Habili Ali

Every dive here starts with a current test. Habili Ali sits exposed in open water, its flow able to come from any direction, so the guide drops a line to read it before anyone rolls in. The first dive usually begins at the northwest corner in the morning light. You track the north wall, where the first third holds the best grey reef chances, until the current turns against you and you drop a little deeper to find the contour that lets you keep working the face. The wall is the dive. It plunges straight down to around 31 metres before easing into a slope.

The west side carries the giant gorgonians, sea fans over two metres across between 30 and 45 metres, and the northwest overhangs hang with black coral from about seven metres. The eastern tip is the cleaning station, where grey reef sharks gather in the current and divers hold position to watch. A second dive runs the southwest: down to about 25 metres, north along the natural edge hunting for sharks on the drop-off, then up to a set of four notches at 12 to 8 metres before the safety stop. The shallow flat top is where you ascend to, not what you came for.

Habili Ali is the adrenaline dive of an area otherwise built on coral gardens and light-filled caverns. Where neighbours like [st-john-caves] and [small-st-john] are scenic and calm, this is a wall-and-pelagic dive: vertical relief, current, and the chance of sharks in the blue. Grey reef sharks are the reliable draw, worked at the eastern cleaning station. Silvertips cruise the blue off the walls. In season a scalloped hammerhead may pass at 20 metres, and the odd manta or a pod of dolphins turns up. None of it is guaranteed.

The dependable star is the architecture. The west-side gorgonian field and the black-coral overhangs give the site its structure-first character, the thing repeat divers rate above the gota reefs even when the sharks stay away. As of 2025-2026 the wider Deep South is living through a regional coral-bleaching event, so the living cover is patchier than older accounts suggest. The relief and the sea fans still make this the most dramatic dive in St John's.

This is no place for a first deep dive. Operators expect Advanced Open Water and a solid logged-dive history, and the marine park sets a minimum experience bar before they will bring you here. The hazards are depth and current. The walls drop past recreational limits and it is easy to over-descend chasing a shark into the blue, so plan your depth and set a computer alarm. The current can reverse mid-dive, and the shallow reef top breaks in even a small swell. Stay close to the reef and follow the guide's plan.

Dive it early. The site gets busy as liveaboards stack up on the leeward moorings, and the morning slot gives the best light and the calmest water. Nitrox helps on the repeated deep profiles. There is no night diving here, because the reef is exposed and has no safe overnight hold, and the boat may skip it entirely when the wind is up. The nearest recompression chamber is around 200 kilometres away at Marsa Alam, so dive conservative profiles and carry DAN-style insurance.