Manuelita

The deep side is the west side of the islet. You descend onto the boulder formations and follow them down into deeper water, with the deepest boulders at about 30-35 m, and it is on those boulders that the cleaning stations sit, where hammerheads, some of them around 4 m long, queue up for the barberfish. An alternative section to the north swaps the boulders for a steep, vertical wall that drops to 50 m.

The garden side is a different dive entirely, tucked on the protected east side of the islet. You descend to the outer edge of the coral garden at about 22 m, one of the few coral reef dives at Cocos, where the simple formations are home to a myriad of colourful critters, bigscale soldierfish and spiny lobsters among them. Hammerheads, marble rays, parrotfish, snappers and trumpetfish all turn up over the same ground, and tiger sharks are regular visitors.

It is also the night dive, rated an exceptional one and run straight off the anchored liveaboard. Once the light goes the whitetips switch from resting to hunting and move over the reef in multitudes, following the torch beams and sometimes coming straight through the group. The ground is the same shallow coral you dived by day, so the navigation is familiar and the attention goes to what the beams pick up.