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5 Best Dive Destinations for Beginners

5 Best Dive Destinations for Beginners

Written by Leisure Pro Staff
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Published on May 25, 2015

When you’re just starting out in scuba diving, it’s important for your safety and enjoyment that you choose sites that are appropriate for your skill level. These are just a handful of the best dive destinations for beginners across the globe that are sure to inspire a lifetime of diving!

Bonaire

This little island that’s part of the ABC chain, just north of Venezuela, is world renowned for its easy twenty-four hour diving. Warm, clear Caribbean water and plenty of shallow dives make this a great destination for new divers.

Florida

With water surrounding the state on three sides and numerous freshwater springs in the interior, Florida offers a wealth of diverse diving sites as well as plenty of high-quality dive shops and operators. One of the main reasons Florida is so appealing to divers is due to its huge variety of different diving habitats. Off both coasts, divers will find wreck dives, shore dives, pier dives, drift diving, and even treasure-hunting dives. Plus, running just offshore from South Florida down to the Keys lies North America’s only living coral reef, where divers will discover a huge abundance of marine life due to the warm Gulf Stream current that flows through the area.

Maldives

The Maldives: a chain of twenty-six atolls made up of twelve hundred islands stretching nearly 500 miles north to south. The water is in the mid to low eighties with visibility from 70-200 feet!

Philippines

There are a number of excellent shore diving destinations in the Philippines, making this one of the best dive destinations for beginners in the world! The house reef at Alona Beach, a half-mile stretch of white sand on Bohol, is popular with beginner divers. Puerto Galera’s Sabang wrecks are renowned for muck diving and night dives, and Cebu’s Moalboal has a handful of mini walls that offer some of the best diving in the country. The water temperature ranges from the mid seventies to the mid eighties with visibility from 50-100 feet!

Bahamas

The junction of the Atlantic and Caribbean oceans is littered with the 700 islands and 2,400 coral cays that make up the Bahamas! A reef that stretches 760 miles from Andros to Long Island offers world-class diving of all types, including shallow reefs, wrecks, blue holes, walls and shark dives. The warm water, high visibility and generally gentle currents make this an ideal place for the beginner diver.

Leisure Pro Staff

Leisure Pro Staff

Marketing Director for LeisurePro