Top dive spots

[jam82]

St. Thomas, Antigua, Barbados, St. Lucia, Tortola, Bonaire, Grenada, Dominica, Aruba. Best place to dive? WWYD?

[The Flying Pirate]

Tortola - RMS Rhone wreck is Amazing! The ship is broken in two major pieces and has been in several movies. It is a fantastic dive.

 

St Thomas is loaded with wrecks and the visibility is usually very very good even compared to other areas of the Caribbean.

[scubadiver888]

St. Thomas, Antigua, Barbados, St. Lucia, Tortola, Bonaire, Grenada, Dominica, Aruba. Best place to dive? WWYD?

 

St. Thomas is an okay dive location. It is not my number one pick but I would definitely dive there if I was in port. Some good wrecks and a fair amount of marine life. Visibility is good but other ports are much better.

 

Antigua? No idea. Never been diving in Antigua.

 

Barbados is at the bottom of this list for me. It is the most eastern island. I'm not even sure if it is still in the Caribbean Sea. I think it might be considered Atlantic Ocean. I found the visibility to be fairly poor and not a lot to see.

 

St. Lucia is a fantastic location to dive. I would rank this as number two. I dive wrecks in Canada (fresh water) so there are very few wrecks in the Caribbean which even come close. I dive the Caribbean for marine life. St. Lucia is chalk full of marine life. You definitely want to do the marine park and Superman's Flight. I would say I saw more variety of marine life in St. Lucia than any other location.

 

Tortola is okay. If you go for the standard dive you'll end up on the wreck of the Rhone. Go in the morning if you can. It gets really crowded and silted up by midday. All the cruise ship excursions go there, independent dive operators go there, private boaters go there. Because it is salt water, the ship is deteriorating. The plating on the hull is gone so you can easily swim through the thing. Technically it is an overhead environment but it is so open there is virtually not worry of getting stuck in there.

 

Bonaire is a diver's paradise. There is a LOT of marine life and everything is protected. You cannot wear gloves, you need to pay a marine park fee (not much money) and they check your buoyancy during a shore dive to be sure you aren't going to damage anything. For divers with poor buoyancy this is a problem. Upside is that divers with good buoyancy get to see some very pristine dive sites. A lot of macro-marine life. Go slow and keep your eyes open.

 

Grenada is a wreck divers site. Unfortunately, the best wrecks are deep. Too close to the surface and they get affected by weather more. The deeper they are the better they survive. When I was there there was a law prohibiting building at shore. This restricted dive operators from building docks. We had to wade out in rough water to chest deep, hand up our gear and cylinders, climb into a small boat then from the small boat into a larger boat. To keep the nose of the boat down they piled all the cylinders in the bow but had no good way of securing them. All seemed a little poorly planned to me. Still better than Barbados.

 

Dominica is a fantastic site. There are no direct flights to here and no 5 star hotels. The dive sites are fairly pristine. The number and type of marine life was unbelievable. You have to dive L'Abym (The Abyss).

 

Aruba comparable to St. Thomas. Very commercial. Nothing great but not bad either. I dive Aruba every time I am there but if I had to pick between this and many other ports it wouldn't be high on my list.

 

I'd rank them:

 

1. Dominica

2. St. Lucia

3. Bonaire

4. Tortola

5. St. Thomas

6. Aruba

7. Grenada

8. Barbados

 

St. Thomas, Aruba and Grenada are all fairly close and might change order based on weather conditions. I have no idea where I'd place Antigua.

[jam82]

Wow. That's great info. That's so much for taking the time to rank them.

[w&k]

Well, I have to rank them a bit differently, but I'm a Floridian and a reef diver. I'll do a wreck if I have to, but don't find them particularly interesting until they look like a reef. Also, we tend to look for the small-boat operators, which can make all the difference in where you go, and what you see. I also include the ease of access in my rankings.

 

I have not been diving on Bonaire or Tortola yet, so will leave them off. Will be diving Grenada for the first time in just a couple weeks :) off the Grand Princess.

 

We tried to dive in Antigua a couple of years ago, but ended up with 2 expensive cab rides and no dive. A co-worker of mine just returned from living over in Antigua for a year, and he said the diving there stunk.

 

1. Dominica - wonderful diving everywhere. if you dock in Roseau, go with Nature Island dive. If in Cabrits, go with Cabrits Dive Centre.

 

2. Aruba - fabulous reefs, but you have to go with the right op to see them, and for me, that's Clive at Dive Aruba.

 

3. Barbados - We have had some fantastic reef diving (and a good shallow wreck) with John of Dive Barbados. Great vis!

 

4. St. Lucia - Great reefs, but ranks low with me for typically having odd port times, and the diving is difficult to get to. The ship's dive is typically done with Scuba St. Lucia, and is very expensive for a follow-the-leader time limited dive. Most folks that can book outside the ship have a much better dive experience, but it's still quite spendy, and the good diving appears to be far away from the cruise ship.

 

5. St. Thomas - Gets the bottom rank for many dive sites in exposed areas. We had an OK wreck dive on the WIT Concrete, but got smacked around by high waves (which they said was typical). The second dive on a protected reef was much better. That being said, we're planning on diving there again next spring.

 

Have a great time wherever you decide to dive!

 

Wendy

 

dive pix

http://community.webshots.com/user/wendyandkeith

 

dive reviews

http://wendyandkeith.webs.com/

[ETepas]

Anyone know which of the Tahiti area Islands has the best dive sites ie: Papeete, Moorea, Bora Bora, Huahine, Rangiroa. Any recommended dive operators?