Small Hope Bay on Andros is home to the world’s third longest barrier reef, so it’s little surprise that the Bahamas attract the big stuff. What most divers fail to realize is how much macro life abounds in the shallows.

Dive a wall and you’ll know anything can happen. In fact, the deeper the wall plunges, the greater the odds of swimming with the unexpected — from sharks to any number of pelagics.

Blackbeard's Cruises offers live-aboard scuba diving travel vacations to the Bahamas Out Islands. Three sailboats — Sea Explorer, Morning Star and Pirate's Lady — take guests for a week of diving on various itineraries in the Exumas, Southwest Eleuthera, Little San Salvador and Bimini.

If you’re looking for a spot with easy, sunny, relaxing diving where you’ll be the only divers underwater for miles and miles, Deep Water Cay is for you.

In the Bahamas, you’ll find a Caribbean reef shark for every 100 yards of underwater habitat. And when feedings occur, sharks appear in droves, swimming increasingly tighter circles around the divers gathered in an arc on the sand.

The islands of the Bahamas are a wide-angle paradise. Dolphins, goliath groupers, sea turtles and other hard-to-miss attractions regularly cruise up from the depths to feed in the shallows.

Thank poor captains and skilled explosive handlers for the 40 ships that litter the waters off the Bahamas’ 12 main islands. Here, divers can explore everything from freighters and steamships to airplanes, landing craft and patrol boats.

These human-assisted habitats act like defibrillation paddles, revving up struggling reefs and reviving declining fish populations from Florida to Indonesia and beyond.

ScubaLab headed to the Bahamas aboard a Blackbeard's liveaboard sailboat to try out some new dive gear — see what our editors had to say.