Roatan ?
I did 19 dives with West End dive ops there last August and had a wicked time. I have to acknowledge it is certainely not in the top 10 destinations in the world but still very nice, and as good as where I had been before (Thailand, peninsular malaysia, red sea).
Corals are not as varied and colourful as in the red sea, but spectacular and various sponges and the abundance of sea fans and gorgonians do compensate for that.
Certainly, it is not the place to see big pelagics but it does have a rich and interesting marine life !
I saw turtles (hawksbill and green) every other dive, spotted eagle rays 6 times, stingrays, dolphins, dolphin fish, tarpons, African pompanoes, a lot of ocean triggers , octopusses, nurse sharks.
+ what I came to call the "usual suspects" in my logbook that I saw on almost every dive : all kinds of Carribean angels and butterflies, trumpetfish, lobsters, spotted drums, trunkfish, cowfish, filefish, porcupine fish, barracudas, moray eels (green, viper, spotted, chain morays), big groupers (potato, tiger, nassau, black, yellowfin etc), schools of yellowtail snappers, mutton snappers, hogfish, rock beauties, hamlets, big schools of blue tangs, black margates, creole wrasses, redlip blennies, sheephead porgies, porkfish, kingfish, black durgons....
Didn't see any sea horse though.
Add to this that water temperature was 29° (diving in a swimsuit most of the time) and that the worst viz. I had was 20m (best was nearly the same as air)... Most of the time we were the only boat on the sites (except on the wrecks), I'd rather go back to Roatan than to Sharm El Sheikh, where you see as many as 60 or 70 divers in a single dive site...
Only things I didn't like :
On some sites fish become too familiar since they've been fed (the green moray on the Aguila wreck is just ridiculous). Thanks AKR :bigun2:
And the "shark dive business". Disgusting.