Reef damage in T&C?

[mcohen1021]

I witnessed reef damage post Wilma 100 ft down in cozumel. However, that alone would not have stopped me from going.

 

[Cert1967]

The Turks and Caicos Aggressor II posted a video, in the last 24 hours, of their first charter since the storms. Here's the link to the video on facebook : Aggressor Fleet

Cheers,

Jim

We were on the EV2 the week of October 7. The Agressor was most often moored about a half-mile away.

Visibility? In general about 30 feet. At times worse. In a few instances, a little better. Couldn’t see the boat swinging at anchor until it was directly overhead. Navigation - compass bearing out and back.

The water had white particulate suspended in the water column and not going anywhere. Anything soft took a beating. Lots of old broken coral uncovered - looked like the results of dynamite fishing.

The EV2? Very nice - great crew, comfortable quarters, nice dive deck, and good food.

The diving? Ok, at best.

 

[Snoweman]

We were on the EV2 the week of October 7. The Agressor was most often moored about a half-mile away.

Visibility? In general about 30 feet. At times worse. In a few instances, a little better. Couldn’t see the boat swinging at anchor until it was directly overhead. Navigation - compass bearing out and back.

The water had white particulate suspended in the water column and not going anywhere. Anything soft took a beating. Lots of old broken coral uncovered - looked like the results of dynamite fishing.

The EV2? Very nice - great crew, comfortable quarters, nice dive deck, and good food.

The diving? Ok, at best.

Intereresting. You didn't experience the same conditions as shown in the video?

 

[Hoag]

FWIW, this just showed up on my Facebook Feed:

"Tom & Ginny, and all the staff at Bohio are excited to announce our reopening date of December 15, 2017. The whole Island has been pulling together to get back to business and welcome tourists and divers to beautiful Grand Turk. The resort is welcoming guests booked through November and early December ahead of the official reopening date. Please call 1-800-494-4301 for further details."
Bohio to Open Dec. 15! | Bohio Dive Resort


Edited to add:
I love it in TCI in March, when the whales migrate through it is amazing!

 

[Ironborn]

We were on the EV2 the week of October 7. The Agressor was most often moored about a half-mile away.

Visibility? In general about 30 feet. At times worse. In a few instances, a little better. Couldn’t see the boat swinging at anchor until it was directly overhead. Navigation - compass bearing out and back.

The water had white particulate suspended in the water column and not going anywhere. Anything soft took a beating. Lots of old broken coral uncovered - looked like the results of dynamite fishing.

The EV2? Very nice - great crew, comfortable quarters, nice dive deck, and good food.

The diving? Ok, at best.

Thank you for the update @Cert1967 .

Explorer Ventures posted this trip report on the same trip that you took:

Explorer Ventures
https://www.facebook.com/ExplorerVe...96186760/10154781012236761/?type=3&permPage=1
Their account of the diving and reef conditions was more optimistic than yours. They wrote that visibility was reduced from the usual 100ft but still OK, and that the most serious damage was mostly on French Cay. Are there any other discrepancies between their observations and yours?

 

[Snoweman]

I returned from T&C last week. Sorry for the late report. I did four (technically five) dives in two days with Dive Provo. First dive was a washout. There were four divers and two dive masters (one being the boat captain). We tried to go in front of Grace Bay. Visibility was about ten feet at best. The dive master hoped it would be better by the wall, but called the dive after about eight minutes. We went up and then went to the north end (?), in front of Amanyara. Viz was great - 100'. We did a full dive there. I was impressed with the fish life, shark, and corals. It was a wonderful dive.

We slowly moved to our second location during our surface interval. It was a short ride to the Black Coral Forest. Viz there was slightly worse at about 75 - 80'. Still a great dive.

The next day had a lot more divers - about 11 divers with two snorkelers. Five of us were "singles". We went to West Caicos. Both dives had about 60 - 70' of visibility. More great life and coral and some very curious sharks. I've never had sharks just hang around - almost circling. The only thing I didn't like about the dive was one of the divers. He was a novice diver and constantly doing the breast stroke while diving. I did my best to stay away from him and not get my regulator ripped out of my mouth. Luckily, he didn't hurt the other novice (female) diver he was hitting on above the water. The last diver came up about ten minutes after me and said the viz was deteriorating quickly as he finished his dive. I'm not sure what was affecting the visibility because it was less choppy than the day before.