Palau

Palau sits in the western Pacific, east of the Philippines, and is made up of more than three hundred islands. Its reputation in diving comes from current. Several ocean currents meet along its outer reefs, carrying nutrients to the drop-offs and drawing in sharks, schooling fish and manta rays. In Palau you rarely go looking for big animals. You find a spot in the current and wait for them to pass.

Blue Corner is the dive most people come for. It is a reef plateau that juts into open water, and when the current pushes across it divers clip a reef hook to dead rock and hang off the edge. Grey reef sharks patrol a few metres away, Napoleon wrasse drift past and jacks and barracuda school overhead. German Channel, a channel cut between the lagoon and the open sea, has manta cleaning stations on a sandy bottom and usually gentler water. Ulong Channel is a classic drift on an incoming tide over a field of hard coral.

There is more than pelagics. Palau was a battleground in the Second World War, and Japanese ships and aircraft lie on the lagoon floor. Chandelier Cave has air chambers where you can surface among stalactites. Above water, the Rock Islands are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a common place to spend a surface interval.

Palau is diveable all year. The drier months from November to April bring the calmest seas and usually the best visibility, while May to October is wetter and windier but still workable. This is not a place for a newly certified diver to go straight to the famous sites. Most of the headline dives assume Advanced Open Water, good buoyancy and some drift experience, and you should be comfortable deploying a surface marker buoy, because boats follow the buoy to pick you up.

Visitors sign the Palau Pledge on arrival, a promise to respect the environment. Don't touch or kick coral, don't feed fish, and use reef-safe sunscreen. Entry requirements and environmental fees change, so check official sources before you travel.