cleung
Contributor
After diving three days in Saba, we decided to do a day of diving in St Maarten to catch the shark dive with Ocean Explorers.
Ocean Explorers Dive Shop
This is the only dive shop in St Maarten that still offers the shark dive so we booked two dives including the shark dive for our final dive day.
Pros
- divemasters are extremely helpful offering to set up your gear and bring it to the boat
- divemaster Jeff gave detailed dive briefings and divemaster Lucy was very enthusiastic in showing us many marine life on first dive on the Carib Cargo wreck
- shark dive enabled closer encounters than even the shark dives in the Bahamas but sharks here were on average smaller but Ocean Explorers offers interesting photos from our shark dive
Cons
- dive boat is small resulting in bumpy ride but it is fast
- no dock access, had to use beach
- the 11 am to 3:30 pm time slot for our two dives was an odd time slot (we had to skip lunch)
We did only two dives here in St Maarten since we did not expect much after diving Saba. But the Carib Cargo dive immediately took us by surprise as it was FULL of lobsters, by far the most we've ever seen at any one spot. And a few of these lobsters were absolutely HUGE, bigger than suitcases. The wreck penetration of the wreck offered by our divemaster was also pretty good too.
The shark dive itself was done a bit different from the ones in the Bahamas. Here, there was more labour involved as we had to use rope lines to get closer to the site of the shark viewing. We also had to crawl along the bottom to and from the observation site. This was not required in the Bahamas even with the bigger sharks there as we simply just dove to the observation sites. However, the shark divemaster gets right in front of each diver here with a camera to pull in the sharks as close to us as possible for the photos.
So these two dives in St Maarten ended up being among our best dives during our entire Saba/St Maarten dive trip which took us by surprise. I don't know what the other dive sites in St Maarten are like so I cannot make any conclusions regarding the comparisons of the diving in general between Saba and St Maarten.
I stayed at the Atrium resort which was just a very short walk across the beach to Ocean Explorers and the studio room I had there was huge with a full kitchenette and free secure parking. I got a great price through Expedia during a special they had but my fellow travellers missed the deal so the room rates went up over their intended budgets.
So I would definitely recommend diving at least the Carib Cargo and the shark dive offered by Ocean Explorers even after diving Saba. I would stay at the Atrium again if the price was right.
Ocean Explorers Dive Shop
This is the only dive shop in St Maarten that still offers the shark dive so we booked two dives including the shark dive for our final dive day.
Pros
- divemasters are extremely helpful offering to set up your gear and bring it to the boat
- divemaster Jeff gave detailed dive briefings and divemaster Lucy was very enthusiastic in showing us many marine life on first dive on the Carib Cargo wreck
- shark dive enabled closer encounters than even the shark dives in the Bahamas but sharks here were on average smaller but Ocean Explorers offers interesting photos from our shark dive
Cons
- dive boat is small resulting in bumpy ride but it is fast
- no dock access, had to use beach
- the 11 am to 3:30 pm time slot for our two dives was an odd time slot (we had to skip lunch)
We did only two dives here in St Maarten since we did not expect much after diving Saba. But the Carib Cargo dive immediately took us by surprise as it was FULL of lobsters, by far the most we've ever seen at any one spot. And a few of these lobsters were absolutely HUGE, bigger than suitcases. The wreck penetration of the wreck offered by our divemaster was also pretty good too.
The shark dive itself was done a bit different from the ones in the Bahamas. Here, there was more labour involved as we had to use rope lines to get closer to the site of the shark viewing. We also had to crawl along the bottom to and from the observation site. This was not required in the Bahamas even with the bigger sharks there as we simply just dove to the observation sites. However, the shark divemaster gets right in front of each diver here with a camera to pull in the sharks as close to us as possible for the photos.
So these two dives in St Maarten ended up being among our best dives during our entire Saba/St Maarten dive trip which took us by surprise. I don't know what the other dive sites in St Maarten are like so I cannot make any conclusions regarding the comparisons of the diving in general between Saba and St Maarten.
I stayed at the Atrium resort which was just a very short walk across the beach to Ocean Explorers and the studio room I had there was huge with a full kitchenette and free secure parking. I got a great price through Expedia during a special they had but my fellow travellers missed the deal so the room rates went up over their intended budgets.
So I would definitely recommend diving at least the Carib Cargo and the shark dive offered by Ocean Explorers even after diving Saba. I would stay at the Atrium again if the price was right.
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