I just returned from St Marteen, visiting from the 22nd-29th, diving 3 days there and 1 day in Saba. The report includes reviews of all 3 dive shops and the 7 dive sites we dived. We enjoyed the trip very much, as the people in the shops and the rest of the islands were friendly and helpful. The island boasts terrific food, diving ranged from average to spectacular, and I would happily go back and do it again.
For our first 2 days (5 dives) we dived with Ocean Explorers. OE is located on Kim Sha beach on the southeastern end of Simpson Bay. I absolutely recommend OE as a solid dive operator and will dive with them again given an opportunity and a trip back to St Maarten. The owners (in process) Jef and Lu are gracious and friendly. The staff was knowledgeable and freindly as well, and my wife and I both felt safe with them all. Prior to the trip, I exchanged several emails with Lu (Luciana) and had confirmed with a deposit 3 days of diving. Lu was very helpful and responsive via email. On our first day, check-in was smooth - Lu checked our C-Cards, we filled out/signed the "standard" waivers, and she asked if we had everything we needed. Since we traveled with our gear I can not speak to the quality/condition of the rental gear. We met Jef and the other staff, all of whom were pleasant and helpful. Our DM's and boat staff included Damian, Marcelino, and Astrid.
Our gear was setup at the shop, and once my wife and I checked it, it was carried down to the boat and loaded. The boat is moored just off the beach. After crossing the beach and wading out to the boat, we climbed aboard the Undersea Adventures (a 28' Mako center console with twin Merc 225's). We had 7 divers on the first day, which makes things a bit cozy, but this is the max they report to carry. Once loaded, the gear occupies most of the stern area, so we all squeezed onto the benches up front for the short ride to the site. I will mention here that there was no general boat/safety briefing given. We were told that with northerly winds and westerly seas, we would be staying fairly close in for the day.
After a short ride, we hooked up to mooring ball at our first site, Turtle Reef. We were given a site brief, then 2 divers at a time geared up and entered, one from each side of the boat. The DM's helped everyone gear up and did air checks, including asking me if my computer had synced to its transmitter (I actually don't get asked this very often). Turtle Reef is a long, relatively flat reef with 5 feet or so of elevation and a wide sandy top. The site is average at best, with highlights being the turtle "Lily" and a dolphin sighting (though not by me). There were scattered hard corals, gorgonia, and sponges with typical caribbean reef inhabitants - spiny lobster, squirrel fish, a few parrots, blue surgeons, various wrasses, etc. The spotted trunkfish and a bevy of rock beauties were nice. Visibility was in the 50' range. After a nice 45 minute dive with only a very light current and a max depth of 60', my wife and I were the last up from our safety stop and after being assisted aboard, we did a run back to the shop for tank exchange.
Our second dive was around the rubble from the old Simpson Bay/lagoon canal bridge. Prior to dropping in, we were told to explore the artificial reef areas as we wished, but not to leave for the others unless guided as the bridge and two little wrecks were not visible from one another. This was a nice site with plenty of fish life. A short swim away are two small artifical reefs. Again, inhabitants on these included the typcial caribbean assortment mentioned above, plus a spotted moray, banded and pederson shrimp, a porcupine puffer, cowfish, grunts, yellowtails, etc. There is a cleaning station on a lower section of the bridge rubble - this visit saw two lizard fish lined up. In the sand/grass beds between the artificial reefs we saw a large southern stingray mostly covered and a porcupine puffer. Viz in the 50' range, this dive lasted 55 minutes with a max depth of 50'. In both cases, we were never rushed, and allowed to dive our air and computers. I would compare both of these dives to the keys, but with bluer water.
On our second day, we did two wrecks. First up was the Porpoise (an old Tug). Located a bit further west out of Simpson Bay, the Porpoise sits in about 95' of water. The back deck is open and allows an easy descent into what had been the engine area. It was also possible to penetrate up the main p-way from above the deck maidship to the p-way just behind the wheelhouse and into the wheelhouse as well. A resident barracuda, dozens of spiny lobster, and a good colletion of grunts, squirrelfish, and various snapper, including gray and yellowtail, moved steadily around the wreck. Viz was a little lower this day, running under 50', our dive on the Porpoise lasted 32 minutes with a max depth of 92'.
Our 2nd dive of the day was on the Gregory, an overturned cargo barge located further west near Longue Bay near the Frech/Dutch border. Penetratoin was easy with a large opening between the sand and deck, plus a hatch that provides further access into a hold area. The highlight here was a large clinging channel crab and a good size Nassau grouper inside, blue phase seargent majors guarding egg clusters all along one side of the hull, and a field of yellow headed jawfish living just off to one side. There is a good photo op alongside the props at the top of the wreck, and a porthole that can be used to frame a nice headshot. Many of the coral encrustations along the outside of the wreck host little secretary blennies, and a few barracuda hung around just over the hull or around the outer hull.
After a break for lunch at Lee's (a short walk from the shop), we headed back out for the third and most memorable dive of the trip - the shark encounter. There's really no way to describe the feeling of being in the midst of a half dozen reef sharks. From about 4 feet to about 7 feet in length, Jef provided the attraction in the form of some fish tails, while we all watched from a semicircle holding onto cinderblocks to help with the bit of surge. Circling, swooping, "diving" around us, the sharks never appeared aggressive, providing tons of opportunities for pictures and video. In addition to the dive itself, Jef provided a briefing on the dive, the site, and a bit of background on his experience and a general commentary on the state of sharks today.
I consider OE to be a first class outfit and will absolutely return to dive with them again.
After a day off to unwind and see some of the sites around the island, including a stop at Bay Rouge for some beer and sun. We headed over to Saba for our 3rd day of diving. Lu had gotten us set up with Saba Deep for two dives, so we caught the ferry (Edge II) about 9 and made the hour and 15 minute trip over. While we only got to dive two sites, I can absolutely see why Saba gets a top 10 from so many folks. We were met by one of our dive guides, Mike, who transported our gear from the ferry dock to the dive boat, while we walked up to the shop. After a few introductions and some paperwork, including get our lunch order submitted to the restaurant above the shop, we walked down to the boat. Our gear had been set up, so after double checking everything, off we went. After a thorough boat/safety briefing and general "good diver behavior" sermon, we headed out. Given the ferry time over, we were joining for their 2nd and 3rd dives of the day.
The first dive site, Tent Reef, was spectacular. We got a site briefing on our ride out and were in our wetsuits ready to gear up and drop in when we hit the site. We had a bit of current that the crew did not seem to expect, so rather than a granny line we had to work our way to the down line from the mooring ball 30' or so in front of the bow. After a minute or so I opted to work down and forward, reaching bottom near the mooring line at about the 4 minute mark. Waiting for the rest of the divers to assemble gave me an opportunity to relax a slow my breathing while taking in the coral heads around the drop zone. Our DM Gary and the rest of the crew assembled, we headed at 45 deg to the current and then slowly dropped over the wall. Taking our time, we hit the 75' mark on the wall at about 18 minutes into the dive, all the while awed by the wall structure and dense life of sponges, gorgonians and fish - baslets, rock beauties, smooth trunkfish, honeycomb cowfish, queen angel, damsels, surgeons, parrots, wrasses and more. After a brief jog along the wall we started working back, settling at 40' or so and waiting in turn for shots of the small, green longlure frogfish. After snapping a couple pics, I started up again only to be waved over to a sea fan and its current inhabitant - a seahorse. What an awesome combo. From here we slowly worked back towards the boat, through a nice arch swimthrough, then finally to the safety stop as we passed a few lobster, squirrelfish and a scrawled filefish - current was strong enough at this point to have us flying like pennants from the line. It took a bit of work to get back to the towline at the bow, and after a 51 minutes dive with a max depth of 75 feet, back on the boat.
After a run back to the dock, where we changed out tanks, offloaded a couple of divers and added a couple, we were back out for our 2nd dive at C Delight after about an hour SI. A bit further northwest from Tent Reef, we dropped in to virtually no current and equally stuning dive. Working our way through a school of tarpon, we hit bottom at 40' and slowly worked our way to 70' as we navigated a series of fingers and around a few coral heads. With great elevation and structure, the fingers were covered in hard corals, sponges, gorgonians and soft corals. Here we saw the only 2 lionfish of our trip, plus large parrots (stoplight and princess), french and queen angels, a webbed burrfish, butterfly (foureye, banded and longsnout), hamlets, surgeons, tangs, sandperch, sharpnose puffers and others. Another 51 minutes with a max depth of 75' and an easy swim back, our safety stop complete, we were aboard and headed back to lunch. The crew radioed in to have lunches started, and about 15 minutes later we were back at the dock.
Two great dives with a great shop. Gary was easy going and let us manage our dives while Mike worked more closely with a newer diver and provided dive and history lessons while on the boat. Cheri and Tom were also great. If I have one regret from this trip, its that we didn't have more time on Saba.
After another day of relaxing and seenig the sites back in St Maarten, we found out late Monday afternoon that OE was scrubbing their trips on Wednesday because of weather - the wind had shifted to the east and surf had picked up making the south end a mess. A quick call to Octopus connected me with Sally and voila, our 4th dive day was saved by the crew at Octopus. After an arduous drive dealing with traffic, road construction and rain, we arrived at Octopus just before 8, quickly took care of the paperwork and headed over to the assembly area. We quickly got wetsuits on and made our way to the beach and through a short wade to the boat. We met Sean, who would be our DM for the morning, and we were quickly off.
As we neared our first dive site, Creole Rock, Sean briefed us on the setup. We would drop in together, meet at the bow, and descend into a drift dive from the east end of the formation, make our way past the seaward side and then around the back into a more protected, shallow "cove" where we would meet the boat. Drifting between 20' and 30' while maneuvering around and over the boulders and scree, this was an easy dive with plenty of fish life, though visibility hovered around 30' and provided Sean some extra work as he stopped periodicaly to collect us (well, mostly me as I often dropped back for some picture opportunities). Notable fish included white spotted and orange spotted filefish, queen and french angels, porcupine puffer, hogfish, boxfish, trumpet, and queen angel along with the wrasses, parrots, damsels, banded shrimp, a flounder and juvenile cubbyu (closely resembling juvenile spotted drum but with a different stripe pattern). An hour dive with a max depth of 34', this was a very enjoyable dive and I can only imagine how nice this would be with better viz.
After a 38 minute SI, we were geared up and ready for our 2nd dive, this one at the French side's Turtle Reef. After a visit to a few artificial sites with stacked concrete blocks filled with squirrelfish, a moray, juvenile cubbyu and several large lionfish, we headed across the sand and grass beds towards the reef. Reaching the reef, we had a brief dance with hawksbill turtle. We then cruised along the reef with grunts, yellowtail snapper, wrasse, boxfish, parrots, and more. We finished the dive back on the artifical mini-reefs before heading up to the waiting boat. This was another very nice site which would have been even nicer with a bit better viz. After an hour and a max depth of 29', the time had come to begin heading back to Grande Case and begin packing up from our last dive of this trip.
All in all I was very happy with the dives and with Octopus. If I had one critique it would be to tell Sean to relax a bit. While I certainly don't mind an occasional "air check" request, these were a little more than necessary, particularly for this depth and experienced divers.
Scott
For our first 2 days (5 dives) we dived with Ocean Explorers. OE is located on Kim Sha beach on the southeastern end of Simpson Bay. I absolutely recommend OE as a solid dive operator and will dive with them again given an opportunity and a trip back to St Maarten. The owners (in process) Jef and Lu are gracious and friendly. The staff was knowledgeable and freindly as well, and my wife and I both felt safe with them all. Prior to the trip, I exchanged several emails with Lu (Luciana) and had confirmed with a deposit 3 days of diving. Lu was very helpful and responsive via email. On our first day, check-in was smooth - Lu checked our C-Cards, we filled out/signed the "standard" waivers, and she asked if we had everything we needed. Since we traveled with our gear I can not speak to the quality/condition of the rental gear. We met Jef and the other staff, all of whom were pleasant and helpful. Our DM's and boat staff included Damian, Marcelino, and Astrid.
Our gear was setup at the shop, and once my wife and I checked it, it was carried down to the boat and loaded. The boat is moored just off the beach. After crossing the beach and wading out to the boat, we climbed aboard the Undersea Adventures (a 28' Mako center console with twin Merc 225's). We had 7 divers on the first day, which makes things a bit cozy, but this is the max they report to carry. Once loaded, the gear occupies most of the stern area, so we all squeezed onto the benches up front for the short ride to the site. I will mention here that there was no general boat/safety briefing given. We were told that with northerly winds and westerly seas, we would be staying fairly close in for the day.
After a short ride, we hooked up to mooring ball at our first site, Turtle Reef. We were given a site brief, then 2 divers at a time geared up and entered, one from each side of the boat. The DM's helped everyone gear up and did air checks, including asking me if my computer had synced to its transmitter (I actually don't get asked this very often). Turtle Reef is a long, relatively flat reef with 5 feet or so of elevation and a wide sandy top. The site is average at best, with highlights being the turtle "Lily" and a dolphin sighting (though not by me). There were scattered hard corals, gorgonia, and sponges with typical caribbean reef inhabitants - spiny lobster, squirrel fish, a few parrots, blue surgeons, various wrasses, etc. The spotted trunkfish and a bevy of rock beauties were nice. Visibility was in the 50' range. After a nice 45 minute dive with only a very light current and a max depth of 60', my wife and I were the last up from our safety stop and after being assisted aboard, we did a run back to the shop for tank exchange.
Our second dive was around the rubble from the old Simpson Bay/lagoon canal bridge. Prior to dropping in, we were told to explore the artificial reef areas as we wished, but not to leave for the others unless guided as the bridge and two little wrecks were not visible from one another. This was a nice site with plenty of fish life. A short swim away are two small artifical reefs. Again, inhabitants on these included the typcial caribbean assortment mentioned above, plus a spotted moray, banded and pederson shrimp, a porcupine puffer, cowfish, grunts, yellowtails, etc. There is a cleaning station on a lower section of the bridge rubble - this visit saw two lizard fish lined up. In the sand/grass beds between the artificial reefs we saw a large southern stingray mostly covered and a porcupine puffer. Viz in the 50' range, this dive lasted 55 minutes with a max depth of 50'. In both cases, we were never rushed, and allowed to dive our air and computers. I would compare both of these dives to the keys, but with bluer water.
On our second day, we did two wrecks. First up was the Porpoise (an old Tug). Located a bit further west out of Simpson Bay, the Porpoise sits in about 95' of water. The back deck is open and allows an easy descent into what had been the engine area. It was also possible to penetrate up the main p-way from above the deck maidship to the p-way just behind the wheelhouse and into the wheelhouse as well. A resident barracuda, dozens of spiny lobster, and a good colletion of grunts, squirrelfish, and various snapper, including gray and yellowtail, moved steadily around the wreck. Viz was a little lower this day, running under 50', our dive on the Porpoise lasted 32 minutes with a max depth of 92'.
Our 2nd dive of the day was on the Gregory, an overturned cargo barge located further west near Longue Bay near the Frech/Dutch border. Penetratoin was easy with a large opening between the sand and deck, plus a hatch that provides further access into a hold area. The highlight here was a large clinging channel crab and a good size Nassau grouper inside, blue phase seargent majors guarding egg clusters all along one side of the hull, and a field of yellow headed jawfish living just off to one side. There is a good photo op alongside the props at the top of the wreck, and a porthole that can be used to frame a nice headshot. Many of the coral encrustations along the outside of the wreck host little secretary blennies, and a few barracuda hung around just over the hull or around the outer hull.
After a break for lunch at Lee's (a short walk from the shop), we headed back out for the third and most memorable dive of the trip - the shark encounter. There's really no way to describe the feeling of being in the midst of a half dozen reef sharks. From about 4 feet to about 7 feet in length, Jef provided the attraction in the form of some fish tails, while we all watched from a semicircle holding onto cinderblocks to help with the bit of surge. Circling, swooping, "diving" around us, the sharks never appeared aggressive, providing tons of opportunities for pictures and video. In addition to the dive itself, Jef provided a briefing on the dive, the site, and a bit of background on his experience and a general commentary on the state of sharks today.
I consider OE to be a first class outfit and will absolutely return to dive with them again.
After a day off to unwind and see some of the sites around the island, including a stop at Bay Rouge for some beer and sun. We headed over to Saba for our 3rd day of diving. Lu had gotten us set up with Saba Deep for two dives, so we caught the ferry (Edge II) about 9 and made the hour and 15 minute trip over. While we only got to dive two sites, I can absolutely see why Saba gets a top 10 from so many folks. We were met by one of our dive guides, Mike, who transported our gear from the ferry dock to the dive boat, while we walked up to the shop. After a few introductions and some paperwork, including get our lunch order submitted to the restaurant above the shop, we walked down to the boat. Our gear had been set up, so after double checking everything, off we went. After a thorough boat/safety briefing and general "good diver behavior" sermon, we headed out. Given the ferry time over, we were joining for their 2nd and 3rd dives of the day.
The first dive site, Tent Reef, was spectacular. We got a site briefing on our ride out and were in our wetsuits ready to gear up and drop in when we hit the site. We had a bit of current that the crew did not seem to expect, so rather than a granny line we had to work our way to the down line from the mooring ball 30' or so in front of the bow. After a minute or so I opted to work down and forward, reaching bottom near the mooring line at about the 4 minute mark. Waiting for the rest of the divers to assemble gave me an opportunity to relax a slow my breathing while taking in the coral heads around the drop zone. Our DM Gary and the rest of the crew assembled, we headed at 45 deg to the current and then slowly dropped over the wall. Taking our time, we hit the 75' mark on the wall at about 18 minutes into the dive, all the while awed by the wall structure and dense life of sponges, gorgonians and fish - baslets, rock beauties, smooth trunkfish, honeycomb cowfish, queen angel, damsels, surgeons, parrots, wrasses and more. After a brief jog along the wall we started working back, settling at 40' or so and waiting in turn for shots of the small, green longlure frogfish. After snapping a couple pics, I started up again only to be waved over to a sea fan and its current inhabitant - a seahorse. What an awesome combo. From here we slowly worked back towards the boat, through a nice arch swimthrough, then finally to the safety stop as we passed a few lobster, squirrelfish and a scrawled filefish - current was strong enough at this point to have us flying like pennants from the line. It took a bit of work to get back to the towline at the bow, and after a 51 minutes dive with a max depth of 75 feet, back on the boat.
After a run back to the dock, where we changed out tanks, offloaded a couple of divers and added a couple, we were back out for our 2nd dive at C Delight after about an hour SI. A bit further northwest from Tent Reef, we dropped in to virtually no current and equally stuning dive. Working our way through a school of tarpon, we hit bottom at 40' and slowly worked our way to 70' as we navigated a series of fingers and around a few coral heads. With great elevation and structure, the fingers were covered in hard corals, sponges, gorgonians and soft corals. Here we saw the only 2 lionfish of our trip, plus large parrots (stoplight and princess), french and queen angels, a webbed burrfish, butterfly (foureye, banded and longsnout), hamlets, surgeons, tangs, sandperch, sharpnose puffers and others. Another 51 minutes with a max depth of 75' and an easy swim back, our safety stop complete, we were aboard and headed back to lunch. The crew radioed in to have lunches started, and about 15 minutes later we were back at the dock.
Two great dives with a great shop. Gary was easy going and let us manage our dives while Mike worked more closely with a newer diver and provided dive and history lessons while on the boat. Cheri and Tom were also great. If I have one regret from this trip, its that we didn't have more time on Saba.
After another day of relaxing and seenig the sites back in St Maarten, we found out late Monday afternoon that OE was scrubbing their trips on Wednesday because of weather - the wind had shifted to the east and surf had picked up making the south end a mess. A quick call to Octopus connected me with Sally and voila, our 4th dive day was saved by the crew at Octopus. After an arduous drive dealing with traffic, road construction and rain, we arrived at Octopus just before 8, quickly took care of the paperwork and headed over to the assembly area. We quickly got wetsuits on and made our way to the beach and through a short wade to the boat. We met Sean, who would be our DM for the morning, and we were quickly off.
As we neared our first dive site, Creole Rock, Sean briefed us on the setup. We would drop in together, meet at the bow, and descend into a drift dive from the east end of the formation, make our way past the seaward side and then around the back into a more protected, shallow "cove" where we would meet the boat. Drifting between 20' and 30' while maneuvering around and over the boulders and scree, this was an easy dive with plenty of fish life, though visibility hovered around 30' and provided Sean some extra work as he stopped periodicaly to collect us (well, mostly me as I often dropped back for some picture opportunities). Notable fish included white spotted and orange spotted filefish, queen and french angels, porcupine puffer, hogfish, boxfish, trumpet, and queen angel along with the wrasses, parrots, damsels, banded shrimp, a flounder and juvenile cubbyu (closely resembling juvenile spotted drum but with a different stripe pattern). An hour dive with a max depth of 34', this was a very enjoyable dive and I can only imagine how nice this would be with better viz.
After a 38 minute SI, we were geared up and ready for our 2nd dive, this one at the French side's Turtle Reef. After a visit to a few artificial sites with stacked concrete blocks filled with squirrelfish, a moray, juvenile cubbyu and several large lionfish, we headed across the sand and grass beds towards the reef. Reaching the reef, we had a brief dance with hawksbill turtle. We then cruised along the reef with grunts, yellowtail snapper, wrasse, boxfish, parrots, and more. We finished the dive back on the artifical mini-reefs before heading up to the waiting boat. This was another very nice site which would have been even nicer with a bit better viz. After an hour and a max depth of 29', the time had come to begin heading back to Grande Case and begin packing up from our last dive of this trip.
All in all I was very happy with the dives and with Octopus. If I had one critique it would be to tell Sean to relax a bit. While I certainly don't mind an occasional "air check" request, these were a little more than necessary, particularly for this depth and experienced divers.
Scott
