North Rock

The beacon at North Rock marks the outermost edge of Bermuda's encircling reef, and beneath it grows the ecosystem that made all those shipwrecks: the northernmost coral reefs in the Atlantic, improbably healthy for their latitude. Brain and star corals build heads the size of cottages, separated by white-sand canyons where snappers and grunts stack in the shade, and the open-ocean water arriving from the north keeps summer visibility extravagant. Hogfish and gray snapper grown bold under decades of protection approach closely, and every gully seems to end in another coral amphitheater.

اللحظة التي جئت من أجلها: The Atlantic's northernmost corals, cottage-sized heads, extravagant visibility

التضاريس: Coral heads, canyons, and sand channels around a navigation beacon

نقطة الدخول: A long lagoon crossing to the beacon at the reef's northern edge; run only in settled weather.

المخاطر: Exposed position; swell and breaking water make it a fair-weather site.

الحفاظ على البيئة البحرية: Bermuda's reef preserves prohibit fishing and collecting around North Rock.