Osezaki Bay

You walk in from the beach, so the dive begins when you are ready rather than when a boat is. PADI suggests the site for Discover Scuba Diving and Open Water Diver courses alongside Advanced Open Water and Enriched Air, which is a fair measure of how straightforward the entry is and how much range the site has behind it. From there the dive is a matter of working out along the sand at whatever pace the search demands.

The reason to be here is small and stationary. PADI's common sightings for Osezaki are nudibranchs, sea slugs and frogfish, and the variety of marine life changes with the seasons, so the same stretch of bottom reads differently from one month to the next. That makes this a dive you swim slowly and low, hovering off the sand while a guide points out what is sitting where, rather than one you cover ground on.

The bottom runs to a maximum of 40 m, and the Advanced Open Water and Enriched Air courses PADI suggests for the site point at that deeper end; nitrox is worth having if you are diving the sand several times in a day. Higher up, the appeal is that the bay is calm and not easily affected by weather or other conditions, so a plan made for Osezaki tends to survive the forecast.