Bonaire, for example, has more than 80 markers indicating places where you can walk off the shore and be in a coral garden within a few hundred feet. Scuba divers on Lady Elliot Island, which is actually part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia, can swim into coral canyons just off the shore and view the open mouths of giant clams, or watch manta rays swim overhead.
On the Cayman Islands, there are more than 100 named wall-diving sites. Shore diving here is easy to arrange because there's access to reefs and mini-walls right near many beaches and dive shops. Curacao, one of the so-called ABC Islands (Curacao, Bonaire and Aruba) that are part of the Netherlands Antilles, has more than 60 marked dive sites including walls, shipwrecks and even an airplane wreck.
