World's Best Dives: Top 10 Exotic Dive Sites

Those who heed the call of wanderlust won’t settle for returning to the same location, and logging the identical five dive sites, trip after trip. The words familiarity, traditional and comfort zone are not in the vocabulary of these adventure seekers. After all, there’s an allure to exploring new waters, encountering species of marine life that don’t exist in your hemisphere and immersing yourself in a different culture. That irresistible impulse to travel is at the heart of what motivates these divers to visit faraway destinations in pursuit of underwater experiences that are unconventional, unfamiliar and totally surprising.

Richelieu Rock
Andaman Sea, Thailand
Whale sharks are known to cruise the waters between the Similan and Surin islands, and Richelieu Rock, often hailed as the country’s best site, is smack in the middle. The nutrient upwellings here attract more than just the world’s biggest fish. They also draw in manta and devil rays. Plus, the reef itself is thick with the small stuff, including cleaner pipefish, harlequin shrimp and whitemouth morays.

Los Morros
Cabo Pulmo National Park, Mexico
Every underwater fanatic has seen the drool-worthy photos of divers surrounded by or facing tornadoes of schooling grouper, snapper and bigeye trevally. Those now-iconic images were taken at this site, one of the most remote in Baja California that’s still reachable by day boat.

Rangali Madivaru
Maldives
At this Indian Ocean site off the island of Rangali, dozens of manta rays swoop in, checking in at cleaning stations manned by schools of cleaner wrasses. The healthy corals also support leaf fish, midnight snapper and 6-foot Napoleon wrasse.
Contact: Four Seasons Explorer

READ MORE: The 10 Most Accessible Dive Sites in the World

Hairball
Lembeh Strait, Indonesia
Black sand serves as the backdrop for this famous muck dive where the most wonderful of the bizarre regularly come out to stroll. Think hairy frogfish. And the Melibe viridis nudibranch, appearing like the ribs of a skeleton, locomoting across the sand. Plus blue-ringed octopuses. Essentially, the site is an encyclopedia of who’s who in the muck world.

Blade
Wakatobi Islands, Indonesia
Like the edge of a knife, this thin, long seamount — 20 feet across and 300 feet long — rises from waters 300 feet deep. Every inch is covered in anemones, gorgonians and sea fans, and the whole lot swarms with schooling anthias, wrasse, unicornfish and more.

Humpback Whales Encounter
Vava’u, Tonga
From July to October, you can snorkel — and make an eye-to-eye connection — with the humpbacks that come from Antarctica to Tonga’s tropical waters to mate and give birth.

READ MORE: The World's Top 10 Advanced Dives

Monad Shoal
Philippines
This underwater island sitting at the edge of a 
600-foot drop-off is a hot spot for a host of pelagics — namely the thresher shark, a species known for having a tail as long as its entire body.

Bradford Shoals
Kimbe Bay, 
Papua New Guinea
Find this isolated seamount starting in 65 feet of water. Hard corals encrust its top shelf, and farther down, colonies of leather coral thrive. Color dances over the corals in the form of fairy basslets, butterflyfish and damselfish. At 90 feet, the drop-off is incredibly sheer — and it’s where you’ll meet gray sharks, dogtooth tuna and possibly a hammerhead.

Blue Wall
Beqa Lagoon, Fiji
On the eastern edge of the outer reef that surrounds Beqa Lagoon, this wall dive starts at 15 feet and continues to 150. With visibility of 100 feet and greater, divers can’t miss seeing passing sicklefin lemon sharks, reef sharks, mantas and eagle rays, whether they swim off in the distance or nose up for a close encounter.

Wreck of the Ann
Solomon Islands
This wreck teems with macro life: Nudibranchs, soft-coral crabs, an array of shrimps and crocodilefish are all commonly found.