Pigeon Island

A staghorn coral plateau in three to ten metres of sunlit water, inside a national park.

The reef fauna around the large island is dominated by Acropora — dense, branching staghorn thickets that run for tens of metres with Montipora plating between them. Around the rocky islets the community shifts to Faviidae, Mussidae and Poritidae: heavier, boulder-forming corals. Roughly 100 coral species and 300 reef-fish species are recorded across the Trincomalee area and most of them turn up here. It is shallow enough that the light never really leaves, which is why it works equally as a first open-water dive and as a photographer's site.