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Scuba Diving

THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, ECUADOR
On Darwin, the northernmost of the Galßpagos’s 13 major islands, every precarious niche of its black, volcanic cliffs has been colonized by blue-footed boobies. The air above is so thick with frigate birds that the island always appears to be smoldering.

But though the Galßpagos Archipelago is a well-known naturalists’ haunt because of its fearless fauna — the historic finches, lumbering saddleback tortoises, and cactus-munching iguanas — too few pilgrims realize that these seamounts are among the most exciting dive destinations in the world. A typical Galßpagos dive begins with an escort of rowdy sea
jacks, heads down to tame bacalao about the size and disposition of golden retrievers, and proceeds on to some main event, which can be as diverse as a mud-flat of red-lipped batfish, a field of active volcanic vents, or a channel choked with a thousand slowly circling hammerhead sharks.

At Darwin and Wolf Islands, where the South Equatorial Current washes the rugged slopes with the archipelago’s warmest waters, the hammerhead parade never ceases. Some ancient agenda commands that they fin against the current, heads sweeping back and forth like metal-detecting machines, oblivious to divers crouched behind boulders just inches away. While the presence of
hammerheads is almost guaranteed, you also might see whale sharks, sperm whales, manta rays, marine iguanas, and penguins — as well as more than 300 species of fish (nearly 50 are endemic), all in pre-human profusion and still behaving as if people had never arrived.

Galßpagos Aggressor I and II, 80-foot, 14-passenger luxury dive boats, offer seven-day trips ($2,345-$2,445 per person, including three daily dives, weights and belts, land trips, and all meals). Call 800-348-2628.

Lammer Law, a 95-foot trimaran that accommodates 18 guests in nine staterooms, has seven-night trips ($2,030-$2,250 per person, double occupancy, including meals, island excursions, airport transfers, tanks and weights, and three daily dives). Call 800-525-3833 or 510-794-1599 in California. — Bucky McMahon

LITTLE CAYMAN, CAYMAN ISLANDS
Sure, Grand Cayman has some great scuba diving. But listen, do you really want to have anything to do with an island whose most famous dive is a 12-foot dunk into a school of Pavlovian stingrays guaranteed to wing the instant some big-eyed snorkeling wonk shows up with a bag of frozen squid? We think not.

Leave the stingray sideshow behind and head for Little Cayman, Grand Cayman’s unsullied, wild sister isle 75 miles to the northeast. The tiny island has a year-round population of about 50, a couple of low-key lodges, a grass airstrip, and several fast dive boats that can whisk you to the best diving in the Caribbean. And — this is key — the goofy-tourist factor is
so low that even the signs that caution motorists to watch for rock iguanas seem quite grave.

You’ll dive in Bloody Bay Marine Park on the island’s north side, where the mile-deep wall falls away just a few hundred yards from the spiky ironshore coast. You’ll shimmy past giant barrel sponges and delicate purple sea fans, and into natural swimmable mazes created by deep spur-and-groove reefs. You’ll fin over sand plateaus where swaying, vertical-standing garden eels form
a kind of living, bebopping lawn. And in addition to a parade of sea turtles, parrotfish, grouper, snapper, bar jacks, angelfish, and wrasse, you’ll encounter refreshingly aloof stingrays who think of you only as some big ugly fish — and not as an automatic squid dispenser.

At Little Cayman Beach Resort, dive packages start at $612 (late December through mid-April) per person for three nights, including all meals and five one-tank dives; mid-April through mid-December rates are $557. Call 800-327-3835.
— Meg Lukens Noonan

COCOS ISLANDS, COSTA RICA
As mating rituals go, few species inhabiting the rich depths around Cocos Island run a gauntlet as spectacular as that of the male marbled stingray. Like fluttering magic carpets, these amorous fellows soar after their dates across underwater canyons, over cliffs, and through gorges, weaving among reef sharks, hammerheads, barracuda, and octopus. If all goes well — a big
“if” — the guys and gals end up on a rock in one heaping pile, like a stack of giant flapjacks on the side of a griddle.

It is, of course, just one of many aquatic soap operas unfolding off tiny Cocos, a 273-square-mile dot situated all alone in the Pacific, 311 miles west of Costa Rica. Part of a mostly submerged volcanic chain, Cocos towers suddenly from the ocean, its steep, jungle-covered walls bursting with hundreds of waterfalls that cascade dramatically into the surf. The entire island is
a national park, and except for 14 Costa Rican park rangers, the place remains completely undeveloped and uninhabited.

In fact, the trailless jungle is so impenetrable that no one travels to Cocos except divers, who brave the 30-plus-hour journey from Puntarenas on well-appointed liveaboard yachts. And for ecological reasons, Costa Rica allows just three boats to visit Cocos’s 20 dive sites, which means the place remains one of the planet’s best spots to witness 500 hammerheads on one dive. So,
like all the other big fish, the marble rays cavort uninhibited, flaunting passion that is — sigh — unquestionably deep.

Book the Undersea Hunter (ten-day trip, $2,695, plus $105 national park fee, including transfers from San Jos‰, all meals, and three daily dives) through International Diving Expeditions; 800-544-3483. — Paul Kvinta

THE CHANNEL ISLANDS, CALIFORNIA
Diving the kelp forests of California’s Channel Islands National Park is probably the closest you’ll ever come to experiencing what a bird must feel flying through a tropical rainforest. Giant kelp (macrocystis pyrifera) is the fastest-growing plant on earth, and at any of the four northern Channel Islands — Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel — you’ll swim
through 100-foot-tall underwater cathedrals formed by the towering stems.

Kelp fronds laid over the surface form a ceiling penetrated by dramatic beams of light; schools of large calico bass and bright orange garibaldi patrol the middle of the water column. Red and purple urchins litter the bottom between jumbled boulders holding abalone, spiny lobsters, and horned sharks. On the sandy bottom you’ll find angel sharks, halibut, or even the California
electric ray, which looks like a garbage-can lid with fins and packs a cattle-prodlike punch if tormented. On San Miguel, the westernmost and wildest island, you might dive with a colony of young sea lions, rowdy punks who blow bubbles in your face and like to head-butt and nip visitors. (Better them than the white sharks that also call San Miguel home.)

The crossing to the islands is an adventure in itself. In summer, dive boats regularly encounter feeding blue whales on their trip across the channel. During other seasons you can catch up with migrating gray whales, basking sharks, and the year-round contingents of porpoises numbering in the hundreds. At any time of year it can be a choppy trip, but once on-site the captain
will find a smooth anchorage. Trips run all year and are only cancelled in the event of extremely bad weather.

Truth Aquatics of Santa Barbara (805-962-1127) has three boats equipped with sleeping berths, dual compressors, hot showers, and highly skilled crews. Open-boat day trips are $71 per person; three-day trips are $377 plus meals. — Andrew Rice

THE SOLOMON ISLANDS
The remnants of war waged amid these 922 woolly green islands in the South Pacific will seem the main attraction upon arrival at Guadalcanal’s Henderson Field Airport. Having rented Victory at Sea pretrip, you will of course know that airstrips ignited the World War II conflict in the Solomons, and every wreck-bagger departing Henderson will babble on about the mighty dives that
await you in Iron Bottom Sound off Guadalcanal as a result of all the carnage: sunken battleships, destroyers, submarines, minesweepers, PT boats, and that cool B-17 Flying Fortress Bomber with intact heavy-caliber machine guns.

Way cooler are the masses of marine life these hulks harbor. Trumpet fish slither out of hatches. Lionfish steal about the portholes. Black-masked emperor angelfish patrol the decks while Moorish idols nibble at gorgonias straining from ghostly engine rooms aglow in purple algae.

But in truth, the wilder, sweeter diving most characteristic of the Solomons awaits farther afield. Off such isolated island groups as the Russells and the New Georgias, you’ll encounter sergeant majors and humphead wrasses that do not beg. You may see a hammerhead or three, but odds are far greater that you’ll find a blue ribbon eel or a Spanish dancer or swim through a giant
donut of schooling barracuda than meet a resident moray with a pet name.

Most telling, though, is that the sight of other divers poking along a wall, free-falling in a cave, or flying through an island fissure with 125-foot visibility does not detract from the experience; these would be but your shipmates adding scale to the vast underwater wilderness. Liveaboard dive boats only arrived in the Solomons within the last decade and now total a whopping
three. If you do meet another vessel, it will likely be a dugout powered by islanders selling nautilus shells or tomatoes fresh from their gardens.
Bilikiki Cruises (800-663-5363) runs 7-, 10-, and 13-day trips for $225-$296 per person per day. Solomon Sea’s 7-day trip costs $298 per person per day (888- 628-2644). — Trish Reynales