Beatrice Rock

The boat drops you on the rock at the northern end of the Maricaban Strait. What you find below is a series of drop-offs with channels running between them, from 5 metres down to 27, and a pinnacle that rises from 14 metres to within 8 of the surface. The structure is what shapes the dive: work the deeper drop-offs first, then use the channels to move between them as the profile comes up towards the pinnacle.

The growth on the rock is dense. There are large barrel sponges, gorgonians, black corals, soft corals, stony corals and anemones with nudibranchs and sea stars on them. Fish include clownfish, triggerfish, snappers, surgeonfish, jacks and anthias, and turtles and octopuses are both seen here. The top of the pinnacle at 8 metres is the natural place to finish, shallow enough to hold a stop over the reef rather than in the blue.

The site is known for its current, and divers may experience it roaring, which is what makes an otherwise straightforward rock a bit challenging. That matters most at the end of the dive: leaving the structure for a blue-water ascent puts you in whatever is running, so deploy a marker, stay together and come up as a group rather than drifting off one by one. The compensation is colour and small subjects: schooling fish and red anthias over the reef, with frogfish and nudibranchs worth slowing down for.