Praslin & La Digue

Diving runs off day boats from Cote d'Or on Praslin's north coast, where Whitetip and Octopus Diver are based; Praslin counts more than 17 named sites at depths of roughly 8 to 20 m. The rides are short and the day is built around them: five minutes to Anse Petit Cour in its sheltered bay, five to ten to Coral Garden, twenty out to Booby Island, and about 35 minutes to Sister Bank when the sea allows. There is no shore diving on the roster; every dive begins at a mooring or a live drop.

The terrain is granite rather than reef. Giant boulders lie submerged in stacks with swim-throughs wide enough to pass, at Sister Bank, Booby Island and Ave Maria, while Channel Rock, midway to La Digue, is a submerged granite reef whose tallest boulder breaks the surface at low tide. Hard and soft coral cover the shallower ground at Coral Garden and Anse Petit Cour. Blacktip and whitetip reef sharks patrol Marianne, hawksbill turtles and eagle rays are reported along La Digue's granite slopes, and green turtles live along the outer edges of the coral reefs.

The record is uneven between the two islands. The catalogue of named sites runs from the Praslin side and the operators there; on La Digue the dive operation at La Passe is a floating PADI centre that cruises the archipelago by yacht rather than a shore-based day-boat business, and it has no site list of its own. Ile Cocos, a marine park since 1996, lies about 7 km north of La Digue. Red Point sits inside Curieuse Marine National Park, declared in 1979. The area suits newly qualified divers and anyone who likes structure, light and short boat rides; divers after a wall dropping into open water should look to the outer Seychelles atolls instead.