best snorkeling eastern caribbean

[licruiser1]

Which island is the best to snorkel on when going on the Valor to St. Thomas or St. Maarten? We would like to snorkel from the beach and would like to see coral and tropical fish without having to go out in a boat.

[Pilot70D]

Neither of your two ports are exactly pinnacle diving or snorkeling destinations. We have been to both and in our opinion St. Thomas is a little bit the better of the two. As far as not going out on a boat I can't help you there. We have always gone diving or snorkeling from boats when there.

 

If you happen to be going to Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, St. Lucia or Dominica the diving/snorkeling is much better. One of the things you can do is to use any of the common search engines and look for snorkeling St. Thomas and then snorkeling St. Marteen and see what turns up. You might also want to search through the threads in the Ports Of Call Section elsewhere on this site and see what turns up for snorkeling.

 

Hope this is helpful. enjoy that next cruise and the snorkeling.

[Stevesan]

Which island is the best to snorkel on when going on the Valor to St. Thomas or St. Maarten? We would like to snorkel from the beach and would like to see coral and tropical fish without having to go out in a boat.

 

St Maarten is poor for snorkeling.

 

St Thomas/St John is fair to excellent.

The best beach snorkeling on St Thomas is at Coki Beach. An option is take the ferry to St John. Trunk Bay is a beautiful beach and very popular with the cruise crowds. Unfortunately, the snorkeling is only fair. Cinnamon Bay and others on St John are good.

 

Vinow has an excellent web site with info on all things US Virgin Islands, including beaches and transportation.

This web site won't allow the URL link here,. Enter vinow in the URL window then Ctrl/Enter together, or the classic www followed by vinow then dot com.

 

If you're not up to the ferry, lots of folks, families especially, enjoy Coki. The shore snorkeling is good. Even Scuba divers enter from Coki.

 

http://www.cokidive.com/

 

http://www.coralworldvi.com/

 

http://www.stjohnusvi.com/magnificent.html