The strip under each is that destination’s own twelve-month calendar; the marked month is when we’re planning to go. Confirmations go out to guests on the waitlist once a booking is confirmed.
ClosedShoulder seasonHigh seasonThe month we go
Southern Raja Ampat, Indonesia
Misool
Four dives a day for a week and you stop keeping a list of the good ones, because the standard never drops from the first pinnacle to the last. That is what nineteen years of ranger patrols looks like from underneath.
2030 TBC. The northwest season has settled by November and the reserve is at its most reliable. Mantas are on the cleaning stations, the soft coral is open, and the water has not yet gone milky.
10guests
Ten daysthe stay
95 placeMisool Resort 97Level AdvancedWaitlist open
Not everyone dives. Kayaking, paddleboarding and the resort's own lagoon and mangrove trips run every day, dive or not. Boat snorkel trips to nearby sites as well as the house reef.
Ninety minutes out of Port Hardy, past rafts of sea otters floating with their paws linked, the odd humpback, eagles dropping to take fish off the surface. Then the boat slows, a bay opens on Hurst Island, and the lodge at the back of it is where you live for the week.
2028 TBC. The lodge runs mid-August to the end of October. By late September the summer algae bloom has cleared, the water is at its darkest and clearest, and the winter seas have not arrived.
10guests
four daysthe stay
85 placeGod's Pocket Resort 83Level DemandingPlanned, not yet confirmed
Fourteen mantas queueing at one cleaning station. Thirty eagle rays crossing in a single pass. I have dived a long time, and only the Galápagos has put more in front of me.
2028 TBC. The northeast monsoon is still running in March. Seas are flat, visibility holds at twenty-five to forty metres, and the plankton sits on the western side of the atolls, which is where the mantas and the whale sharks are.
10guests
Nine days aboardthe stay
78 placeSpirit of Maldives 70Level DemandingWaitlist open
Misool. The first trip, and the reef it was scored on.
02The boat
The boat
Everyone on it is doing the same thing
Every diver on the boat has a camera. The operator knew the group six months out and set the week’s pace for it, so nobody is paired against a beginner and the boat waits while somebody works a subject.
On an ordinary week you take whichever boat you’re given, and the pace belongs to whoever is fastest. A couple travelling alone can buy part of the way out of that with a private guide, at a day rate most operators will quote you. That fixes your own pace and leaves the boat’s alone: you still surface when the other six are cold.
Both weeks are sorted before you book them, and you can dive them at the speed the picture needs.
Boo Windows, Misool. The boat waited while this was worked; on an ordinary week it would not have.
Going in off the back of the boat, Misool. Four dives a day, and the pace set by whoever is working a subject.
03Booking
Payment plan
A quarter to hold the place, the rest in quarters
The resort takes a quarter that never comes back, then three more in equal parts — the last one six months out rather than at the last minute, so there’s time to resell the place if it doesn’t come through. Payments are made to Miles Below.
At booking
25% Confirms your place and fixes the price. Non-refundable from the moment it is paid.
24 months out
25% Second instalment
12 months out
25% Third instalment
6 months out
25% Final balance
Misool takes 25% up front and does not return it under any circumstances. I hand that money straight to them, so it is non-refundable. If you cancel at any time, the deposit is still gone, but if I can resell your place I will return the remaining amount to you. I will always try. I cannot promise it.
This is based on a Misool booking four years out: a quarter at booking, a quarter at two years, a quarter at one year, the balance six months out. Shorter lead times compress the same shape.
The terms
Group size
Ten guests, eight to run. If a trip doesn't reach its minimum, everything paid is returned in full.
Cancellation
The 25% deposit is non-refundable from the day you pay it. Cancel after paying in full and the deposit is still forfeit. If the place resells, the remaining amount comes back. Best efforts, never a guarantee.
Transfers
You can pass your place to someone else only where the operator allows it, and only inside their window. Four years is a long time and lives change, so ask early and I will find out what is possible.
Insurance
Dive and travel insurance are required, not optional. Proof requested before departure.
Experience
Every trip states its rung on the difficulty ladder. If you're below it, I'll say so before taking any money.
Price
Held at the figure quoted when you join, provided the schedule is kept. Fuel surcharges and marine park fees are the only exceptions.
How these run
What you're actually buying
The number that matters is divers per guide, not guests per trip. A group of ten runs as small teams in the water, typically four to a guide, which is what the good resorts do anyway. Ten people on the manifest, three or four in your buddy group, nobody shooting over your shoulder.
Nobody is instructing you underwater. That's what photographic freedom means here — no one at your shoulder, no specialty course running in the background. What you get instead is ten photographers comparing frames at the review each night: my read on it, plus nine others you wouldn't get alone. Most of what people learn on these trips, they learn from each other.
Destinations earn their place by what they're best at, not one blended number. Lembeh scores lower on wide — there's no wide here — and it's still the best macro diving on the planet. A destination that shows a real strength stays on this list even where the axes it doesn't play to pull the average down. What doesn't happen: a resort buying a better spot with a better rate. Check the score yourself before you ask.
Disclosure
Group bookings in dive travel usually work on a comp basis: bring ten paying guests and the organiser's own place is free. Mine is no different, and the resorts I take groups to are resorts I also score on this site.
You should know that, so it's here rather than buried. The scores don't move for it. The lowest Operation score on this site is a , given to a liveaboard I paid to be on, and Bali Dive Resort scores 67 having hosted me this year. If a comp were going to buy a better number, it would have bought one by now.
Browning Pass, British Columbia. The second trip; cold, and worth it.
04Who with
Who with
Miles Nurse, and a boat of photographers
Thirty years underwater, seven thousand dives, five of those years working the boats in Fiji, Australia, Canada and Grand Cayman. Every place a trip goes to, I have dived and scored myself, and you can read the number before you pay me.
Trips are led, not instructed: I am the photographer and the person who chose the destination, and the diving is supervised by the operator’s own active staff. Everyone else aboard is carrying a camera too, so nobody is waiting on you and you are not waiting on them.
Nobody is instructing you underwater. That's what photographic freedom means here — no one at your shoulder, no specialty course running in the background. What you get instead is ten photographers comparing frames at the review each night: my read on it, plus nine others you wouldn't get alone. Most of what people learn on these trips, they learn from each other.
PADI Master Instructor #112461 and DAN Instructor #8669, neither in teaching status — by choice, not lapse. The record, and who has paid me.
05The week
The week
The week for whoever came with you
Written up only where Miles has watched it happen; a trip with nothing here is not yet asked about.
Misool
You don't have to dive to spend the week outside. While the boat is out, the resort runs its own program alongside it — kayaks and paddleboards into the lagoon, a snorkelling adventure over the house reef and the sites nearby, a mangrove trip through the channels behind the island. I watched partners sign up for these most mornings and come back to the jetty sunburned and talkative, the same time the dive boat does. A family travelling with children keeps a smaller version of the same week: the kayaks, the lagoon, an early night.
The wellness experiences fill whatever is left of the afternoon — a massage booked around nobody's dive schedule but your own. Sunset brings the whole resort back to one beach, divers included, and you'll have already had the better part of the day to yourself.
Misool, between dives.
06The list
The list
Trips are announced to this list first
Small groups, filled from this list first. Plus each new guide as it is finished. Four or five emails a year.
Unsubscribe in one click. The address goes nowhere else.
