One of the most widespread forms of marine tourism today is that of Scuba Diving. Few other activities enable such a direct interaction with the marine environment. It is perhaps for this reason that the activity has become so popular. The worlds largest diving organization, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) has issued in excess of thirteen million certifications since 1967, with 951,470 new certifications in 2004 (576,125 were the basic Open Water Classification) (PADI, 2005). However, the activity also involves a considerable amount of expense both in monetary terms and physical effort, so there must be some considerable reward. Many academics over the years have discussed ideas of self-actualisation through such activity, and indeed a useful motivational division is that suggested by Beard and Ragheb (1983). These authors identified four possible areas for leisure motivation: intellectual; social; competence-mastery; and stimulus-avoidance. Each of these corresponds to opportunity for self-actualisation, discussed in this paper as education, esteem, expertise and escape. A number of unstructured interviews were carried out aboard a three-day live aboard dive trip to the Great Barrier Reef in mid 2005. These interviews demonstrated that Beard and Raghebs classifications are all present in the majority of dive experiences. The insights given by the respondents demonstrate the significance of these attributes to the marine tourism experience. The intellectual motivations to engaging in Scuba Diving are clear, with parallel tracks of learning about how to dive and learning about the underwater environment. The social nature of diving is clearly an important part of the experience and is enhanced by the 'buddy' format, as high levels of trust between individuals need to be built upon. Linked to the educational perspective is the nature of competence with the skills of being a scuba diver. Lastly, the liminal nature of the underwater environment is a defining facet of this branch of marine tourism, and almost all respondents emphasised the alien nature of this world. However, it also became apparent that divers sought a fifth dimension to their dive experience, that of an embodied experience. A number of contemporary writers in geography and tourism have discussed a growing interest in the body politics that surrounds contemporary leisure practice. Scuba-diving, like much marine tourism, is profoundly embodied, being 'fundamentally about active recreational participation, and demands new metaphors based more on 'being, doing, touching and seeing' rather than just 'seeing''(Cloke and Perkins, 1997:189). Such an acknowledgement has important implications for managerial approaches to marine tourism in the coming century, for sustainable practice has to be built upon a deep understanding of why we seek such experiences.