Best for larger stuff ??

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Tuckster

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Location
Virginia
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50 - 99
I'm looking for suggestions (2/11) on a location where I will have the best opportunity to see rays, turtles & sharks. I know T&C is 1 spot & the Bahamas another. I've been to Bonaire & Cozumel & GC. A liveaboard won't work with my schedule (all Sat. departures). Roatan ?? Grenada ?? Tobago ?? Belize ?? At least In Roatan, I know they offer shark dives. I love Cozumel but been there 3 times & seldom seen anything big.
 
Larger Stuff? Like you said, you know about the Roatan Shark dive...

On a broader sense, take a breath, do some diving, sharpen your observational skills. There's lots of "larger stuff" swimming right by you.

We all begin diving with the same skills. We can't see or find anything. Thus- we gravitate towards easily seen and identifiable critters. Lobsters, Crabs (Hey... I've seen those in a restaurant!), bigger fish like Baracuda, Groupers, and similar.

It is so insidious that no diver can know what he isn't seeing. I have had students that were so keyed up with "Wooowooo... I'm diving!" (kind of like the first time you have sex) that they couldn't see a 10" lobster on the sandy bottom from 4 feet away. Not all that uncommon.

Sometimes we are so eager to see something, we'll pay for the priveledge to see Sharks attracted to feed before us. We might go to a resort that features Dolphin encounters. Both of these (and similar are called "Canned Fish" acts or "Rodeos") you will someday realize are pretty dreadful.

Tobago? Only one Dive Op that I know of that could give you a remote chance of seeing Mantas- get 40+ logged small boat dives (wooden ladders) and drift (heavy current) recoveries before you go play with those guys.

Grenada? The only place to see the real deal is the far NE barrier islands- getting there will cost serious money and two plus days of diving with specific dive ops before they will bother to trust you.

Roatan? There is a Canned Shark Dive and a Dolphin Pester. For what they are, two of the best I have ever seen in terms of dive breifing and dive-op infrastructure. You can often see (and snorkel with) free dolphins on the South Side at First Bight (East of CCV). See Pilot Whales from New Years at http://www.docksidedivecenter.com/WeeklyLog122906.html on just a regular dive boat trip.

Roatan and Belize do offer some potential for Whale Sharks, but specific times of year are an issue, phases of the moon, plus the dive-op itself has to be doing some serious networking. The most Whale Sharks ever dove in the Bay Islands was in the day that CCV had a float plane diong the spotting. Go for the diving, if you get a Whale Shark- consider that you've won the lottery.

No arranged dive will come close to your first incidental encounter in the wild. You may have seen 100 sharks being fed on 8 different Canned Shark dives, but that one dive when you are at 60 feet off of San Sal and a 12' Bull Shark swims along 100 feet away and just ignores you... that is a memory.

Go to some place with great stuff to see. Concentrate on that life that is 6" down to microscopic. Practice your buoyancy, your observational skills and diving. You'll see the "big stuff" soon enough!

If you go looking for "love", you'll likely not find it!
 
If you get to the Atlantic side of Grenada (Aquanauts Grenada regularly go round here) you will undoubtedly see nurse sharks and occasional reef sharks, as they congregate around the wreck of the San Juan. Eagle rays and turtles are fairly common occurrences too.

You've already mentioned the Bahamas yourself, but for me, San Salvador (as Doc suggested) is the place go, as then you can often see hammerheads cruising by on the walls. Yes, you can see Caribbean reef sharks off Nassau and Grand Bahama, but these are fed sharks, so not particularly acting as they would totally in the wild.

I have had good fortune from the East End of Grand Cayman – every time I have dived with Ocean Frontiers down here (five times), I have seen Caribbean reef sharks, hammerhead sharks, eagle rays and multiple turtles. Plus, it is great diving.

Or, as Doc suggests, you can always just enjoy the regular reef critters and count any big animal encounters as a lucky dip.

Mark
 
You might think about diving from the Big Island ..Hawaii. Generally there are Manta Rays that come in close to shore every night. They are quite popular with the dive ops.
As far as rays, have you been to stingray city on Grand Cayman? You can spend a whole dive interacting with southern sting rays at this dive site.
I have never been on a trip to Cayman Brac/Little Cayman when I didn't see eagle rays or sharks at some point during the week.
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:lol:

I've posted the same kind of thing a few times... and got the same kind of responses, especially from Doc Adelman / Roatan Man.

There aren't great answers in the Bahamas/Carib/C. America... I've tried most of the places mentioned above, except Grenada... my general best recommendations would be getting off the beaten track with some folks who *really* know their turf (and are friends with some local fisherman preferably) in the Bahamas and T&C.

Their should be other and better answers, given the ongoing development of whale watching (and some bad stuff) in the eastern Carib... but there aren't.

That said, I'll be in Belize for whale sharks this spring. :D
 
On yesterday's morning dive charter, we had not one, but TWO Eagle Rays checking us out. We see them often, but usually one as it gracefully swims by. Yesterday, they hung around a bit, and one circled around one of the divers. Then, that diver freaked out and started thrashing about, which scared them away.

On our night dive site, we have to dodge the sting rays as they come to the wreck for the night. It's awesome!

We regularly see large Nurse sharks, occaisionally Black tips, Caribbean Reefs, and in deeper water - Bulls.

Not too shabby for the US Virgin Islands!
 
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