Seven nights, St Marten, St Thomas, and Coco Cay; Tripp, D, and I left on the third largest cruise ship on the ocean over spring break. I didn’t want to overload Tripp in diving, so we skipped St Martin, booked St Thomas, and booked a single dive on Coco Cay, which only took the first hour of the seven at port.
St Thomas – Admiralty Dive Center
Operator
Site
Dive
Depth
Bottom Time
Admiralty Dive Center
Buck Island
62
59.7
39 minutes
Dive Flag
63
67.4
34 minutes
Exiting the cruise ship promptly at 7:30, we were met by a downpour of rain. Navigating to the pickup point was difficult: I couldn’t use my phone, so we went in approximately the right direction till I could find somewhere secluded to check where to go. Unfortunately, I overshot by a couple of blocks, and we backtracked to a coffee shop just a few minute walk from the port.
We were met by another family from the cruise ship, and the owner of Admiralty, to be taken the mile or so down to the boat. As we prepped, the crew kept checking the weather, and the rain didn’t seem to stop soon enough to wait, so we went out to the first dive site.
Buck Island featuring Señora Cartanza
A WWII Freighter, turned “agricultural” ship, made its way to the bottom of the sea floor, and was moved to Buck Island to create a dive site at around 60ft. Tripp previously had wanted to see a wreck, and since there’s no passthroughs or anything requiring extra training, this was a great place to start.
Since the ship is around 60ft deep, we didn’t have tons of bottom time. Probably about 10 minutes were spent diving around the ship, and the other 20ish hitting the nearby reefs. A couple of turtles were spotted, a lionfish hiding under the rocks, and pretty typical sealife.
Dive Flag
Tripp started this dive seeing his first reef shark! This dive was frustrating to me, one group on the dive with us was hunting lobsters, which alone isn’t a big deal. However, their awareness of the gear they were lugging was horrid, they smacked coral, they drug it through reefs. And once they got distracted by a lobster, all awareness of what they were doing was gone. It was quite fun watching him catch the lobster, try and bag it, and have it get away from his catch tool — karmic even.
My camera battery had died on dive one (due to both a long accidental video, and using the generic batteries), so I swapped it for a second. Unfortunately, the battery was dead when I tried to turn the camera on underwater. An inspection in the room later showed that salt had gotten onto the positive terminal; hopefully, a bit of tweezer and IPA action will clear it up, but I had no camera for dive two.
Otherwise, this dive was a pretty standard 60ft reef, decent life, decent coral, pretty consistent with what I remember of St Thomas.
Not so Perfect Day at Coco Cay
All gear packed, heading down to the shore; about a five to ten minute walk lugging the gear, then dragging the wheels through the sand. And…? Dive cancelled due to wind.
I wasn’t surprised, the surface looked pretty rough. I believe you get dragged behind a jetski to the dive start, then beach exit, so it’d be a fairly rough go, but the dive shack said they notified the excursion deck at 9am, and I hadn’t been told when we left just prior to 10am. I’m sure they were slammed by all of the different excursions being cancelled (snorkeling, kayaking, diving, etc), but lugging two people’s worth of gear down to be told later it was off was definitely rough.
28 days prior to the travel date, I realized that I needed to use my timeshare by 31st March, and also that Josh needed to get back into the water, and start his advanced cert work, or our planned Thailand trip wasn’t going to work. So with no notice, I booked a room, flights, and asked him to join me if he could.
Reddit recommended Aqua Adventures for a dive shop, so I communicated with them for a couple weeks, and arranged a refresher course on Saturday, and AOW on Sunday and Monday, with a possible day off or fourth day of diving on Tuesday.
Weekend Winds – A Failure to Launch
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday winds were 20+ MPH, with gusts up to 40. While the ferry may be able to cross with that wind, the docks close for smaller boats. So all our plans went down the drain. One day of diving wasn’t going to get Josh his AOW, and it felt a waste to do the refresher as our only dive, so instead, Josh did a “recertification” course on Monday, with a small shore dive for skills refreshes. It got us in the water, and while it only went as far as swimming around under the docks, it also got us practiced at skills neither of us had used for a decade-plus.
Barco C-55 – My First Panic, My First Called Dive
Backrolling off the boat, we did a very quick descent, followed by a moderately hard swim into the current to reach the wreck. Josh and Danny then started their skills and I… well, I started freaking out. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t pull in air, couldn’t successfully breathe. I wanted to pull out my reg, but I held my hand in front of it, because I knew that was stupid.
Was it nitrogen narcossis? Probably not. We were only at 75ft, and I’ve never had anything like that before. Was it just a pure panic attack? Again, probably not, I’ve never had one of those before either. In retrospect, my “best guess” — and that’s all I’ll ever have — is it was a mixture of bad GI issues the two days prior, low calorie intake because of that, a swim that shouldn’t have been hard (but was, due to caloric deficit), and some amount of narc induced panic.
I notified Danny that I wasn’t doing well. We called the dive right away, and fortunately Josh had already had a chance to do the skills, and safety ascended. I tried to signal at 40ft that I’d calmed down, and could try a slow descent, but Danny had already scrapped the dive, and that was fine. Hopefully, it’ll never happen again, but there are worse “bad endings” to a dive than a safe early-exit.
Grampin
No drama for the second dive of the day. This drift dive was along a large area of coral, at about 25 feet, with a pretty typical subtropical mix of small and medium life. Stingrays, nudibranchs, crabs and lobsters, and schools of tropical fish. I didn’t photograph much, given my previous freak-out, I primarily wanted to focus on calm, and my breathing. I was the first out of air, but I also started about 400psi below Josh and Danny, so it wasn’t horrible, even though my breathing wasn’t great.
Good Night Moon, Good Night Stars
After a short break, we finished our day of diving with a night dive. This was a less comfortable dive for Josh, as using the flashlight means you’re a bit more centrally focused. For me, this dive was the best of the three. The Leton floods did great for illuminating a wide area as I went to photograph, and seeing the big puffers, lobsters, and other more secluded aquatic life out and about made for a very different view than the previous dive.
The “basket star” was a new thing for me, having never done a reef dive at night. And seeing a moray out and about was neat, though photographing it was tough as it retreated quickly from my lights.
This little guy swam in circles with me, following my light for over a minute, till I left it be to continue its evening undisturbed.
Slug Bug!
MUSA, or the Museo Subacuatico de Arte, is a set of statues, and other art pieces, located underwater, slowly forming an underwater reef at about 20 feet, enough to see by snorkeling (if the viz is a bit better) and definitely designed for diving. The artist has installations all across the world, which would make an amazing to-do list for diving!
Groups of tens of statues, bugs, individual pieces of art, and more are all throughout the area. The artist is Jason deCaires Taylor, his portfolio is definitely worth a visit at https://underwatersculpture.com/
Josh had to return home too early to make these dives, so I had booked it to allow the lone diver scheduled for that day not to be cancelled. Instead, when I got there, two snorkelers were waiting in the shop. By the time we were about to go, six snorkelers were there, and two other divers, a dad and his daughter (discover scuba student). Unfortunately for the snorkelers, the visibility meant there wasn’t a lot for them to see.
This wasn’t the most vibrant area for life, but there is no doubt that that will change in time. Already, there is growth on the art pieces, just about fifteen years in, and coral and life takes decades to grow. While the dive had to be called a tad early due to the discover student getting too cold, it was a great, easy, shallow dive that I’d recommend for anyone. And perfect for a discover student.
Return to Manchones
One of the most unique, and beautiful fish I saw was the flying gurnard. Danny said it reminds him of the Dilophosaurus (well, he said the one in Jurassic park that has the… then gestured with his hands the neck frilling out), and I totally agree.
A beautiful two foot needlefish, great schools of porkfish, more giant puffers hiding under rocks, and a great view of a stingray swimming were just some of the highlights of this dive. While, like the others, I’d say this wasn’t anything unique, or spectacular, it was definitely a healthier reef than we saw in the keys, and a perfect example of why I love to dive.
Our trip to Key West was wholly planned as a dive trip, one day each for arrival and departure, and three days of reef diving with Captain’s Corner, where cousin Derek Bardini works as a dive instructor.
Our departure was on the red eye from Sacramento, though delayed an hour and we missed our Key West connection flight. Instead of arriving at noon, we arrived in the early evening on Wednesday. Still arriving in time for three days of diving, we checked in on Wednesday to the Parrot Key hotel, went out for an arrival dinner, then got to bed to prep for our first afternoon of dives.
Sand Key – I’m Not Lost!
Miscommunication with Derek (he thought we were late to the whole first day, not just our arrival) meant that Tripp and I headed out on day one as unguided divers. We got to the boat around 1pm for a 2pm dive time.
Gear setup and ready, the captain gave us a rundown of our first dive site, Sand Key, and how the reefs are laid out in the Marine Sanctuary. We got down to depth and I saw plenty of coral and life, so we headed out to view what Florida had to offer. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t understand well enough the description, and we followed coral and life, but didn’t head out in the correct direction and missed the main reefs for the first half of our dive.
Visibility was moderate at best, though the warm waters were a nice treat. We spent about a half hour swimming through the coral, then caught one of the reef “fingers” for the last fifteen minutes of the dive site. Tripp would say I was lost, but I would say that I knew where we were relative to the boat fine (we came up within twenty feet of the boat), but we did miss out on a lot of what we could have seen.
With about ten minutes to go, Tripp pointed out (whether in “Oh cool, look at that!” or “Oh crap, look out!” I can’t be certain), a group of jellyfish at the surface. We swam for a few minutes longer at the reef, yet when getting back onto the boat, Tripp was stung in the leg! Fortunately, these aren’t horrible, just about the equivalent of a bee sting, and a bit of vinegar helped denature the sting. Three total divers were stung, as about ten jellies were hanging out at the boat ladders.
Eastern Dry Rocks – Reef Fingers
Tripp and I headed out to the reef following the captain’s instructions properly for the second dive. A few trips around the fingers of reef and we saw quite a bit more life on this dive than the first. We also ran into a lot more of the other divers this trip, and enjoyed viewing the plethora of coral and life along the reef. Unfortunately for the dive (and the first), we missed the shark, the sting ray, saw only one grouper, and generally all the “awesome” items to see in the Florida Keys, though we did have a great and beautiful dive. Visibility is only about 20 feet, and the surge was getting pretty strong by the end. In fact, the boat ride back was in 3-4 foot waves, and Tripp was looking a bit green before and after the dive, but altogether, this was a pleasant and fun dive trip, and much more successful navigation.
Eastern Dry Rocks – Day Two
Derek joined us on the ship today, taking us back to the same two dive sites from the previous day. The boat has limited locations for diving when the winds are heavy, so while things were a little more calm on day two, we stuck to the same sites as before.
Two big differences exist on these reef dives versus what I’m used to. The first is the start time; I’m quite used to dives starting early morning, but because Captain’s Corner dives the Vandenburg in the morning, the reef dives happen in the afternoon. The second is the surface interval. Typically, I’m used to a thirty to sixty minute boat ride between locations, which also happens to be the surface interval. But because the reef area is pretty compact, and because the dives are generally less than thirty feet deep, the surface interval is just enough time to switch tanks, and we’re back in the water. Today’s dives started earlier than the 2pm start time, because there were boat races happening in Key West that made accessing the harbor impossible at the normal start time, so we began today at 11am instead.
The sites are plenty big enough to show a good variety in life each day, and with a guide to allow me more time to focus on the reefs and less on navigating, I was content in seeing plenty of new things. Tripp also felt a lot more comfortable on these dives, bringing along his camera for this trip.
The keys are heavy with fan coral, brain coral, parrotfish, wrasse, tangs, and most things you find in warm water tropical dives. What’s different between these and Hawai’i, for example, are the nurse sharks, the groupers, sting rays, jellyfish, green morays, and more. While we again didn’t see any sharks or other big ticket items, the dive was plenty full of great flora and fauna, if a bit low on visibility.
Sand Keys – Day Two
The other item to note on today’s dives versus the previous is that Derek also had a Discover SCUBA student and a very new diver in the group with us. This is always risk; the depth of these reefs is perfect for a Discover dive, but someone with only a couple hours of pool experience may burn through their air in a few minutes, may need to surface and stop the dive, or any number of additional risks to their dive and ours. Fortunately, David (the DS newb) and Manju (the beginning diver) both did great, and we had a nice long dive together.
Our second dive of Sand Keys meant we spent the whole dive in the reef, not “lost” among the coral. Here we see our first lionfish, a spiny lobster and a lobster carcass, some beautiful huge brain coral, and a significant amount of life. This was a much better day than the previous, and left a lot of hope for an even better third day of diving.
Day Three – Hay Stacks
Our final day of diving brough us to two new dive sites. Unlike the “fingers” of coral on the last two days, our first dive site today brought us to various independent reef formations, each with their own life and coral on them. Joining us today was a semi-frequent diver with Derek who came as a solo diver to make our group four. A beneficiary of the current remote workforce, he moved down to Florida since his work only requires a good internet connection and proximity to an airport.
The highlight of the first dive was the smallest turtle I’ve ever seen on a dive. Probably just two feet long, head to tail, he was swimming alone among the reefs. Tripp has seen a plethora of turtles among his dives, so while not a unique experience, always a highlight item for any day of diving, and fortuitous since we saw several on our boat trip in, and I was hoping that wasn’t our only turtle visitation.
Cannonball Cut
Our final dive site of our trip was Cannonball Cut, named after the former existence of cannonballs dropped from ships as they had to lower their weight to pass through the shallow reefs. Here, we saw the best items of our entire trip.
Day two showed us our first grouper. This last dive showed us several. From a beautifully camouflaged grouper lodged in the coral, to a three-hundred plus pound goliath swimming with two other groupers, this would be the one unique item among my diving history.
We also did a fun passthrough beneath some of the coral, saw a second and very beautiful lionfish (the one pictured above), and finished with the best dive of the trip.
Thank you Derek Bardini for taking us out in your home town, thank you Captain’s Corner for the great coordination and support, and thank you to my family for letting me take Tripp away for a few days.
Of the three dive trips, this was the one I was most anticipating, and unfortunately, the lowlight of our diving.
Booking a Manta dive during a peak season was a lot more difficult than I expected, and we almost didn’t get to do it. Because we also chose to have D and Damon snorkel the site, we were limited to a single dive (not a pre-dive and manta dive). We left with Aquatic Life Divers from the same docks we dove in the previous day, with a single dive master, Liliana, for the five or so of us diving, and a lead for the three snorkelers.
There are times when no manta show, but for us, we did get to see one for a minute or two, but… that was it. A highlight for this trip was actually the snorkelers, they got to see three or four manta in the area they went to. The organization of all the operators coming out and adding their lights to the “bonfire” is always impressive, and hopefully the next time I come out, there are a lot more rays to see.
The other interesting thing I encountered was a flounder that I had totally missed for several minutes, hanging out on a rock right in front of our waiting spot. Tripp says he saw it pretty early, but it seemed pretty camouflaged to me!
Having purchased new short booties for Tripp, and checking in with Jack’s the day we arrived, I was excited for this dive in Kona. The area is my favorite to dive in, and I’m grateful we had the opportunity to book a dive trip.
We headed out to the docks in the morning and got everything setup. I’m pretty used to Jack’s being a fully staffed company, with young dive masters and instructors in training. For this dive, though, we got two fairly seasoned DMs, one leading a group with high end camera gear, the other leading the group of new and fairly-new divers.
I was fairly worried going into this dive that there would be a repeat of the issues and anxieties of the last dives, but nothing of the sort happened at the start. Getting in the water was a breeze, we followed the group the entire dive.
“Lone Tree” refers to a spot on the short that used to have a single tree on the rocks. That tree is long gone, but the dive site name has remained. The arch is a fairly large swim-through that leads to some great photo spots.
After a good dive, at the time we decided to ascend, Tripp was already down at about 500psi. We’re initially taught to go up earlier than that, and the pre-dive had talked about when we planned to head back, and when we planned to start the ascent. Tripp was extremely worried about his low air, and didn’t want to do the safety stop. I kept getting him to stay down at 15 feet, and his worry kept growing as he saw the air creep closer to 0. There’s no good way to communicate that, we’re at 15 feet, even if it hit zero here, you’d be okay. We’re better doing the safety stop than heading up. The only think I could do is keep pulling him to me each time he started to ascend.
This led to Tripp not wanting to do the second dive. Add in a lack of wanting to eat a sandwich with sprouts on it, and he wasn’t too keen on diving. However, the second dive location had recently seen a white-tipped shark, and that was enough to overcome his reluctance to dive again, and get back in the water.
While we didn’t get to see the shark, as we didn’t make it that far out from the boat, we did see an awesome coral that routinely held a group of fish that would swim out from nesting in the coral when you approached, and also held a crab. We also got to see a viper eel on this dive. Tripp was a lot more comfortable, and overall, this was diving as I’m used to. Comfortable, fun, full of life, and a great experience.
Our plan coming into Oahu was to do a night dive the day we arrived. We had a wedding to attend, non-divers to keep occupied, and a flight to Kona to consider leaving enough decompression time to achieve.
The day we arrived into Oahu, we had plenty of time to get the dive going, had confirmed our dive reservation, and were ready to go. By the early evening though, we got a message that the current was too bad, and our dive was canceled. Looking through our schedule, I made arrangements with the dive operator (Banzai Divers) to dive the morning before our flight, as long as they were relatively shallow dives. However, after the wedding concluded, the day before the dive, they canceled due to an ear infection with the dive master.
Frantic calls to every dive shop ensued throughout the reception dinner. Calling for a “next day” dive proved almost impossible. One shop was kind enough to send me a list of ten different dive operators to contact. The ninth one on that list, fortunately, had availability, though it was quite a ways away. We booked with Reef Pirates and had a dive set.
Dive Anxiety and Equipment Issues
We made it down to the Hanauma area in the morning, and to the little strip mall containing the dive operator. The coolest part of their setup; the strip mall backed up to the water, and so the boat left straight from the “closet” that was their shop.
One other diver accompanied us, so we set sail to our first dive location and got ready to enter the water. Tripp couldn’t get into his full-size booties, so he went barefoot in his fins (mistake one!) When we dropped into the water, almost immediately his fin came off. This being his first dive since certification a year prior, his anxiety levels skyrocketed, and he canceled his dive. However, with the help of the boat captain, and the spare fins they had on the boat (all the way down to XXXS!), he made his way back into the water and we descended.
Things from that point didn’t go great. This is the first time I’ve dove with a true beginner, and non-adult, and having started already in a bad place, Tripp did not enjoy the dive at all. In fact, we told the DM to go ahead with the other diver, and three times, we ascended (slowly, fortunately) to the surface, to communicate, deal with issues, and then descend again to try to continue the dive. We did get about 20 minutes of real dive time, but after coming to the surface quite a ways from the boat, and an unsuccessful attempt to swim back, Tripp was done.
A boat ride and a surface interval later, the captain and dive master had talked quite a bit to Tripp about how normal some of the anxieties are. With a goal of seeing turtles at the next dive site, Tripp convinced himself not to worry, but to just do the dive and enjoy it. That self-mantra worked! This time, we made it down, and had a good, full length dive with the dive master and other diver.
It was interesting talking to Tripp afterwards, and hearing the personal struggles he went through and overcame. The decision he made to enjoy the second dive meant that he did! The equipment issues not being present in dive two meant he could just enjoy the entirety of the dive. I worried about the future plans for three more dives, but it seemed that, since he did succeed at one, we could succeed at the next, till the anxieties were gone. And the fin issue and other issues are all preventable and manageable.
The Dive Highlights
The dives weren’t all management of the dive process, I’d be remiss to not talk about the fifty or so minutes of actual diving that happened.
Oahu isn’t nearly as full of life as Kona, but it definitely is better than anything on the West Coast. Since we didn’t travel too far from the boat on dive one, the majority of what we saw was sand, coral, and small amounts of life. That first dive was dominated by the dive process.
The second dive, though, had a lot more of what I’d expect in Hawai’i. Trumpetfish, schools of squirrel fish under the overhangs, tang and butterfly fish, puffer fish, etc. Not quite in the abundance I recall, but definitely a normal variety of Hawai’ian sea life. The highlight for me, though were two items. Several (I think four) turtles, and the best moray experience I’ve had. While moray eels are often peeking out of some hole, trying to find their next meal, or just intimidate some diver, this guy made his way out of his spot and swam out while we were watching. I’ve never gotten to see (or video) a moray swimming during a dive.
I’m happy we were able to make it out to dive, and doubly happy that we didn’t do a night dive as our first dive. I think, had we had the equipment issues at night, we wouldn’t have had a single full dive in Oahu. The cluster that was booking this dive was, in hindsight, a great thing.
For his twelfth birthday, we bought Tripp his base SCUBA gear and classes for Open Water certification at Dolphin Scuba.
The dive weekend was in the midst of a two week holiday at Lake Tahoe. Dolphin had a bit of a mix-up in managing whether a 12 year old could join group classes for the checkout or not, and so our original plans in Monterey were cancelled. What happened instead is that they worked around our existing vacation and had one of their instructors come up to meet us in Tahoe, which worked out great!
There were two or three other groups out at the beach doing certifications (altitude, technical… something), but our time was just with Matt Estrada, Tripp, and I. Matt was great to allow me to be beside them through the dives, though I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible, and I skipped the first dive to allow him to focus.
For the first dive I joined, Tripp and Matt had done an air exchange and ascent before I went into the water, plus underwater gear removal and replacement. We then spent the next fifteen minutes or so going around the sandy beach area. I trailed behind them on a semi-solo dive, to let them focus on Tripp’s learning.
The second dive, Tripp had to work on navigation skills, heading half way out to a dive buoy. After the skills were over, again we just dove around at 20-30 feet. A few crawdads were around the area, but mostly it was about being comfortable in the water.
One the second day, and Tripp’s final dive, we did one long dive out from the beach and over to some of the boulder areas. Tripp’s buoyancy looked great, and we enjoyed a little more life (though still just a few schools of small fish and crawdads), but we just explored at about 40′ till Tripp was down to 1500psi.
No checkout dive is the same as a real rec dive, but it’s always awesome to get in the water your first time. Tripp seened to do just fine with the cold water and thick wetsuits; the good visibility in Tahoe always seems to help. I’m super appreciative of Matt’s flexibility at letting me tag along on their dives.
The last time I took a personal vacation to a dive area, I lugged my full set of gear, and yet never got in the water for diving. So with a karate-focused trip planned to Okinawa, I decided to go to the other extreme, and carry only my C-Card, the bare minimum to dive.
After a couple of days in Naha, our group went up to Chatan to be near our training locations. A typical morning and evening had me walking along the Sunabe Sea Wall, and I saw that, all times of day, there were tens of divers out in the water. The inspiration these groups gave me to look around for a dive operator was strong. I spent an hour or two, visiting several of the many local dive shops, till I found what I thought would be the one. However, between the time I was visiting the shops and deciding to book, one of the shops I couldn’t find returned my call via text, and I arranged a dive with Okinawa 39ers.
The Dive Logistics
Typically, dealing with a dive operator and a boat excursion, you arrive at their shop, they take you to their boat, and you make your way out to the dive spots. However, in Okinawa, it seems the MO is for the dive operators to go to a dock and share a boat amongst themselves that they hire from a fisherman. Dai picked me up at my hotel at about 7am and we drove a half hour or so north to Manza.
One major advantage to this kind of setup… between each dive we docked back up, and our lunches, snacks, gear, personal effects, were all left in the van while we went out diving. No scarfing down food and killing time on the boat while at a distant location, or traveling to the next dive spot. Instead, we got to stand on firm land, wash down with fresh water, and enjoy our hour between dives in a much more comfortable spot.
Another interesting finding on this style of dive; the original group I was going to book with was on the same boat. I got essentially the same dive, for about $50 less cost! And I have absolutely no complains about Dai as a divemaster, he was fantastic to work with and dive with.
Nakayukui
Our first of the three dives was out to Nakayukui. Unfortunately, while I began this blog in earnest after the dive, it was four years later till I hit submit. My recollections of the dive are slim, but my notes say I saw two lionfish at the start of the dive, an interesting disintegrated net, and some big boy fish.
It had been a while since I dove, and the difference in protocol between some of my previous dives and this were apparent. When we hit the 3 minute safety stop, I planned to swim around a bit at 13-17 feet, as we were in a shallow spot, but Dai wanted me to stay put on the anchor line, so I got a wee bit reprimanded.
Dream Hole
The second dive out, I encountered some problems with the BCD. It wouldn’t release air unless I was 100% vertical. I know air travels up, but my personal gear is much more forgiving.
This vest was definitely giving me a bit more problems. We went down a hole starting at 7m depth and down to 27, with a sand floor and a wall. We exited out a hole shaped like Pikachu, and swam the rest of the 41 minute dive.
Horse Shoe
Our final stop was a wall dive, from about 7 to 40m. There was some beautiful purple and yellow nudibranch, a school of around 20 box fish, and about 10 lion fish on this dive. We swam out about 80m from the boat to hit the wall, and meandered our way back on a 47 minute dive trip.
A 5.7 million gallon tank, sharks, rays, turtles, and more. This dive was like the petting zoo of diving, where semi-domesticated fish hang out inches from your face, and tiger sharks will swim over your head. It’s a pretty amazing experience, and while artificial, is one of the best diving experiences I’ve had.
The dive started with a backstage tour of the aquarium, including information as to their role in conservation with other aquariums, their animals, the layout of the tank, and some information as to what to expect on the dive. We couldn’t take any pictures backstage, so there’s not much to share visually, but it was interesting to see how they take care of the tanks and fish.
After the tour (about ninety minutes worth), we made our way into the gear that they supplied (you can’t use anything but your own mask), and went down into the tank. The dive started with a ten minute tour around the tank, followed by about a half hour of free time.
One item they told us about prior to the dive was that the interaction with spectators into the aquarium needed to be as if we were cast members, because most of the public doesn’t know that we’re not. And they weren’t kidding. One of my favorite things in the dive was swimming along the windows, waving at and interacting with the kids. It felt like I was adding to the experience of hundreds of kids, and that was great.
Beyond that, like I said, it was like being at a fish petting zoo. At one point, I sat on the ground, and three separate sharks swam within a foot of me at the same time. It was quite intimidating, but awesome.
The eagle rays, the sharks, the closeups with the turtles, and more. It was amazing being so up close and personal with so many fish.
There isn’t much else to say, but I definitely would recommend the dive to any diver out there, no question.
One thing is for certain, getting here was worth the dive, but next time, we fly!
The boat over to Saba, just a seventy minute boat ride off the coast of St Maarten, was fast and furious, leading to more than one pale or green face, and a lot of blank stares out towards the horizon. Arrival into the island was by way of a little port, with a small road leading straight uphill to the town of “The Bottom.” The three local dive operators have storefronts alongside the power plant and two restaurants that occupy the port. Selecting Saba Deep as my dive operator was very scientific: it was the only one of the three that our hotel booking agent had heard of.
The shop was small, but friendly, and as for the staff, they were great. Suggestions to pre-order lunch with the restaurant above the shop, so that we could still get to eat, and make the return trip on time, were well received by the divers. After mentioning that I hadn’t eaten yet, and that the only thing the restaurant offered that I could take with me was potato salad, they directed me to an item on the menu that could be made in less than the ten minutes it would take before the boat was taking off. This type of common kindness and courtesy has lacked on some previous charters I’ve taken, and it was nice to see.
The captain and divemaster had already taken our gear down to the boat and gotten all of the rigs set up on tanks by the time we got down and set out for the south-west coast of the island.
It took a while to find a dive site that wasn’t too choppy to dive, or too deep to give us much time. The first dive was at Ladder Labyrinth, an area around the site where the original Saba settlers had to hike goods up before the port and road were built. The site had fingers of lava extending from the mountain, covered in coral and offering the area life. The first thing to strike me here was a new type of coral that I hadn’t seen in my recollection. While tube coral I’m used to seeing, this larger tube (whose name I don’t know yet), was amazing in its texture and size.
The second thing to amaze me was my first encounter with a seahorse. The little guy wasn’t moving much, or at all, but I’ve met divers with hundreds of dives under their belts who’ve never seen one. The divemaster said that one had been hanging around this site, and that she’d set off trying to find it once we got down. After she didn’t find it, I had lost hope, but on our return after our time was up, she flagged us all down, and we got to see it hanging out on a rock right below our boat.
Our second dive was a drift through a lot of varying reef types, from crevices between large rocks, to boulders and lava fingers. We started the dive with a shark swimming off (which I didn’t get to see), and a ray on the sea floor. The drift took us through a lot of varying sea life, with an abundance of nudibranchs, small schooling fish and larger ocean fish (one barracuda that I got a photo of its tail end departing). Box fish, butterflies, and other species that I typically associate with warm tropics were in abundance, and while the life was plentiful, and much more like what I expect in warm water diving, this dive was not much different than many others that I’ve been on; which is to say, I loved it, and would go back in an instant.
After heading back to shore, the operators dismantled and cleaned our gear, while we all enjoyed the lunch we’d pre-ordered. On our way back out to the return boat to St Maarten, I watched other divers cleaning their own gear and doing their own work. I guess my random choice was a good one, since the sites were great, the divemasters great too, and the shop was the most customer-service friendly of the three.
