(CNN) — If solely salt water — sweat, tears and the ocean — actually was the treatment for all the things, as Danish writer Isak Dinesen as soon as stated. Then scuba diving could be simply the antidote the world wanted proper now.

Till it is lastly protected to get out exploring the world once more, nonetheless, you’ll be able to dream of the place to Dive beneath the floor of the ocean for essentially the most wonder-inducing views on the planet.

“There are such a lot of features of scuba diving that could be useful in directing our minds away from worries, stresses and each day calls for,” says medical psychologist and PADI scuba diving teacher Laura Walton, who has dived all over the place from the South Pacific to Scotland.

“In fashionable life, we’re consistently pulled into the previous, current and future by means of our capability to assume,” she says. “However after we dive beneath the water, our consideration is captivated by absorbing experiences of getting into one other world.”

Relying the place you descend, which may imply finning by means of a “Christmas tree forest” of child corals off the Florida Keys, coming nose to nose with a wall of sharks on a French Polynesia atoll or having a stare-down with a large Pacific octopus within the chilly waters of British Columbia.

The world’s most intriguing dive locations take intrepid to the subsequent degree.

Raja Ampat, Indonesia

Bali brings the touring plenty to Indonesia. However intrepid scuba divers know to hop one other flight east within the archipelago to West Papua, the place among the easiest diving on the planet awaits in Raja Ampat.

The clear heat waters of the marine protected areas listed here are house to over 1,300 species of reef fish and veritable fields of corals which might be among the many most pristine on the earth.

“You possibly can come again and say you noticed 9 species of anthias, 5 species of pygmy seahorses,” says Cole, “Indonesia general has continued to over-impress fish and coral geeks. However Raja Ampat deserves its place on the prime.”

Tuamotu Atolls, French Polynesia

After admiring one of the spectacular and dependable shark aggregations on the earth, let the present push you into the atoll’s calm, turquoise lagoon, the place you may spot a manta ray winging its approach throughout the pristine coral beds.

Palau, Micronesia

However till you have submerged underwater on this marine wonderland positioned some 500 miles east of the Philippines in Micronesia, you have not seen Palau in any respect.

Essentially the most well-known Palau dive website, Blue Nook, is a reef that juts out into the open ocean, with large upwellings that entice passing pelagic fish, reef sharks and education clouds of pyramid butterfly fish, amongst many different species.

Native Palau wildlife information, marine biologist and diver Ron Leidich has known as Blue Nook an “underwater Serengeti,” so riveting is the expertise of diving in such an plentiful confluence of marine life.

Divers use a “reef hook” at websites like Blue Nook to tether themselves to rocks to look at the spectacle of passing reef sharks and clouds of tropical fish in what are sometimes sturdy currents.

“Palau is fingers down the very best place we have ever been diving,” says diver Frances Gulick, of Dallas, Texas, who often takes a number of dive journeys a 12 months along with her husband. “Nothing compares to watching sharks searching in entrance of you whereas a resident Napoleon wrasse photobombs like a pet canine of the ocean.”

Fiji

“There’s one thing about that Fiji blue water and the yellow, purple, purple, inexperienced and pink background of the coral reefs and partitions that makes the entire scene appear to be it was painted by an impressionist grasp,” says Cole, “With anthias and fairy basslets education on most of the reefs, it is as near diving in a kaleidoscope as you will get. A very fractal expertise.”

Famed dive websites like Beqa Lagoon on Viti Levu, Fiji’s fundamental island, draw shark divers to mingle with shark wranglers and eights specie of sharks, with common tiger and bull shark sightings.

Chuuk Lagoon, Micronesia

One of many world’s prime locations for eager wreck divers is Chuuk Lagoon (beforehand known as Truk Lagoon) in Micronesia, the place over 60 Japanese warships had been sunk throughout World Warfare II by the US Navy in Operation Hailstone of 1944.

The violence that rained down on this lovely nook of the world is palpable even underneath water, the place the bones of Japanese victims can nonetheless be seen fused to the metal wrecks. However the profusion of coral life carpeting cargo holds and crawling up the sunken masts and the clouds of tropical fish swirling throughout you drive house the message that life, certainly, goes on.

When you dive only one wreck, make it the 500-foot-long Shinkoku Maru, a former Japanese gas provide ship coated with a rainbow profusion of sponges, smooth corals and anemones.

Key Largo, Florida Keys

The group’s largest coral tree nursery covers 1.5 acres of sea flooring and has greater than 500 coral bushes holding 60 to 100 corals every.

“Corals are important for creating habitat for all of the marine life we wish to see,” says Alice Grainger, communications director for the CRF. “All our genotypes had been initially collected within the wild, in order that they’re very hardy. The corals we’re returning to the reef are thriving.”

And diving by means of a coral nursery, says Grainger, is a singular expertise. “It is like swimming by means of a forest of coral Christmas bushes.”

Vancouver Island, British Columbia

“If it wasn’t for that 45 to 50 diploma Fahrenheit water, you could possibly simply trick your self into pondering you are seeing the colours of the tropics right here,” he says, “The invertebrates — smooth corals, anemones and sea sponges — are significantly colourful.”

Two bucket record chilly water critters divers come right here to see are wolf eels and the large Pacific octopus — the most important octopus on the earth that averages about 110 kilos and 16 toes throughout.

“A lot of the realm is swept by sturdy currents that act as a conveyor belt for the vitamins and oxygen that supercharge marine life,” says Cole, “Studying learn how to dive the tides is vital to having fun with what Vancouver Island has to supply.”

Sea of Cortez, Baja, Mexico

It is unimaginable to speak about diving within the Sea of Cortez (also referred to as the Gulf of California) with out name-dropping a legend. In spite of everything, it was Jacques Cousteau himself who referred to the wealthy waters between the Baja California Peninsula and Mexico’s mainland as “the world’s aquarium.”

Encounters with pleasant California sea lions (the juveniles tend to playfully nip at divers’ fins) are the most typical lure in the case of in-water interactions. However the greater than 800 species of fish and animals that decision these waters house additionally embrace manta rays, whale sharks, education hammerheads and megapods of dolphins.

Cocos Island, Costa Rica

Diving by liveaboard dive boats is the one technique to entry Cocos Island, a distant Pacific Ocean island that belongs to Costa Rica and lies some 330 miles off the mainland.

“Enchanting is a phrase that will get kicked round rather a lot in journey, but when a jungle island ringed with waterfalls proper out of Jurassic Park the place each dive is a shark dive would not do it for you, I do not know what’s going to,” says Mary Frances Emmons, editor-in-chief of Scuba Diving journal.

Cocos Island is an jap Pacific approach station for each form of creature, she says, from Galapagos and hammerhead sharks to parrot fish, squirrel fish, rays and jacks by the hundreds.

“We received fortunate close to the tip of our dive after we came across a pack of white tip sharks in a searching frenzy not removed from the floor,” she recollects, “An uncommon daytime glimpse at a prime nighttime attraction in Cocos.”

Bahamas

Divers kneel on the sandy backside on the dive website known as Tiger Seashore, the place tiger sharks are available in shut off the western finish of Grand Bahama throughout one of many Bahamas’ most legendary dives. And Cole says there is not any higher place than right here to see the striped apex predators.

However many different apex sharks might be frequently seen and dived with within the mouthwash-clear waters of the Bahamas, too, he says, together with nice hammerheads, lemon sharks, bull sharks and oceanic whitetips.

Add to that adrenalin rush the Bahamas’ many shipwrecks, plunging partitions and the prospect to frequently snorkel with wild dolphins off islands like Bimini and you have the all makings for an epic journey a brief jaunt from the US.

Solomon Islands

The world’s most fascinating dive locations blow you away under the water after which once more once you floor, too.

A cultural mixture of Melanesian, Polynesian and Papuan influences swirl on land. And for divers, there are limitless shipwrecks, downed airplanes and even sunken submarines to discover throughout expeditions by way of liveaboard dive boats or from land-based eco resorts.

Add to that plentiful fish life, pristine pastures of laborious coral and genuine village visits, and you will find tradition, historical past and marine biology intertwined at each flip.

Nationwide Park Revillagigedo, Mexico

Most divers, nonetheless, are drawn to the realm for intimate encounters with big oceanic manta rays, which generally have wingspans of 23 toes. “However interactions with wild bottlenose dolphins within the water right here have turn into simply nearly as good,” says Higuera.

Poor Knights Islands, New Zealand

New Zealand’s topside views (most from the South Island) get the lion’s share of the Hollywood love.

Residence to thick kelp forests, the waters right here do not precisely beckon like Bali (throughout the southern hemisphere summer season, water temperatures common about 72 levels). But it surely’s exactly the combination of New Zealand’s cooler ocean waters mixing with heat currents swept south from the Coral Sea that make for the bizarre denizens that cruise the Poor Knights.

“Biologically it is neat as a result of it is a mixing of chilly and heat water critters,” says Cole, which implies you may see parrot fish, moorish idols and sea turtles alongside cool water critters like scorpion fish and the ever-present blue and pink maomaos (colourful fish that are likely to congregate in arches and shadowy grottoes).

“Of us go to New Zealand for inexperienced journey and to be exterior, however only a few go under the water line,” says Cole, “And the water within the Poor Knights is actually tropical blue.”

Purple Sea, Egypt

Right here, off the tip of the Sinai Peninsula between Africa and the Center East at Egypt’s Ras Mohammed Nationwide Park, you will discover among the clearest seas on the planet for scuba diving (there may be nearly no pure runoff from the Sinai to cloud the encircling waters).

Extraordinary partitions of wholesome laborious corals abound. And round Dahab and Sharm al Sheikh you’ll be able to entry many dive websites proper from the shore, with no boat required.

“Orange anthias are all over the place and never shy with divers, who can also discover themselves surrounded by angelfish, butterflyfish and colourful broadtail and Napoleon wrasse,” says Emmons.

Wreck divers enjoyment of descending on the well-known British Navy ship SS Thistlegorm, the Purple Sea’s hottest wreck. Emmons says so as to add the previous cargo ship, the Giannis D, to your wreck wishlist, too.

“it is a playfully disorienting jungle health club that means diving in an M.C. Escher drawing, come to life,” she says.

Dominica

However along with its coral-clad partitions and reefs, Dominica provides one thing many Caribbean islands cannot — the prospect to swim with resident sperm whales that frequent the waters throughout specifically permitted boat journeys.

Even for those who come to the Caribbean’s Nature Island simply to dive the reefs, nonetheless, you will not go away upset. And the place to see the corals and fish life at their finest is throughout the protected Soufriere-Scotts Head Marine Reserve on the island’s southwest tip.

Portugal

Divers needn’t enterprise far past Lisbon for a few of mainland Europe’s most dazzling underwater views.

A lot farther offshore, the volcanic archipelago of the Azores delivers with open ocean dives and sightings of the resident sperm whales. On the submerged seamount known as Princess Alice Banks within the Azores, shoals of mobula rays swim in circles across the pinnacle at a depth of round 90 toes in what can solely be described as a vortex of marvel.