Snorkelling Beaches

Reef or living rock within about fifty metres of the sand.

The test is whether you can see something worth seeing without a boat. That narrows the field sharply: most reef destinations put their coral a kilometre or more offshore, and the beaches that qualify here are the exceptions where the reef comes close in. Ningaloo in Western Australia is the clearest case, a fringing reef reachable by walking into the water; the Red Sea does the same thing so consistently that entry is by jetty because the shore itself is coral. Volcanic islands with rock rather than sand at their edges — the Canaries, the Azores, Saint Lucia — offer a different version with fish around boulders instead of coral. Two cautions apply throughout: standing on coral kills it and cuts you, and several of the best sites now cap numbers or require a guide for exactly that reason.