New Diver Indiana

[drrich2]

We’re here in St Thomas right now and diving with Aqua Action Scuba next to the Secret Harbour Resort.

After you get home, please post us a trip report. St. Thomas seems to be regarded as that cruise ship port where some people dive during stops, rather than an island people travel to for a week as a primary dive destination. Or so would be my impression from the coverage it gets on the forum. I'd like to see some dedicated dive trip reports.

 

[jonhall]

For now we're more interested in traveling and doing tropical diving

Welcome to SB from another Hoosier in Indy. I probably said the same thing when I started diving 20+ years ago and it hasn't changed - I haven't been diving anywhere other than tropical locations!

Did a lot of diving in St. Croix - hope St. Thomas is similar - you'll have a great time!!

 

[Norwegian Cave Diver]

Welcome to Scuba Board.

 

[Telegaster]

Welcome to ScubaBoard Telegaster,

Greeting from St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands!

I’ll admit, I am totally biased about the diving in the USVI, but I saw you mentioned coming to this part of the Caribbean. Part of your tropical holiday may be more about resort experience, tours and shopping than diving. But in case it’s more about the diving, I thought I’d throw in my two cents.

St. Thomas and some of the surrounding small islands has some nice sites but very shallow reefs. Of the 4 islands, St. Croix is known for its diving, as we sit on the Puerto Rico trench (the deepest in the Atlantic). The trench brings nutrients to feed our coral and marine life.

I’m not knocking St. Thomas, it’s got a lot going for it and of course St. John and the BVI’s are nearby (when they’re fully open), just letting you know when it comes to diving St. Croix has a bit more diversity. Depending on time available maybe you can split your stay? You can catch a ferry or seaplane over.

Wherever you end up enjoy your holiday. Give me a holler if I can help.

Thanks for the info, I had heard that St Croix probably had the best diving of the USVI, logistics look tough for us to do because we have a big group of mixed divers and non divers, I was thinking st croix would be a good option to visit via a liveaboard in the future.

Welcome. A big question with a multi-part answer is, what do you want out of a dive trip? I've got 4 dives in St. Thomas with Admiralty Dive Center (they did very well with me), none in the Great Lakes. That said, I don't think anyone will challenge the assertion those are very different places to dive. For some examples of what I'm talking about, consider...

1.) Some people are big on lush, underwater 'flower garden' coral reef diving in 'bath water' conditions (tropical, often low current), and some pretty tropical fish. the Caymans (e.g.: Little Cayman's Blood Way Wall and Jackson Bight area), the outer atolls of Belize (such as via live-aboard) and the diving I saw off southern Roatan with CocoView Resort would serve that purpose well. So would some of the more southern west coast dive sites of Bonaire, which is popular with shore divers.

2.) Some people like the above, but enjoy shore diving. Bonaire is the regional mainstay of this, but Curacao is really good if you need sandy beaches and a larger island with more topside civilized entertainments.

3.) Some like good reef, a nice mix of tropical creatures, overall budget trip costs, a variety of good, often cheap food topside and don't mind drift diving...Cozumel!

4.) Some people like diving with big animals - Goliath grouper and sharks out of Jupiter, FL, the off-shore wrecks with sand tiger sharks out of North Carolina, tiger and lemon sharks out of Tiger Beach at Grand Bahama, a mix of creatures in the Galapagos and Socorro, etc...

5.) Some people love cave diving.

6.) Some love history, the 'real' wrecks vs. those placed as artificial reefs, and places like the Great Lakes, South Carolina or Truk Lagoon have special appeal.

Some people just take dive trips to dive. Some want topside amenities like a luxury hotel or 'authentic' encounters with foreign locals, or excursions (e.g.: jungle tours, zip lining), shopping, etc... Some are taking a non-diving spouse or kids. If you tell us more about what you're looking for in a dive trip, we may be able to suggest some places.

Thanks for your insight, It definitely rings true to me, regarding my preferences I'm still in the "i don't know what I don't know" phase of the hobby, but I'm eager to start seeing things and deciding what I like. I'll be sure to log the dives when I get back and maybe get some gopro footage.

 

[drrich2]

...logistics look tough for us to do because we have a big group of mixed divers and non divers, I was thinking st croix would be a good option to visit via a liveaboard...

Ironically, I liked St. Croix and would recommend it as a land-based trip, although if you want to do it via live-aboard, the Juliet does St. Croix part of the year, and is a well-regarded live-aboard operation.

Here's my trip report/research notes combo. from a St. Croix trip. You'll see from follow up posts by others that some things have changed, but I think the gist is still accurate.

 

[Tripp]

Howdy and Welcome to SB from Texas!!! Dive right in the water's fine!!

 

[Jaan]

After you get home, please post us a trip report. St. Thomas seems to be regarded as that cruise ship port where some people dive during stops, rather than an island people travel to for a week as a primary dive destination. Or so would be my impression from the coverage it gets on the forum. I'd like to see some dedicated dive trip reports.

I'll share a link to a longer report with pictures eventually but as a summary I would say it was quite nice, but not as spectacular as: Bonaire, Belize, Cozumel, Cayman, Roatan etc. We selected USVI mostly because we didn't need to retest to reenter the US. That part was easy enough and we are glad we went, but as things open up it would not be on the top of the list for us. Perhaps if you've done the others and want a change. We were in the East End, enjoyed boat dive sites like the Cartanza wreck and Cow & Calf. Dive masters were trying to cover a lot of terrain so we couldn't do any real macro except for our shore diving where we did find lots of Pederson (and other cleaner) shrimps, rough head blennies and a friendly squid which was cool. The reef off the shore had much less life of what you see off Bonaire, but still more than what we see off our local south Florida shore dives. On the boat dives, while we did spot a couple of reef sharks, huge rays, a turtle; the density of what we saw was also less than that of the other places we love. Still cool, but everything on the island was expensive (perhaps only now, perhaps always). When you're paying >$100 for a 2 tank boat dive and they speed you through the site and ask you to surface as a group after 40 mins when you still have 1/2 tank, you can't help but feel a little cheated. Over all: easy diving (barely any current), warm (82-83) water, shallow (most dives < 40 ft, all <80 ft), Viz typically 80 - 100ft. Did we enjoy it, of course! But once things open up you could definitely find better value. Someone I know told me he enjoyed the diving off St John's much more that St Thomas.