Kushimoto

A day here is built around short boat runs. Shops in Kushimoto and the fishing harbours either side put small local boats on the water and reach most points in minutes, so groups come back in between dives rather than sitting out a long surface interval offshore. Two tanks before lunch is the normal rhythm, and a third dive or a night dive is easy to add because nothing is far away. When the sea is flat a few of the shallower points can be walked in off the rocks. Guiding is led-group and Japanese-language first; shops set up for overseas divers tend to say so up front.

The ground underwater is rock rather than reef flat: boulder aprons, low ridges and pinnacle tops, with sand and rubble collecting between them. Hard coral holds in the bright shallows on the sheltered side, growing in overlapping plates that thin out as the bottom steps away. On the headlands the Kuroshio makes itself felt, so the morning's site choice is often a question of which point is workable rather than what anyone would like to see. Depths stay modest throughout, which is part of why three dives in a day stays comfortable.

The diving is slow and close-focus. Guides work a small patch of ground rather than covering distance, and much of a dive goes on hovering over one coral head or one rubble patch while something a fingernail across is pointed out. Photography habits follow from that: macro rigs outnumber wide-angle, and dives are often planned around a subject someone found the day before. The cold months are quieter and the water longer-sighted, so shops keep working through winter on a thinner slate of resident critters.

It suits divers who would rather look than cover ground, and it takes mixed groups well: a newer diver and a photographer can work the same point, with the guide doing the finding. Anyone after big animals, depth or long drifts should look elsewhere. It also folds into a wider Kii Peninsula trip, since the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trails, Nachi Falls and the coastal onsen towns are all within driving distance of the same base, which helps when non-divers come along.