Australia	Okinawa
Belize	Philippines
Egypt	Solomon Islands
Hawaii	Tobago
Indonesia	Vanuatu
New Zealand

Australia

The water over the Great Barrier Reef is extraordinarily clear, and the reef itself is full of surprises, such as remarkably colorful giant clams.

The fish are fantastic as well, of course!

There are many varieties of coral, including a psychedelic mushroom coral which I haven't seen anywhere else.

Belize

The conservation-minded population of Belize has set aside numerous areas on land and under the water as nature reserves. Accustomed to living in safety, many fish show little fear of divers and snorkellers.

Of course, there are some situations in which you wouldn't mind too much if the local inhabitants showed some fear.

Belize is also famous for its sportfishing, and it's one place in the world where you can swim with the sportfish, including Grouper, Jacks, Permit and the "Silver King", the six foot Tarpon.

Egypt

In the last few years Egypt has become a real magnet for divers, and the Red Sea has been labelled one of the Seven Wonders of the Underwater World by a group of experts.

The reason for the Red Sea's popularity rests in its unusual geography, almost completely enclosed except for a small gap at its southern end, and with no rivers flowing into it to ruin the clarity of the water.

This isolation, and unusual conditions caused by it such as high salinity, has led to a high concentration of species which are found only here and in the neighbouring Gulf of Aden, such as this masked or blue-cheek butterflyfish.

As you can see, over the last few years I've snorkelled in quite a few places around the world, all without seeing a turtle. In Hawaii that all changed in a quite dramatic way.

Hawaii is a very long way from any other landmass, which means that total species count is lower than some other places. However, it also means that Hawaii has many species which can be found only here..

I didn't feel at all deprived by the lower species count, because I felt that Hawaii had the best snorkelling I'd seen anywhere. In fact, I had to devote several pages just to butterflyfish, because there were so many different types.

New Zealand isn't the sort of place which you visit just for the diving, though it does have a few interesting oddities, such as normally deep-water red corals and black corals living in the upper reaches of the cold fjords at the Southern end of the country.   And other countries can boast swimming with sharks or dolphins, but where else can you swim with krill?

You can lie in bed with an octopus and lots of shellfish.

Best of all for people growing up here, you're never more than an hour from a nice beach!

Okinawa's best snorkelling and diving is probably on its offshore islands, which I had the misfortune not to be able to visit. However, I did snorkel the Kadena Seawall several times, meeting such charming inhabitants as this highly venomous sea snake.

As well as the ubiquitous pufferfish (which the Japanese probably think of as unprepared "fugu", a potentially deadly delicacy in these parts), there were some attractive fish around, including several varieties of triggerfish.

This was my first experience with Crown of Thorns starfishes, creatures which sometimes appear in plague quantities, stripping bare whole sections of the reef by turning their stomachs inside out and eating the coral polyps.

I was attracted to the Philippines by the prospect of being able to snorkel with whale sharks at the town of Donsol, twelve hours drive east of Manila.   It's one of only two places in the world where you're guaranteed to see these creatures, the largest fish in all the ocean, the other being Ningaloo Reef in western Australia.

I made this trip in 2006 with a new camera, and after only two days I decided to learn to scuba dive, rather than free diving with a weight belt as I'd done for the last ten or so years. My new ability to go deeper than I was previously able certainly paid dividends, with many sightings of things I hadn't seen before, like a cuttlefish, frogfishes and a sleeping parrotfish.   These were some of the highlights of the trip, along with old friends like this moray eel.

The new camera provided me for the first time with the ability to do underwater macro photography, allowing me to fill the photo with very small critters. Like many other underwater photographers before me, I set about finding nudibranchs, beautifully patterned and colored sea slugs which put their terrestrial counterparts to shame.

The Solomon Islands is home to multitudes of nudibranchs, colorful but toxic sea slugs which advertise their foul taste to keep predators away.

It's also home to larger creatures which can pack quite a punch, like moray eels, sharks and stone fish.

The Solomon Islands were one of the major battlefields of World War Two, and there's still plenty of military hardware below the surface for divers and even snorkellers to explore.

Tobago completely trumps its bigger companion Trinidad in the reef stakes because it's further away from the murky water created by South America's large rivers. Tobago is reputed to have the largest brain corals of anywhere on the planet.

The world renowned Buccoo reef turned out to be a disappointment on the day I went there, but other spots around the island are well worth visiting

It shouldn't take long before you find a flamingo tongue or two, colorful little mollusks which are obligingly active during the daytime..

Vanuatu was one of the first places I visited with an underwater camera and, although the photographs I got were of very poor quality, all of the interesting fish and other underwater wildlife made me want to come back for more.  With early experiences like these, it's no wonder that photographing the underwater world became a bit of an obsession for me.

The clownfish, comfortable in its home of stinging anemones, is one of the classic fish of the Pacific.

A swimmer or diver might want to think carefully before getting up close and personal with this dugong, a close cousin of the Caribbean manatee. It lives in a relationship with villagers at Resolution Bay on the island of Tanna, who can summon it by slapping the water, but it seems that lack of female company has given this particular individual a rather lecherous and aggressive personality!