Blue Hole

The boat runs about 20 minutes from Cabras Marina in Apra Harbor and hooks into the mooring buoy at the top of the hole; there is no shore option, because the coast alongside is the sheer cliff of the Orote Peninsula. You descend the line to the reef flat at about 18 m, where coral patches and schooling fish sit around the rim and the opening below reads as a heart shape from directly above it.

Inside, the shaft is a straight vertical drop with rock walls, and it continues past 90 m, far below anything you will dive. The plan is built instead around the window at about 40 m that opens through the wall into blue water; local divers call swimming out through it shooting the hole. Set a hard maximum before you get in, because 40 m is the edge of advanced recreational depth and the clarity makes it easy to keep going.

Out on the face the dive becomes a slow ascent along the wall, with blacktip sharks, turtles, octopus and large snapper the usual company and pelagic fish passing further out in the blue. The current here runs east to west, so the exit is normally made by deploying a surface marker buoy and being collected in open water rather than swimming back to the mooring.