Cape Maeda Point

You are diving the outside of the cape rather than the cavern in it. Above water Cape Maeda is a wedge of raised coral reef pushing into the East China Sea, walled with Ryukyu limestone cliffs — the same formation that makes Cape Manzamo further up the coast — and below the cliffs are inlets, the point itself and water that reads deep and blue straight off the rock. Get in at the steps, cross the shallow reef at about 5 m and swim out.

The bottom goes from that reef to 30 or 40 m quickly, and the drop-off is the dive. Along its face schools of Amami chromis hang in the blue and sweetlips sit back in the rock shade; deeper, on the sand at the foot of it, are jawfish and the shrimpgobies divers come here to photograph — yasha and blackray gobies among them. Spiny lobster and whitetip reef sharks turn up for anyone who looks into the cracks on the way.

Offshore the detached reef known as Tsubame-no-ne is the fish end of the site, with passing pelagics and batfish over it. Visibility is better in winter than in summer. What is fixed here is the regime around the dive rather than the route: the cape has been inside a protected park since the Ryukyu government designated it in 1966 — now part of Okinawa Kaigan Quasi-National Park — and its official website posts each day whether entry to the water is permitted at all.