Holmes Reef

Holmes Reef sits in the Coral Sea roughly 300 kilometres east of Cairns — far enough from land that only liveaboards reach it. A remote atoll system with a shallow lagoon ringed by vertical walls that plunge past 600 metres, Holmes Reef has never been fished commercially and rarely sees more than one vessel at a time. Silvertip sharks patrol every wall dive in large numbers, scalloped hammerheads appear over the deep passages, and the coral itself is some of the densest and least bleached in Australian waters. This is what the Great Barrier Reef looked like before humans arrived.