mrrworld
Contributor
Did 9 dives last week in St Croix. All good dives, nothing spectacular but worth a visit if you are looking for fairly easy travel to get to some decent diving.
We dove with Nep2une Divers and Cane Bay Divers. We chose these two because basically they were the only ones who responded to my email asking for information. Four other dive shops never responded, which was weird. It would have been cheaper to use one but I wanted to move around the island than do all the dives in one area so we split the difference. We used Nep2une for dives around Frederiksted and Cane Bay for dives in the Salt River area. (Cane Bay Divers did say they dove Frederiksted area also but I got the impression you took their boat from Salt River, which is like a 1.5 hour boat ride. I may have misunderstood but if so, not thanks to that.)
You can’t go wrong with either of them. Nep2une’s boat is smaller a maximum 6 divers so if you like small groups, this is for you. With such a small group we had some say in where to dive or were given options to choose from. But the boat is small, no real cover from the sun and I imagine would be a little rough if the sea is not calm. Cane River has a bigger boat, holds 14 or 15 divers. We never had that many so the boat was comfortable but not sure what it would be like with 14 divers.
For dives in Frederiksted, we did the pier twice. Both were very good dives. Saw several turtles, frog fish, bat fish, octupus, flounder, and a giant green morey eel. I also probably saw the best unobstructed view of a seahorse I’ve ever seen. It's really a great dive site and you could do it over and over again.
Other than the pier, we also dove Sugar Reef, Sprat Hall, and another one I can’t remember. The reefs were in good shape and we saw your typical reef fish but nothing out of the ordinary. We saw several rays including one very big southern sting ray.
I enjoyed the 4 dives we did in the Salt River better. The fish life was better although I realize it’s not a zoo so that could have been just the luck of the draw. But it’s mainly wall diving, which I found much more interesting than the reefs near Frederiksted.
In Salt River, we dove Vertigo, Columbus Landing, Sea Mount, and Snake River West. We saw black tips on every dive but Vertigo although this may have been artificially driven. The sharks are associating divers with killing lion fish and getting an easy meal. So we were followed for almost the entire dives by 2-3 black tips. But we also saw barracuda, two very large nurse shark laying underneath a ledge, some turtles. These were really good, fun dives, especially Columbus Landing and Sea Mount.
We did not shore dives. No reason other than I am getting old and felt two a day was enough.
We rented a car and stayed at an AirBnB near Christiansted. I’m glad we did. The island is not that big so it was easy to get anywhere and you need a car. Maybe if you are staying at a resort with a dive shop you don’t need a car but I didn’t look into that and not sure it existed. Christiansted seemed to have a little more life to it with more places to eat. Frederiksted seemed a little dead to me although maybe it’s different during cruise ship season. (There were no cruise ships when we were there.)
We dove with Nep2une Divers and Cane Bay Divers. We chose these two because basically they were the only ones who responded to my email asking for information. Four other dive shops never responded, which was weird. It would have been cheaper to use one but I wanted to move around the island than do all the dives in one area so we split the difference. We used Nep2une for dives around Frederiksted and Cane Bay for dives in the Salt River area. (Cane Bay Divers did say they dove Frederiksted area also but I got the impression you took their boat from Salt River, which is like a 1.5 hour boat ride. I may have misunderstood but if so, not thanks to that.)
You can’t go wrong with either of them. Nep2une’s boat is smaller a maximum 6 divers so if you like small groups, this is for you. With such a small group we had some say in where to dive or were given options to choose from. But the boat is small, no real cover from the sun and I imagine would be a little rough if the sea is not calm. Cane River has a bigger boat, holds 14 or 15 divers. We never had that many so the boat was comfortable but not sure what it would be like with 14 divers.
For dives in Frederiksted, we did the pier twice. Both were very good dives. Saw several turtles, frog fish, bat fish, octupus, flounder, and a giant green morey eel. I also probably saw the best unobstructed view of a seahorse I’ve ever seen. It's really a great dive site and you could do it over and over again.
Other than the pier, we also dove Sugar Reef, Sprat Hall, and another one I can’t remember. The reefs were in good shape and we saw your typical reef fish but nothing out of the ordinary. We saw several rays including one very big southern sting ray.
I enjoyed the 4 dives we did in the Salt River better. The fish life was better although I realize it’s not a zoo so that could have been just the luck of the draw. But it’s mainly wall diving, which I found much more interesting than the reefs near Frederiksted.
In Salt River, we dove Vertigo, Columbus Landing, Sea Mount, and Snake River West. We saw black tips on every dive but Vertigo although this may have been artificially driven. The sharks are associating divers with killing lion fish and getting an easy meal. So we were followed for almost the entire dives by 2-3 black tips. But we also saw barracuda, two very large nurse shark laying underneath a ledge, some turtles. These were really good, fun dives, especially Columbus Landing and Sea Mount.
We did not shore dives. No reason other than I am getting old and felt two a day was enough.
We rented a car and stayed at an AirBnB near Christiansted. I’m glad we did. The island is not that big so it was easy to get anywhere and you need a car. Maybe if you are staying at a resort with a dive shop you don’t need a car but I didn’t look into that and not sure it existed. Christiansted seemed to have a little more life to it with more places to eat. Frederiksted seemed a little dead to me although maybe it’s different during cruise ship season. (There were no cruise ships when we were there.)
Nep2une is my go to shop when I use the Westside., just like Dive Experience is my go to on the East side. Cane bay is a great shore dive and can be a very easy in and out, even for us old guys.
