You can find a few threads on SB with info about St. Maarten. The first time I went, I stayed in Simpson Bay area and dove with Ocean Explorers which is also located there. The wrecks in the area were good dives but overall not a lot of reef to explore (lots of sandy bottom.) If I had used that trip alone to judge St. Maarten, I wouldn't have ranked it high on my list of places to go for diving. Thank goodness I went again, staying near the town of Phillipsburg, and dove with Scuba Fun in Great Bay close to where the cruise ships are. I really enjoyed the dives out of Great Bay with sharks on all but a couple of dives and much more on the ocean floor to explore.
but remember, you are facing the Atlantic Ocean in St. Maarten.
Isn't the south (and west) side of St. Maarten facing the Caribbean and St. Martin facing the Atlantic with the Great Bay area kind of a mix of the two?
We are staying at the Belair Beach Hotel using part of our time share.
We used our time share at Belair Beach for a week and really liked it. We are going back to Belair the end of Sept. for a couple of weeks. The dive ops along the Great Bay marina's are about a 5-7 minute drive. You may have to pay a buck or 2 to park, but you will be inside a fenced area. Scuba Fun was a nice op, but they do get a lot of cruise ship customers, as maybe all of the ops in this area do. They also take care of your gear and lock it up at night. Divi which is next door to Belair Beach has a hut on the beach where you can also set up dives. Can't remember who the dive op actually is - maybe Ocean Explorers. Didn't do any dives with them, but it was cheaper to rent jet skis there than from Belair Beach. There is a shore dive that can be done along the southeast end of Little Bay which is where Belair Beach is. There are some pieces of scrap from a helicopter and plane in what is a protected marine park. Not a great dive, but something different.
Belair Beach has the nicest beach I've been on at a resort. White sand, calm water, and when you check in and get your room number, hurry to the beach area and you can get lounge chairs assigned to you for the week. No-one else gets to use them. Although BB has a restaurant, we went to Divi (a 2-3 minute walk) several times to eat and even got pizza to take back to our room one night.
Are you sure you don't want to head over to Saba?
One thing I have decided is that even though we go where our timeshare and our friend's vacation club takes us, when there is an opportunity to explore, I'm going to take it. Plan to get to Saba this time!