For the diver who wants the reef with the most fish on Earth.

In July 2016, a Conservation International team led by Mark Erdmann and Trudiann Dale ran a rapid biodiversity survey at ten reef sites around Atauro. The result: an average of 253 reef fish species per site, the highest recorded anywhere in the world up to that point.

The richest site reached 315 species, the third-highest single-site record on the planet. In total, 642 species were counted around the island. The average beat Raja Ampat's, which had been the benchmark until then.

The same survey that produced the record figure also recorded the opposite. Some of the reefs show damage from blast fishing. And there are few large sharks and few large fish generally, a sign of sustained fishing pressure. If you are going in search of megafauna encounters underwater, this is not the destination.

After the survey, the relevant ministry expanded the protected species list by nineteen more. That is a real response, but it is recent, and a reef does not recover on the timescale of an administrative decision.

What you will see is density and variety of small life, not a big-animal spectacle. It is worth going in knowing that.

The sensible structure is to split the trip in two. Dili first, two or three days. The coast east and west of the city has shore dive sites reached by road in five minutes or fifty, depending which. It is one of the few places in the world where you can park, kit up and walk into a wall reef.

The named sites that circulate among divers, such as K41 or Bob's Rock, lie to the east, towards Manatuto: they are half-day drives from Dili, not neighbourhood outings. The city's dive centres organise those road trips.

The second half is Atauro, three days minimum. There is a ferry from Dili to Beloi, on the island's east coast, with a crossing of around two hours. I am not giving times or fares because they change and I found no reliable source; confirm them in Dili the day before, and reckon on the sea being able to cancel them.

If you can choose your dates, go between October and December. That is when cetaceans pass through the Wetar Strait on their way between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean: blue whales have been confirmed, along with sperm whales and several dolphin species. You see them from the surface, not diving, but it is the kind of afternoon that makes up for a cancelled crossing.

I say this without drama: it is the check that turns the trip from sensible into reckless if you skip it. Dive conservatively, with wide decompression margins, and do not stack deep dives the day before flying.

If you fit this profile, the proposition is easy to sum up: you will dive the reef with the highest average fish species count ever measured, and you will do it with almost nobody else in the water. That second fact may, in time, turn out to be the rarer of the two.

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