Based on the opinions of thousands of divers from across the globe, our annual Top 100 Readers Choice Awards showcase the best scuba diving in the world.

Shore diving can be the ultimate do-it-yourself adventure. Here are eight of the most extreme shore dives on the planet. Are you up to the challenge?

Like a shimmering string of pearls, California’s newly linked — and expanded— MPAs beckon to divers

How did an underwater photographer get this photo of a Pacific black dragonfish (_Idiacanthus antrostomus_)? He was part of a project documenting deep-sea animals found in Monterey Bay, California. Jason Bradley partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Moss Landing Marine Labs to gain special access to both live and collected deep-sea organisms, to reveal what lives in these distant alien habitats.

The story behind underwater photographer's Davide Vazzaro's photo of California sheephead in a kelp forest at Casino Point, a dive site off Catalina Island, California.

Great white shark diving brings you face-to-face with the ocean’s apex predator. Here’s where you can make it happen.

Nutrient-rich waters from deep underwater canyons give California’s Carmel Bay some of the best diving in the country. Here are the best spots to explore underwater.

With 840 miles of spectacular Pacific coastline, California offers abundant places for divers to get wet, from easily accessible shore-diving spots to offshore pinnacles and islands. And as underwater photographers will tell you, many of these sites offer gorgeous kelp forests brimming with marine life. We can’t possibly write about them all, but here are five amazing places in California to dive in kelp.

On Catalina, divers enjoy one of the best underwater parks in California