, South Africa. It is known for its dense population of Great White Sharks and as a whale-watching location. The main tourist attraction in Gansbaai since approximately 1995 has been cage diving with Great...

In 1969, French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and his team explored Truk Lagoon. Following Cousteau's 1971 television documentary about the lagoon and its ghostly remains, the place became a scuba diving paradise, drawing wreck divingenthusiasts from around the world to see its numerous, virtually intact sunken ships. The shipwrecks and remains are sometimes referred...

Sipadan is the only oceanic island in Malaysia, rising 600 metres (2,000 ft) from the seabed. It is located in the Celebes Sea off the east coast of Sabah, East Malaysia (which is on the island of Borneo). It was formed by living corals growing on top of an extinct volcanic cone that took thousands of years to develop. Sipadan is located at the heart of the Indo-Pacif...

Ras Mohammad is a national park in Egypt at the southern extreme of the Sinai Peninsula, overlooking the Gulf of Suez on the west and the Gulf of Aqaba to the east. Ras Mohammad encompasses two islands, Tiran and Sanafir. Tiran Island is located approximately 6 km offshore from the Sinai Peninsula. Underwater caves formed as the result of earthquakes are located in Ra...

Stingray City is a series of shallow sandbars found in the North Sound of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. It is just inside a natural channel that passes through the barrier reef and consists of a string of sandbars crossing the North Sound from Morgan Harbour to Rum Point. It is a tourist attraction, where southern stingrays are found in abundance and visitors can pet ...

The Rock Islands of Palau, also called Chelbacheb, are a small collection of limestone or coral uprises, ancient relics of coral reefs that violently surfaced to form Islands in Palau's Southern Lagoon, between Koror and Peleliu, and are now an incorporated part of Koror State. There are between 250 to 300 islands in the group according to different sources, with an a...