Diving in the United States

A 40 m wall beneath a kittiwake colony, a 5–10 minute boat ride from town

Cold-water walls, a Navy barge wreck and giant Pacific octopus

Sheer walls and a steamship wreck close to Juneau

Current-fed walls of anemones and sponges, dived at slack water

Intact Lake Superior steamers and freighters inside a national park

Cold-water walls, wrecks and wolf eels in Puget Sound and Hood Canal

Great Lakes shipwrecks within recreational limits off Pictured Rocks

Intact Great Lakes wrecks in two lakes, either side of the Mackinac Bridge

A hundred wrecks in Shipwreck Alley, some shallow enough to snorkel

Historic schooners, steamers and a sunken car ferry off Milwaukee

A year-round colony of harbor and grey seals at Duck Island

Rocky shore reefs off Cape Ann and fishing-boat wrecks on Stellwagen Bank

The Andrea Doria, scuba's 'Mount Everest,' lies 100 nm off Montauk in 58-73 m of water

North America's best-known high-altitude, clear-water lake diving

Beach-entry kelp forests inside a national marine sanctuary

Permit-limited giant kelp forest with sea otters working the shallows

Little-dived kelp pinnacles between Port San Luis and Morro Bay

Sand tiger sharks aggregate around WWII wrecks in the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

Desert-reservoir walls and a shore training site strung with sunken boats

Playful sea lions and towering kelp forests around rocky island pinnacles.

Market squid spawn on the Redondo canyon edge from mid-December to early March

Easy cliff-foot shore dives, with young sea lions hauled out at Seal Rock

Walk down the stairs at Casino Point straight into a giant kelp forest

Market squid spawn in their millions over the sand on winter nights

A sunken Canadian destroyer and giant kelp a short boat ride from Mission Bay

A field of sunken ships and bridge spans, from 23 m inshore to 34 m offshore

Cave and cavern diving in constant-temperature springs

The only place in the US where you may legally swim with manatees

An intact 55 m tugboat sitting upright at 22-24 m, with goliath grouper

Healthy coral reef caps 161 km offshore (100 miles), famous for August coral spawning.

Summer sea turtles on the jetties and fish-crowded Gulf oil rigs

Shore dives onto 1715 Fleet sites and a boiler wreck close off the beach

Goliath groupers over 200 kg mass on the wrecks to spawn each August

Critter-dense muck diving in 5 m of water beneath a Florida road bridge

The USCGC Mohawk, a veterans memorial reef in 27 m off Captiva Island

More than 50 shipwrecks along 37 km of coast, from 6 m to 40 m

Warm shallow reefs and famous wrecks a short boat run from Key Largo and Islamorada

Shallow Sanctuary patch reefs and the intact Thunderbolt wreck at 37 m

The Vandenberg wreck plus shallow sanctuary reefs

Green turtles on nearly every dive along a sheltered lava coast

Turtle reefs and sunken ships ten minutes off Waikiki

Molokini's crater wall and Lānaʻi's skylit lava caverns

Green sea turtles grazing on lava-rock reefs a short drive from town.

Manta rays glide through diver spotlights on Kona's nightly manta dive.