Table Top

Ten minutes north of the launch and you are over the most northerly of Tofo's bay sites. The dive is a straight, planned traverse: in at the north end of the first wall, across the plateau in the middle, and out along the second wall. With 28 minutes on nitrox or 23 on air there is no room to wander, so the boat drops you on the right end and the route runs one way.

The northern end is grouper country, with large white blotched and potato groupers patrolling it, and they are usually the first thing worth stopping for. Three cleaning stations and stands of green tree coral sit at the start and the end of the route, and a slow, low approach pays off there rather than swimming straight at whatever has come in.

Across the plateau the interest turns smaller and stranger, and sea apples are a regular sight over this middle section. Stingrays work the sandy pockets among the rocks: small Kuhl's rays, and the honeycomb whipray with a tail up to 5 m long. The second wall, thick with reef fish, closes the dive out, and with the shallowest part of the site still around 24 m the ascent is made off the reef into open water.