Bermuda

Wreck diving here is boat diving. Shops work from the West End around the Royal Naval Dockyard and from the East End near St George's and Hamilton Parish, and each tends to run to the sites on its own side of the platform rather than steaming across the island. Morning two-tank trips are the standard product, and with little depth to burn through, surface intervals stay short and bottom times run long. A few inshore bays take a walk-in entry, but the wrecks that define the place all need a boat. It is a summer business: boats largely stand down from late autumn and go back to work in spring.

The island is the eroded cap of an extinct volcano, and the platform around it is broad, flat and shallow — coral heads, sand channels and the boilers, rims of reef that break the surface along the south shore. Sites sort into three kinds: boilers and swim-throughs close inshore, the wreck grounds out on the platform, and the outer edge where the shelf tips into deep water. Navigation matters more than depth, since one coral head looks much like the next once you leave the mooring line.

Shallow water changes how a wreck dives. Sunlight reaches the whole structure, so a hull reads as reef: plates carpeted in growth, holds standing open, fish holding in the shade under a boiler. Some sites are flattened debris fields crossed on a compass bearing, others are ships you can circle in one dive, and how much survives usually comes down to how exposed the position is. Historic wrecks are protected under Bermudian law, so operators dive them look-but-don't-touch and artefacts stay where they lie.

It suits divers who like structure and history and are content without big animals: recent qualifiers, families splitting a week between beaches and boats, photographers after wide-angle wreck shots in bright water. Reef swim-throughs and caverns add variety, and the island also holds flooded cave systems, dived only by cave-trained divers with permission rather than as part of any day-boat schedule. What Bermuda is not is cheap — diving is one attraction among several here, not the reason most visitors come.