Torfet Ali

Pipeline is the one to pick if you want to set the depth yourself. The drift runs one way, north to south, with a deep wall on one side carrying scores of anthias and the odd Nembrotha nudibranch, and soft sand banks flanked by coral on the shallow side. Open Water divers stay up on the banks; deeper divers hang along the wall. Nobody has to commit to a depth at the start, and the current does the work.

Villa (Kharafi) is the coral garden. The dive starts or ends in a diverse stand of hard coral, where small fish face into the current and dart gobies hover above the drop-off. A hawksbill known as Barney often takes the lead for the first few minutes.

Halg Nigma is a reef cut named after a fisherman's fable of a star that fell from the sky and split the reef. The sandy lagoon inside is only the approach; the wall is the dive. Its stag-horn coral reaches from the surface down to 15 m, which makes it the easy ground for Open Water divers, and a red anemone sits on it at 20 m. Beside the boat, a pinnacle packed with glassfish and sweepers keeps trevally and groupers circling.

Shaab Ghalib is about terrain. Coral fingers run out into slopes, and small canyons between them give the dive its route, with fusiliers moving alongside.

Torfet Abu Shash is the remote one. A sand patch sits in the lee of a small headland scattered with coral blocks, cracks in the shallow wall hide behind schools of unicornfish, and at the northern point a large pinnacle swarms with fish and shrimp.

Torfet Abu Shash can be dived only from the operator's high-powered RIB, because nothing can be moored there. The pinnacle at its northern point is the payoff for a sea calm enough to launch.

The other thing a diver repeats afterwards is Pipeline, a drift where you pick the depth as you go. Between the RIB-only pinnacle and the drift, one short boat ride covers dives of very different weight.

The programme rotates, so a given day shows only some of the five. Pipeline is a one-way drift in current rated anywhere from limited to strong, and the deep wall rewards the same steady buoyancy. Leaving the sandy lagoon at Halg Nigma, the plateau falls away at about 45 degrees, so keep an eye on your depth there.