Comoros — Mohéli

Diving Mohéli is closer to an expedition than a booking. Operators are very few, capacity is small, and everything has to be fixed before you arrive rather than walked into on the day. Boats are open skiffs running out of the south-coast villages, and a day is typically two dives among the offshore islets with the surface interval spent on a beach. The park is co-managed with those villages, so fees and a local guide come as part of the arrangement rather than as an option.

Underwater the park is fringing reef wrapped around the islets. The sheltered inner faces are shallow coral garden, gentle enough for a first dive, while the outer edges tip into blue and pick up enough moving water to be worked as a drift, with most of it inside 30 m. Coral holds up well on the sheltered ground, though the western Indian Ocean's bleaching years have left marks here as elsewhere and condition varies from islet to islet.

Turtles are what you spend most of a dive alongside: grazing on shallow reef, parked under ledges, rising past you on the ascent. The nesting beaches along this coast are patrolled by village associations, and poaching is the pressure they exist to hold off, so what you see in the water is the visible end of a long local effort. Beyond the turtles the appeal is emptiness, with few other boats and a reef nobody has arranged for visitors. It suits experienced, self-reliant divers who are relaxed about basic rooms and unreliable connections; anyone needing guaranteed daily diving should look elsewhere in the Indian Ocean.