20 Under-the-Radar Dive Sites Worth the Drive in Northern Territory

This list is the inverse of the popularity rankings. It takes sites that are well documented and have been given a positive assessment in the directory, then keeps only the ones recorded as rarely or occasionally dived. In other words: sites that people who know them rate highly, that hardly anyone else visits. Sites with thin documentation are excluded, so a place is not here just because nobody has written about it.

The result skews to Victoria and southern New South Wales, where there are hundreds of shore-accessible reefs and a diving population that concentrates on a dozen famous piers and walls. It also picks up the second-choice sites of the big tropical operators: the reefs they use when the headline site is blown out.

Usually one of four reasons. Access is awkward (a swim, a scramble, a boat launch rather than a charter). The site is a fallback in an operator's schedule and never gets top billing. There is a more famous site next door that soaks up the visitors. Or the conditions window is narrow and the site only works on a wind direction that keeps most people at home. None of those are reasons not to dive them; all of them are reasons to check the conditions section on the site page and talk to the local shop first.

Quiet sites are not maintained sites. There may be no mooring, no current information from a morning boat, no one else on the surface. Dive them with a buddy who has done them, or with the local club, carry a surface marker, and leave a plan ashore. Several are in sanctuary zones or marine national parks where nothing may be taken; that is exactly why the life is so good.