Well here is the rub...we were supposed to get there Sat afternoon and do 2 tanks a day for 6 days. Instead, due to screwups by Southwest and Intercaribbean, we got there Sunday afternoon. We were both exhausted and feeling run down for at least a day after we got there. The winds were blowing about 20-23 mph from the E and SE every day. So we didn’t even try any afternoon dives, we skipped one set of morning dives when it was really rough and we both didn’t feel up to diving, and the op was unable to go out on Friday morning because it was too rough. So I am basing this on 6 dives at 5 sites, and they are pretty much the five sites closest to the channel coming from town. Bear in mind that my sample size is quite limited and probably doesn’t include the best sites they have to offer.
With that said, I thought the reefs looked very unhealthy, particularly in less than about 35 feet of water, and there was a distinct lack of small to medium sized fish. And the typical schooling fish like grunts and snapper were smaller and sparser than we are used to seeing elsewhere. On the other hand, we saw at least one shark on every deep dive, several huge turtles, including a very large male hawksbill, the largest eagle ray I have ever seen, and large resting stingrays on every dive. We saw two humpback whales during the surface interval between dives, the other divers saw wild dolphins underwater just before their safety stop on an afternoon dive we skipped, and I am pretty sure I heard both whales and dolphins nearby while diving.
So while the reefs were not lush and covered with schools of fish, there was not necessarily a shortage of exciting things to see. I think super macro photogs and fish nerds would be bored out of their minds, but pelagic fans might really enjoy the diving there. For me, it was less enjoyable than Little Cayman, largely because of the more structured and follow the leader guided dive style, the reef condition, and the choppy conditions (we usually go to LC in Aug-sep when it is flat as a pancake). I would like to go back sometime and get a larger sample size on which to fully form an opinion, but my opinion as of now is that I like it better than Coz due to the pelagics on offer and the lack of currents (not a drift diving fan) but I would put Brac and Little quite a ways above it.