Best Destination for Diving

During the past year, thousands of our readers and web visitors filled out reports on destinations, which are the basis for our annual Top 100 Readers' Choice awards. Here are the cream of the crop winners in the Best Destination for Diving category.

CARIBBEAN AND ATLANTIC REGION

Top 5

1. Turks and Caicos
2. Bonaire
3. Cozumel
4. Cayman Islands
5. Bay Islands

1. Turks and Caicos

If you spent the rest of your life exploring the underwater realms of the destinations on this list, you’d die a happy diver. For many divers, a lifetime is what you’ll need to fully explore the Turks & Caicos, two island chains that sit atop a pair of limestone banks separated by the 6,000-foot-deep Turks Island Passage. Renowned for their beaches and surrounded by gorgeous water that ranges in color from aquamarine to Windex blue, the islands’ dive sites are clustered off protected lee coasts where healthy coral gardens lead to sheer vertical walls that plunge beyond recreational depths. Visit here between January and May to see migrating humpback whales, and year-round for fly-bys with eagle rays, manta rays, and a healthy population of sharks.

PACIFIC & INDIAN OCEANS REGION

Top 5

1. TIE: Philippines and Malaysia
3. Galapagos
4. Indonesia
5. French Polynesia

1. Philippines

One day you could be floating over lush soft coral, or swimming straight into a school of jacks. Tomorrow, it could be a fast drift past giant elephant-ear corals and clouds of bluetooth triggerfish, or mucking about the wrecks of two cars that have become home to a small battalion of ghost pipefish. In the Philippines, you get a little bit of everything, with a lot of the eye-popping color and fish life this Southeast Asia archipelago is known for.

1. Malaysia

While there’s good (and inexpensive) diving off Peninsular Malaysia, Malaysia’s reputation for world-class diving is justifiably linked to the satellite islands off the coast of Sabah, on the island of Borneo. In the west, Layang Layang is famous for hammerhead sharks and massive walls draped in corals and sea fans; in the east, it’s a quartet of islands that are the envy of every diver who’s never been. The Mecca for divers is Sipadan, an epicenter of big-animal encounters and home to a turtle tomb and tornadoes of barracuda. While Sipadan closed its doors to resorts a decade ago, it’s still accessible from macro paradises Mabul, Kapalai, and Lankayan islands, just a short boat ride away.

NORTH AMERICA REGION

Top 5

1. British Columbia, Canada
2. Florida Keys
3. North Carolina
4. Channel Islands, California
5. Monterey, California

1. British Columbia, Canada

Yes, it’s cold, the vis can be limited and tidal currents can rip. But with 17,000 miles of Pacific coastline, British Columbia delivers an impressive dive resume that has consistently placed it at or near the top of this category for the better part of two decades. Check out our Top 5 lists to see why: B.C. is found on nearly every one, and is No. 1 on the Best Marine Life, Healthiest Marine Environment, Best Macro and Best Wall categories. From exciting wreck dives and animal encounters with sea lions, harbor seals and wolf eels to gorgeous kelp forests and a plethora of photogenic encrusting invertebrates, B.C.’s rich offerings have deservedly earned Canada’s westernmost province its designation as North America’s Best Destination for Diving.

How We Got the Numbers

Thousands of Scuba Diving subscribers and web users rated their experiences at dive ­destinations in a variety of categories on a scale of one to five. A minimum number of responses was required for a destination to be included in these ratings. Final scores represent the percentage of fours (very good) and fives (excellent) awarded. The destinations were then ranked according to these scores.