Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Sardine Run an Instagram favourite
SOUTH Africa’s Sardine Run was ranked the most Insta-worthy scuba diving spot in the world.
A statement by Build Your Aquarium said its experts sought to discover the most Instagrammable scuba diving spots by creating a seed list of the 14 most popular diving destinations around the world, and collecting the number of hashtags each had generated.
“The title of the most Instagrammable scuba diving spot goes to the Sardine Run in South Africa with 23 999 hashtags.
“Every year between the months of May and July, scuba divers have the opportunity to witness the magnificent view of billions of sardines swimming up the coast of South Africa towards Mozambique,” read the statement.
Tiger Beach in the Bahamas, took second place. Founded in the 1980s, it managed to generate 23 383 hashtags (only 616 less than the Sardine Run).
It is famous for the huge variety of marine animals inhabiting its waters, including various sharks, such as tiger sharks, lemon sharks and hammerhead sharks.
With 11 692 hashtags on the social media platform, the remote Tubbataha Reef in the Philippines placed third. The reef is situated on a string of extinct underwater volcanoes. It is a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site and is home to unique corals, along with thousands of different marine species.
The statement went on to say that ranking fourth and fifth place respectively are Roca Partida in Mexico (10 328 hashtags) and Richelieu Rock in Thailand (6 983 hashtags).
The least Insta-shared scuba diving spot, having a total of nine hashtags on Instagram, 23 990 hashtags less than the Sardine Run, was Dinah’s Beach in Papua New Guinea, which ranked last.
About the information collected:
• BuildYourAquarium.com sought to find out the most Instagrammable scuba diving spots in the world.
• A comprehensive seed list of popular scuba diving spots was compiled utilising multiple websites, including
Blue Water Travel, PADI, Wanderlust, Rough Guides and Scuba Travel.
• Only destinations that appeared more than once across the different articles were taken into consideration.
• A refined list of 14 scuba diving spots across the world was created.
• Following this, each diving spot was manually input into Instagram utilising the search variation #divingspotname and the number of hashtags generated was recorded. Search variations, such as: #tigerbeachbahamas, #tubbatahareefs and #richelieurockdiving were used in order to obtain accurate results.
• All destinations were then ranked based on the amount of hashtags they had generated, so that the most Instagrammable scuba diving spot could be determined.