Returned from Barbados Sunday (December 11th), We were suppose to be home saturday, but American Airlines fumbled the ball and we were stuck in Miami overnight and finally reached DC Sunday morning, sans all our checked luggage. If finally showed up 3 am on Monday morning, 'Yawn!'
Anyway, we stayed at the Sandy Bay Beach Club, after having reservations at the Amaryllis and getting caught in a bait and switch scheme to fill their sister hotels they put us at their newest sister resort 'Sandy Bay', which was nice, but not as nice as the Amaryllis. They did give us a large ocean front apartment and the all inclusive (meals/drinks) for the forced downgrade. Anyway that is a whole other story and if you want to read my report on the hotels, go to Tripadvisor.com and look up the Sandy Bay Beach Club. It wasn't really that bad and I would stay there again.
We dove with Roger's Scuba Shack for all of our diving and I was very happy with the operation. The most we ever had on the boat at one time were 6 divers, but most of the time it was just my wife and I and sometimes two other divers.
The Shack is located in downtown Bridgetown right on Carlisle Bay. It is a small operation that normally will only take a max of 8 people out on its roomy boat. The weather wasn't really cooperating while we were there and we had some overcast and rain showers on our diving days (monday - wednesday), mixed with sun. There is alot of coral bleaching going on around Barbados, I would say a good 10% of the corals had some level of bleaching occuring. This was due to thermal stess from high ocean temperatures over the summer. Mark, our divemaster told us that water temperatures had reached 90 degrees F. a few months ago. This is occuring all over the Caribbean this year.
We only dove 8 out of the 11 dives we had scheduled due to some mix-ups, but we still got a good taste for the diving around Barbados. Some of the reefs are very sparse while others are quite prolific in the species and numbers of coral and other invertebrates. There were many fish, but not many large adults of any species. I'm not sure if this is from overfishing or some other stress, but recruitment seemed strong.
Some of my favorite sites were Dottin's Reef, Asta Reef and Friars Wreck, the Boot, the Stavronokita (although I would need more dives and my doubles to better explore this wreck), and Carlisle Bay, which has about 6 wrecks scattered around a small area of the Bay. Infact, Carlisle Bay was probably the spot I liked the best and we ended up doing two day dives and a night dive here just because of the easy depth (<60') and lots of macro life for photography (octopus, seahorses, crabs, etc...) and great easily penetrable wrecks.
On 'The Boot' reef, we saw a total of 9 medium to large turtles on the one dive, some sleeping. We saw at least one turtle on every other dive.
The visibility varied greatly depending on rain showers which washed soil off the island into the surrounding waters, but it was as low as 40 foot on the Stav to 60' in Carlisle Bay and 80' at Dottins reef. Water temperatures were in the low 80's on every dive.
All the dives were drift dives except Carlisle Bay, even when the currents were light the dive boat still followed us around and picked us up wherever we surfaced, which was really nice. The DM we had with us on all the trips was Mark, a local and the brother of Roger (the owner). Mark is a boisterous young man with a quick wit and friendly smile. He was just a joy to dive with. We stayed down for the full tanks, usually over an hour depending on depths of the dives which started out as deep as 100' on the reefs to 130' on the Stav. All the tank fills were right on to hot, never less than 3000 psi and most of the time around 3100 - 3200 psi.
You had to hump your gear and tank down from the shop across the beach and wade into the water to the boat, which was fine and common in alot of the Caribbean. Most of the trips to the sites took only 10 - 15 minutes with some up to 30 minutes away (Stav). Only drinking water was provided on the boat. Rogers has a van that will pick you up from your hotel every morning and drop you back off in the afternoon. Pick-ups were usually around 8:30 am, so morning dives get a late start, but this is common with many of the dive ops in Barbados, and many of them do no more than 3 tank dives a day. Rogers will do 4.
Overall the diving in Barbados is good and on par with the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, but not as good as St. Lucia, and can't touch Tobago, Cozumel, Honduras, etc...
I would definetly recommend Rogers to anyone going to Barbados, I thoroughly enjoyed diving with Mark and 'The Shack'.
Oh, on a side note, in front of the resort we were staying in was moored Ram's boat, 'Scotch and Soda'. He only went out two days with a couple staying at our resort. I recommended him to them (they were fairly new divers). They were suppose to do a two tank dive with him each morning, but due to late starts and Ram not wanting to stay out, they only did a one tank dive each day and then came back to the mooring and sat on the boat and drank with him. They thoroughly enjoyed the operation, but if you were interested in doing some serious diving, that may not be for you.
I will post some pictures from the trip in my photo album on Scuba Board. http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=28967
Anyway, we stayed at the Sandy Bay Beach Club, after having reservations at the Amaryllis and getting caught in a bait and switch scheme to fill their sister hotels they put us at their newest sister resort 'Sandy Bay', which was nice, but not as nice as the Amaryllis. They did give us a large ocean front apartment and the all inclusive (meals/drinks) for the forced downgrade. Anyway that is a whole other story and if you want to read my report on the hotels, go to Tripadvisor.com and look up the Sandy Bay Beach Club. It wasn't really that bad and I would stay there again.
We dove with Roger's Scuba Shack for all of our diving and I was very happy with the operation. The most we ever had on the boat at one time were 6 divers, but most of the time it was just my wife and I and sometimes two other divers.
The Shack is located in downtown Bridgetown right on Carlisle Bay. It is a small operation that normally will only take a max of 8 people out on its roomy boat. The weather wasn't really cooperating while we were there and we had some overcast and rain showers on our diving days (monday - wednesday), mixed with sun. There is alot of coral bleaching going on around Barbados, I would say a good 10% of the corals had some level of bleaching occuring. This was due to thermal stess from high ocean temperatures over the summer. Mark, our divemaster told us that water temperatures had reached 90 degrees F. a few months ago. This is occuring all over the Caribbean this year.
We only dove 8 out of the 11 dives we had scheduled due to some mix-ups, but we still got a good taste for the diving around Barbados. Some of the reefs are very sparse while others are quite prolific in the species and numbers of coral and other invertebrates. There were many fish, but not many large adults of any species. I'm not sure if this is from overfishing or some other stress, but recruitment seemed strong.
Some of my favorite sites were Dottin's Reef, Asta Reef and Friars Wreck, the Boot, the Stavronokita (although I would need more dives and my doubles to better explore this wreck), and Carlisle Bay, which has about 6 wrecks scattered around a small area of the Bay. Infact, Carlisle Bay was probably the spot I liked the best and we ended up doing two day dives and a night dive here just because of the easy depth (<60') and lots of macro life for photography (octopus, seahorses, crabs, etc...) and great easily penetrable wrecks.
On 'The Boot' reef, we saw a total of 9 medium to large turtles on the one dive, some sleeping. We saw at least one turtle on every other dive.
The visibility varied greatly depending on rain showers which washed soil off the island into the surrounding waters, but it was as low as 40 foot on the Stav to 60' in Carlisle Bay and 80' at Dottins reef. Water temperatures were in the low 80's on every dive.
All the dives were drift dives except Carlisle Bay, even when the currents were light the dive boat still followed us around and picked us up wherever we surfaced, which was really nice. The DM we had with us on all the trips was Mark, a local and the brother of Roger (the owner). Mark is a boisterous young man with a quick wit and friendly smile. He was just a joy to dive with. We stayed down for the full tanks, usually over an hour depending on depths of the dives which started out as deep as 100' on the reefs to 130' on the Stav. All the tank fills were right on to hot, never less than 3000 psi and most of the time around 3100 - 3200 psi.
You had to hump your gear and tank down from the shop across the beach and wade into the water to the boat, which was fine and common in alot of the Caribbean. Most of the trips to the sites took only 10 - 15 minutes with some up to 30 minutes away (Stav). Only drinking water was provided on the boat. Rogers has a van that will pick you up from your hotel every morning and drop you back off in the afternoon. Pick-ups were usually around 8:30 am, so morning dives get a late start, but this is common with many of the dive ops in Barbados, and many of them do no more than 3 tank dives a day. Rogers will do 4.
Overall the diving in Barbados is good and on par with the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, but not as good as St. Lucia, and can't touch Tobago, Cozumel, Honduras, etc...
I would definetly recommend Rogers to anyone going to Barbados, I thoroughly enjoyed diving with Mark and 'The Shack'.
Oh, on a side note, in front of the resort we were staying in was moored Ram's boat, 'Scotch and Soda'. He only went out two days with a couple staying at our resort. I recommended him to them (they were fairly new divers). They were suppose to do a two tank dive with him each morning, but due to late starts and Ram not wanting to stay out, they only did a one tank dive each day and then came back to the mooring and sat on the boat and drank with him. They thoroughly enjoyed the operation, but if you were interested in doing some serious diving, that may not be for you.
I will post some pictures from the trip in my photo album on Scuba Board. http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=28967
