As a 25-year scuba diver, I'm often asked what is the best place that I have ever gone diving. I find that a difficult question to answer -- there are the giant clams of the Great Barrier Reef, the amazing wreck of the SS Rhone in the British Virgin Islands, the awesome sharks off Rottnest Island in western Australia...and so many more. The underwater world is amazing no matter where you go. (Except maybe Dubai where scuba diving meant diving around giant concrete blocks with no sea life -- plant or swimmers -- in sight!)

But, all that said, my dives in Tahiti were especially amazing. I would recommend spending a couple extra days in Tahiti to dive whenever possible. Tahiti is a classic "sinking volcano" -- a long dormant volcano with a reef that has grown around it. As the volcano sinks back into the earth (volcanos are heavy), it leaves the barrier reef behind and forms a "lagoon" -- quite water between the barrier reef and the island. In the lagoon, I experienced two amazing dives...

The first dive was on a tandem set of wrecks -- a sunken ship and a catalina flying boat. Both purposely sunk. The plane was the most haunting -- one could imagine both the plane and the diver still in the air, floating together. It was awesome to swim up to the plane and through its fuselage. The second dive was "feeding the sharks". Only a couple feet from us, our dive master would pull chum from a stainless steel bucket and it would create a frenzy amongst sharks. The crunching bones -- probably louder in the density of the water -- was a bit shocking...but, amazing.