Grey reef shark

Holding in current on the northern pinnacles, particularly Castle Rock and Crystal Rock.

The park stays open and the northern sites are diveable year-round from Labuan Bajo. The 'limited' months reflect the south: Dec-Feb monsoon swell makes the southern sites and the crossing to them unreliable, and liveaboard itineraries shift or shorten. Confusingly, Dec-Feb is also when the southern manta aggregation is strongest, so the best manta window and the worst access window overlap.

Resident year-round on the corners and in the channels. Unbaited; they hold in current for the same reason the fish do. Palau declared the world's first national shark sanctuary in 2009, which is part of why the densities persist.

Diveable all year with no closure. Jun-Sep is the wet season with rougher seas, visibility down to 15-20m, and exposed sites like Peleliu frequently cancelled, hence 'limited'. Dec-Apr is dry season with 40m+ visibility and is also the manta window.

Several hundred animals resident in the south pass, every month. Unbaited: they hold in the channel because the current delivers food, not because anyone feeds them. This is the strongest 'any month works' claim in the dataset.

Open year-round; the sharks do not have a season. Nov-Apr is the wetter, warmer, more humid half with more rain and occasional cyclone risk, and May-Oct is drier. Neither closes anything.

Holding in the pass in numbers on every tide.

Open year-round with no closure. Jun-Sep is the peak tourist season and the drier half; Dec-Mar is warmer, wetter and carries the hammerhead window. The two headline seasons pull in opposite directions, which is the useful thing to know before booking. Low operating

On the outer reef, away from the feeding sites.

Open year-round with no closure. Nov-Apr is the warmer, wetter half with occasional cyclone risk; May-Oct is drier and also covers the whale season. Low operating

On the channel dives.

Open year-round. Jun-Sep is the southwest monsoon with more rain, wind and reduced visibility, and the western sites blow out, so those read 'limited'. The whale sharks are there regardless; the diving around them is just less pleasant.

On the atoll channels, not in Hanifaru.

The atoll is open and divable all year, but Hanifaru Bay itself is a seasonal southwest-monsoon phenomenon running roughly May to December. Outside that window the resorts and dive sites operate normally and the bay is simply empty, so Jan-Apr reads 'limited' rather than 'closed': you can go, you will dive, you will not see the thing Baa Atoll is famous for.

Resident on the offshore reefs; the encoded gaps reflect when boats are there rather than the animal, and are held down deliberately because access and biology are hard to separate in the sources.

Sources disagree on whether this is a closure or just bad weather. Some operators list the itinerary as running year-round; others describe winter wind limiting access to the offshore sites, and the Egyptian marine park has historically restricted Brothers and Daedalus in the winter months. Encoded 'limited' for Dec-Feb rather than 'closed' because the evidence does not support a hard closure. See OQ-29. Note the tension in the two arrays: the best shark months (Jun-Nov) are not the best condition months (Mar-May, Sep-Nov). Low operating

Resident on the reef and encountered naturally on the walls, but the dense aggregation people book for is the North Horn feed. Encoded 'baited' because that is what the headline encounter is; the animals are here regardless.

Trips run year-round but the crossing is the constraint: 20 hours of open ocean each way means the Coral Sea leg is dropped or rerouted in weather far more often than the sheltered Ribbon Reefs are. Dec-Feb is cyclone season in the region, hence 'limited'. Low operating