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Astonishing special dive
Blue hole and shark-feeding dives are tops
Of all the exciting dive sites in The Bahamas, the most memorable one for many divers is a blue hole. This kind of sinkhole is a submerged cave that occurs on dry land and in the sea floor. They formed during the last ice age, when glaciers and the polar ice caps trapped much more water than they do today, lowering the sea level by as much as 400 ft. About 10,000 years ago, when the Pleistocene ice sheets melted, the water rose again and flooded the caves.
Later, the cave roofs collapsed, creating deep sinkholes with a labyrinth of tunnels. Blue holes are found throughout The Bahamas and the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world.
Scuba diving in blue holes is an otherworldly experience, but it’s not for the novice. Certified divers must take a special course before they can explore a blue hole.
One such dive site is called the Lost Blue Hole, located 11 miles off the southwest coast of New Providence under 35 ft of water, surrounded by white sand banks studded with coral heads. The typically bell-shaped sinkhole is 100 ft in diameter at its entrance and 200 ft deep, but “you don’t have to dive that deep to experience some amazing natural wonders,” says Leroy Lowe, co-owner of Bahama Divers in Nassau.
He compares diving here to a 360˚ wall dive. A ledge 20 ft down, he says, is a popular place for divers to stop and pose for keepsake photographs. At about 80 ft there’s a crevice filled with spiny lobster. Below that is a conical mound of debris from the collapsed cave roof, a common characteristic of blue holes.
A host of marine animals lives in and around the hole, including schools of pompano, sergeant majors, grouper, angelfish, red and yellowtail snappers, amberjack and other reef fish, along with stingrays, moray eels, turtles and a few sharks. Hundreds of baby sharks gather here from late May to early July.
After more than 30 years of diving at the best sites in The Bahamas, Lowe names the Lost Blue Hole as his favourite. “The first time you go into this blue hole,” he says, “it’s a little weird, but when you get down there and look up and see the sunlight streaming down through this perfect circle, you realize why it’s so special.”
Bahama Divers runs trips to the Lost Blue Hole several times a week, always with a lead instructor and a backup safety diver.
Diving with sharks
If you add up all the exclamatory remarks of visiting divers, the vote for the most thrilling underwater experience goes to the shark-feeding dive. That’s a featured attraction at Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas, located on the southwest coast of New Providence Island.
Divers returning from these memorable adventures typically use adjectives such as incredible, amazing, awesome and brilliant to describe their one-of-a-kind experience.
“It was the best dive I’ve ever done anywhere in the world,” proclaimed one visitor from Chicago, and a diver from Miami said “It was the most amazing experience of my life.”
Professional guides brief groups of certified divers before entering the water, then lead everyone to the sandy bottom 50 ft below, where they form a semi-circle. Then the pro shark feeder comes down with a box of bait.
That rings the dinner bell for a school of from 20 to 40 sleek Caribbean reef sharks, who all know the drill. “It was a truly amazing experience to sit there on the bottom … and be swarmed by sharks,” said a woman from California. “I got some amazing pictures.”
Some of the four- to six-ft sharks circle quite close to the divers and even bump into them sometimes, but they are much more interested in the free lunch. As a visitor from North Carolina said, “At no time did I feel threatened. It is almost as if they are showing off.”
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Astonishing special dives
Blue hole and shark-feeding dives are tops
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