Anyone ever dove St. Croix?

[stcroix2]

We did not dive with Nekton, nor have we personally heard from any of the divers who dove St. Croix via Nekton. Our diving on St. Croix has taken a huge break over the past 12 months. Between November 2004 and Sept. 1, 2007 we each logged well over 400 dives in St. Croix. We joined the local dive club, CRABBS, and I was the most prolific diver in that club for two years running. We had two dive buddies who dove quite a bit with us too. Robert is still there, and has surely taken the baton.

We have thousands of photos, and over 50 videos posted of our diving there. We truly enjoyed every single dive. Indeed there are walls, reefs, wrecks, a junk yard and a fair amount of aquatic life. We did not really experience a significant quantity of large fish and critters. The locals have quite a problem in that they are fishing themselves out of fish. Not an uncommon problem in the Caribbean. During the 2006 season there was quite a bit of coral bleaching. It seems that once the temps reached 87, it was too warm for the coral. Contrary to the pundits which profess that once bleached, coral dies, that was not our observations. Many, many coral heads which were almost entirely bleached white, came back to be very colorful and healthy.

One thing you may notice, which seems more prevalent diving off St. Croix is the size and quantity of the barrel sponges. Out west there are many very large sponges.

We often encountered Hawksbill turtles, Caribbean Spiny Lobster, Green moray eels. Although we were never able to spot a single Frog fish, we did encounter several bat fish on a regular basis at the Pier. Also, prior to the Nekton, there were generally a half dozen or more Sea Horses encountered on EACH dive at the Frederiksted Pier. By the way, Robert sees several Frog fish in his dives now at the Pier.

One of the very best things we appreciated about St. Croix, and our favorite dive shop, was that we had each dive site to ourselves! Now that is not always the case, the three dive shops diving the famous Salt River Wall, will often dump their boat loads of divers almost on top of each other. It was not uncommon to return to their dive boat with an extra diver or two. Other than CRABBS dives, we pretty much avoided those operations. They just are not our style of diving. The MARES Rep put it best about St. Croix diving: "On a bad day in Cozumel there are a thousand divers in the water, On a GREAT day in St.Croix there are a hundred divers in the water"

Finally, I might add, there was quite a bit of angst when Nekton announced they were going to make a stop at the St. Croix dive sites. Live aboards do not have a very good reputation about the aquatic-friendly nature of their divers. There was fear that they would run off the very sensitive aquatic life under the Frederiksted Pier, and the Wrecks. Although we still converse with our dive buddies there, they have said nothing of the ill-effects of Nekton's visit.

We love the diving on St. Croix, and will be returning when the opportunity presents itself.

Keith

 

[stcroix2]

Oh, and while Diane was reading the July 2008 Sport Diver magazine, on page 102.. N2blue.com and Frederiksted Hotel are offering an 8 day summer diving special...$700 per person, double occupancy...seven nights accommodations, five morning two-tank boat trips, unlimited tanks and weights for shore diving and one guided night dive at the Pier. American Airlines is about the only way to get there, via San Juan (SJU).

The hotel is very accessible to the Frederiksted Pier and the ultra-scary Swirling Reef of Death dive site!

 

[robint]

I had heard that many of the people of St Croix were not happy about the Nekton coming but I doubt they still feel that way. The Nekton company is one of the most eco-friendly ops in the world and does not even have an anchor. They have put down mooring pins all over Bahamas, Belize, and now St. Croix and allow all dive boats to use them to help save the reefs from damage. They also don't really cater to newbie divers so the idea that they damage the reefs was silly. The people I usually see beating up the reefs are newbie day-boat divers who only do a few dives per year. Those people don't do liveaboards.

I had heard rumors of over-fishing in St. Croix, no big fish on the reefs. Too bad. :depressed: Hopefully they can enforce some rules about that with the local fishermen like some other Caribbean countries have done in the past few years. I have heard in several places, like Roatan, they are already seeing a dramatic increase in fishlife in the past year (since they started sending patrol boats out to keep fishmen off the reefs).

 

[namabucs]

I have to disagree with a couple of the replies here. I was on St. Croix last year when Nekton's boat first arrived on the island. They invited the dive staffs of several of the shops aboard and my wife I were lucky enough to be invited along. There were three of the shops there, SCUBA, Scuba West, and I think N3theBlue was there that night too. The shops all seemed to love the idea of having Nekton diving on St. Croix because it validated that there's really some very very good diving there. It's not like Nekton can't "choose" where they go and they chose St. Croix. By the way I've never been on a live aboard and only visited this one for a few hours but it sure was set up well for diving.

The other comment I have to disagree with was the "scorched earth" thing. I think they were referring to Long Reef. While there are some areas, primarily in the shallows, where storms have hammered some of the coral, we dove a LOT of Long Reef sites over the course of two separate weeks and loved it. Eagle Ray is a great dive, we played with Earl the Eel at Blue Chute, and saw a lot of marine life at both Sugar Beach and Turquoise Bay. We've been diving quite a while and St. Croix is one of the few places we've returned to ( a couple of times now). The island is also very friendly and very laid back. It's what the Caribbean should be.

 

[woodfrogs]

We've done the wall, and the wrecks, coral reefs, the pier, lots of places.
I'm always amazed at the creatures and formations. Not all operators will go to all the dive sites because they're strung out along the north shore of island and the surf can make a long trip a misery. We usually do a 2 tank morning dive session, which leaves the afternoon free for shopping, kayaking, poolside, etc. But you will not lack for places to go. And I still prefer Derrick & Anna at N2 the Blue, just super people to deal with, and they're right in Fredricksted near the Pier.