CAPTAIN SINBAD
Contributor
I am scheduled to dive there next month so I will be telling you what I think. Utila was better than Bonaire IMO.
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....and Roatan is the same reef, so there's that. Who are you diving withI am scheduled to dive there next month so I will be telling you what I think. Utila was better than Bonaire IMO.
....and Roatan is the same reef, so there's that. Who are you diving with
Out of the three Roatan has the greatest possibility of being underwelming so I don't think your comments are that far off.
Out of the three Cozumel has the ability to give you a decent selection of dives and experiences with the least amount of effort to experience them. Belize and Roatan can blow away those decent Cozumel dives with enough effort put in by the dive tourist to get to the locations in Belize and Roatan that offer up that locations best dives. Diving off a cruise ship just won't get you to those top dive locations in Belize and Roatan, so you're left with mediocre to eh... dives.
I would not advise anyone to judge the diving in any location in the world based on diving it via a cruise ship, you just are never going to get what you can get when you go there specifically to dive, its just impossible. Cruise ship diving is dumbed down diving to the lowest common denominator diver on the trip, they take you to dive sites that nobody can hurt themselves on and can't mess the environment up too badly because it's already been beaten up to near death. I stopped cruise ship diving years ago, it's just a waste of your money, with the rare exception it's 38 minute bottoms times on the closest, easiest reef, diving with horrible divers on a crappy boat with a dive operator set up to process divers like a conveyor belt at a factory.
I've been to Roatan for a week July 2005 (Co Co View) and found the diving very underwhelming, and that was 10 years ago, before the Lionfish Invasion, can't imagine what it looks like today! While I enjoyed the Co Co View experience/dive op/accomodations, fish life was non-existent, even back then, and the vis was rather murky/silty, even though we had minimal rain. The outstanding dive consisted of the off shore shark dive we did one day (Waihuka Adventure Diving) which took us enough offshore to experience great vis, pretty healthy reefs, fish and shark life.
Co Co View suffers from far too much diver pressure, and being on the shore suffers from too much murky rain/silt runoff. I'm assuming local fisherman had pretty much wiped out the fish, as this was the pre-Lionfish era, the Lionfish have likely finished off what was left, but that just a speculation on my part as I never returned to Roatan.
I've done both - a year apart. Utila is definitely more larger stuff - not counting the 8 whaleharks we saw - and certainly more dramatic on the north side. It seemed like just about every dive in that area there were a few sharks circling around - you won't see that off AKR. Some big grouper though and almost always turtles. And lots of rays.I will be with AKR.
In Utila, certain parts of the reef are really mind blowing. The deep walls that descend into the abyss are really dramatic. Plus there are underwater caves and over all larger marine life like Dolphins, Rays etc. Bonaire I found to be fishier in terms of small fist but the landscape was the same on almost every dive. I hope that Roatan will offer the same terrain diversity as Utila though I doubt it.
Don't know who you dove with in Belize from a cruise, but we dove on Turneffe Atoll with Hugh Parkey (the ship's dive op) the last two times there, and the dives were great (perhaps not Indonesia great), but excellent for the Caribbean.
I've done both - a year apart. Utila is definitely more larger stuff - not counting the 8 whaleharks we saw - and certainly more dramatic on the north side . . . .
. . . The northside of the island (AKR dives this side) is a different reef structure with more variety of fishlife due to the Marine Preserve. Each side of island has its Pros and Cons. . . .