Boat recommendation for shark cage diving in Guadalupe?

[Dan]

I'm diving in St. Croix May 11-21 and getting on the Belle Amie May 29-June 6.

Wow, you’ll be on diving trips twice in a month? Have fun! Hopefully we’ll bump into each other in one of our diving trips!

 

[Living4Experiences]

Wow, you’ll be on diving trips twice in a month? Have fun! Hopefully we’ll bump into each other in one of our diving trips!

St. Croix is a place I've wanted to go for a dive vacation ever since I visited and dived there while on a cruise ship. It wasn't on my plan of travel for 2021, but with so much fluidity in travel these days, I couldn't pass up the cheap airfare on American this week, $575 round trip, first class, from LAX.

 

[DanielM]

This is just my opinion, but the SPOC at that price is a no-go for me. If it was half that cost or if the $675 was for unlimited use, I may consider it a factor to swing me over to Solmar V. I don't think the SPOC will greatly enhance my GWS experience to warrant the extra cost. In my situation, I'd rather spend the $625 extra for a comfortable room above deck for the entire trip (see my previous post) versus a 45-minute experience. But, hey, if that's what you want to do, it is your bucket list trip and you can make it as grand as you like!

Thanks again for sharing your perspective, it helps. For me, I think I'm going to make this bucket list item as grand as I can on the shark viewing front by paying the ridiculous $675 per SPOC immersion to "swim" along with the sharks

 

[HalcyonDaze]

That's a great observation, I totally missed that! However, I think they both offer 3 GWS diving days and the same depart for "home" at 5pm on the last day, so the difference seems to be that Solmar V gets you there on the morning of your first dive, versus Belle Amie getting you there the night before to spend the night and start diving the next morning. So, unless I'm missing something, I think I'll call that a negligible advantage to Belle Amie...

For Solmar V you pick up a charter bus in San Diego on the morning of Day 1 and board the boat in Ensenada; I think we cast off at 12 pm and then arrived at the island around midmorning the next day. For Nautilus, Day 1 is check-in and departure is on the morning of Day 2, with arrival in the early evening. So Nautilus nets maybe another half day at the island, as according to the itinerary they open the cages at 0630 on the first day of diving.

Thank you for the detailed report on the Solmar V, including how they clean the stuff, the emergency evac, and the camera charging situation - that was brand new information to me! Also new to me was this point you made about the weights and standing up, which in hindsight is obvious, but it didn't even cross my mind - more motivation for my new year's resolution to get a bit fitter

Not sure it's so much fitness for the weights as just having the harness pulling on you. The tighter you can fit the straps, the less it will swing free as the cage rocks and pull on your neck and shoulders in all sorts of unpleasant ways. Then again, I'm starting from a chiropractor's nightmare where properly loosening up my back would require a hammer.

Thanks again for sharing your perspective, it helps. For me, I think I'm going to make this bucket list item as grand as I can on the shark viewing front by paying the ridiculous $675 per SPOC immersion to "swim" along with the sharks

I think it's one of those "your mileage may vary" items. I'm used to diving in the open with other sharks (including some pretty big ones like the Tiger Beach mamas) and part of the fun for me is that interaction - I'm in the water with them, and while I wouldn't go so far as to call it an "understanding" it's a definite sense of "I'm a guest in your house, it's on me to be polite." Being in a cage on the other hand felt like "hands and feet inside the ride at all times;" I'm in a box separate from the sharks and they have a full range of motion. I definitely felt like I preferred the submersible cage and got my favorite shots from there, because if a shark swims by it's coming specifically to check you out and not just coming past because someone is pulling a bait towards the boat. Barring getting lucky and having a white shark roll by me in Florida (which just happened to friends of mine on Monday), the SPOC is as close as I'm going to get to actually being able to meet them out in the open.

 

[dirtfarmer]

Thank you for sharing your experiences with both boats and for the other insights - really helpful! On the point you made regarding the diver:cage ratio, can you please help me understand it better? From what I gather, Solmar V has 20 guests for 2 surface cages which has to be better than 30 guests for also 2 surface cages that the Belle Amie offers, right? Then there are the submersible cages, which for Solmar V is 20 guests for 1, and for Belle Amie 30 guests for 3 - that may sound better, but if both boats schedule each guest for a maximum of 3 dives in the submersible cages, I fail to see how having more cages helps (and that it is not only better, but so much better to negate the better ratio Solmar V has on the surface cages).

Yeah I was wrong,( I might be the only person in the world these days to admit they are wrong) then I was researching Guadeloupe trips I think I was comparing another boat in the Nautilus fleet to the Belle.
From looking at the websites Belle Amie has a capacity of 36 divers and
15 spots in cages, and Solmar has a capacity of 24 divers and 11 spots in cages. Solmar V lists 20 divers and 10 spots but if you add up all the bed capacity its 24.
Long story short both boats are excellent, rooms on the Belle are much bigger, food on the Solmar V better. You pick the winner in the end!

 

[Hoag]

Yeah I was wrong,( I might be the only person in the world these days to admit they are wrong) then I was researching Guadeloupe trips I think I was comparing another boat in the Nautilus fleet to the Belle.
From looking at the websites Belle Amie has a capacity of 36 divers and
15 spots in cages, and Solmar has a capacity of 24 divers and 11 spots in cages. Solmar V lists 20 divers and 10 spots but if you add up all the bed capacity its 24.
Long story short both boats are excellent, rooms on the Belle are much bigger, food on the Solmar V better. You pick the winner in the end!

I actually did 2 trips on the Solmar V just about 6 weeks apart. The 1st was to Isla Guadeloupe, and then a month and a half later, to Socorro. IIRC, the Socorro trip was a full boat, but for the Guadeloupe trip, it was limited to 16 "divers". The number crunching broke down as the Hookah had 8 hoses so there were two "shifts" of 8 divers (4/cage) in the water at any given time for a period of 1 hour).

This lasted for the first day, and then it became much more fluid and not every spot was filled evry shift so you kind of went when & where there was an opening.

 

[DanielM]

I'm used to diving in the open with other sharks (including some pretty big ones like the Tiger Beach mamas) and part of the fun for me is that interaction - I'm in the water with them, and while I wouldn't go so far as to call it an "understanding" it's a definite sense of "I'm a guest in your house, it's on me to be polite." Being in a cage on the other hand felt like "hands and feet inside the ride at all times;" I'm in a box separate from the sharks and they have a full range of motion. I definitely felt like I preferred the submersible cage and got my favorite shots from there, because if a shark swims by it's coming specifically to check you out and not just coming past because someone is pulling a bait towards the boat.

Totally! In a perfect world, we'd be able to do this without cages, and with full scuba gear. The cages are a compromise.

Barring getting lucky and having a white shark roll by me in Florida (which just happened to friends of mine on Monday), the SPOC is as close as I'm going to get to actually being able to meet them out in the open.

Exactly! Still not as good as a natural encounter, but who wouldn't prefer a maneuverable cage that can be steered to swim along the sharks, over the immobile cages. The question is whether than extra benefit is worth the $675 per immersion cost, which then becomes a very personal decision...

 

[dirtfarmer]

So I decided to pull the trigger on another guadeloupe trip after all the enticement here.
I'm booked on the Solmar V for late September 2021!
Yay finally a dive trip I can get excited about.

 

[al248005]

So I decided to pull the trigger on another guadeloupe trip after all the enticement here.
I'm booked on the Solmar V for late September 2021!
Yay finally a dive trip I can get excited about.

Are you aware of the return situation for the Solmar? they take you to a private lab once the boat returns the shore You have to pay $110 for a test and they will have you the results within 48 hours. Also if the border gets closed good luck. We were supposed to go last October during the height of the season with them the virus hit and then they could not reschedule us for the same week and moved us basically to the beginning of the season this year and instead of only having 16 people on the boat like we signed up for now there's 20 people on the boat. We are desperately trying to get out of this trip because the cost is skyrocketing very quickly with all these extra cost (marine park and covid tests). The marine park fee can keep going up at any time because from what I am reading it is based off of how much money that particular area is generating and then the Mexican government decides on how much the fee will be.

One last thing... Now they also charge a chamber fee that you are forced to pay even if you have dive insurance that covers it. While I understand you can go on this trip and not be a diver if you have dive insurance that covers chamber there is no reason why you should have to pay a fee for it. Als o the likelihood of getting bent in 10 ft of water is highly highly unlikely and secondly why aren't they keeping track of the time you are in the water versus out of the water so you can eliminate that possibility

 

[Dan]

Nautilus would provide a free rapid test and give us credit for the new marine park fee. I still have $275 credit from my last month trip to Socorro that I can use to deduct the cost of my next trip with them to Socorro or Guadalupe.