Iron Bottom Sound

Diving here is lower-key than the history suggests. Operators are based in the capital, and a wreck day usually means a van ride out along the coast road west of town, kit assembled on the sand and a walk into the water, with tanks swapped in the shade between dives and no boat involved. The land behind the entry points is customarily owned and a small fee is normally collected at the beach, which is one reason most divers arrange the day through a centre. Boat days point north instead, across the sound, and depend on what the crossing looks like that morning.

The two halves of the area have little in common. The beached transports lie bow-up on the slope with their sterns running away downhill, so depth is chosen simply by how far out you swim; the shallow ends are bright and crusted with growth, while the deeper sections fade into silt and low light, more so after heavy rain. The Florida Islands are a different proposition: hard reef structure, drop-offs and swim-throughs, and visibility the shore sites rarely match.

The signature dive is a slow swim along a hull that has been on the bottom since 1942, ordinary fittings now under coral growth, clouds of small fish moving through the frames and the shoreline visible above you the whole way. Night dives on the shallow plating are a local staple. Technical divers work the deeper wrecks around Tulagi, which sit well past recreational limits and rarely figure in a visiting diver's plans.

It suits people who come for the story as much as the fish. Visibility is modest by regional standards, the topside is a working capital rather than a resort strip, and this is not a polished dive holiday. Most divers treat it as two or three days attached to a longer trip further west, which is the sensible shape: time for the shore wrecks, one crossing to the reefs, and the campaign's land sites — ridges, airfield, memorials — in between.