Kabira Bay

Kabira Bay cuts deep into Ishigaki's northern coast, its sheltered turquoise water protected by two small islands that break ocean swells and create a lagoon-like environment with pristine coral gardens, seagrass meadows, and sandy channels that transition seamlessly into each other across depths of 3 to 22 metres. The bay is famous above water as a black pearl cultivation site, and the wooden rafts anchored across the bay have become colonised by juvenile fish, making each raft a micro-reef worth investigating. Leopard sharks rest on the sand in the afternoon calm, and the seagrass beds sustain one of Okinawa's most important dugong foraging areas, with individuals occasionally sighted crossing the bay at dawn.