Gorgonian Forest

The wall here starts at 15 metres and drops to 40, which is a shallower top than most of the atoll's sites and gives the dive a longer usable profile. You descend onto the upper edge and follow the face along, letting the water do the work. Current is medium and can sometimes be quite strong, and that is the whole point of the site: it is what pulls the larger fish onto the wall and holds them there.

Along the face, trevally and groupers work the edge with snappers, sweetlips and triggerfish through the same water, and turtles cross the wall. In the right season, April and May, hundreds of schooling hammerheads come past off the wall, which means the dive is run with one eye on the reef and the other out in the blue.

Because the wall tops out at 15 metres, the last stage of the dive is easier here than on the atoll's deeper sites. Once the deep phase is done you come up the face onto the shallow edge and finish over the top of the wall, with a safety stop held against reef rather than in open water. If the current is running hard, stay close to the face on the way up.