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Explore our watery world
WTDN - January 2008
Explore our watery world
Underwater adventures for all
An undersea adventure is available to anyone who wants to experience the crystal-clear waters off New Providence and Paradise Island.
Local dive companies offer a widerange of diving and snorkelling packages for everyone, from complete novices to fully certified divers.
Beginners can swim over shallow-water reefs while intermediate and expert divers can choose from a variety of wall, blue-hole, shipwreck and shark divs.
"The visibility is about 100 feet. It's really, really great," says Adrianna Hutchinson of Stuart Cove's Dive Bahamas, which has been offering diving and snorkelling excursions since 1978.
"People enjoy the variety of corals we have here in The Bahams and they enjoy the variety of marine life that we have."
Bahama Divers is another well-known dive shop in Nassau, offering diving and snorkelling packages, including learn-to-dive packages and open-water certifications.
This 40-year-old company is pehaps best known for its Lost Blue Hole dive, says co-owner Leroy Lowe. It's a scuba outing to a 100-foot-wide circular opening in the ocean floor about 11 miles off the north shore of New Providence. The blue hole is under about 30 feet of water and then ivers can descend another 200 feet.
The area is also a favourite for migrating reef sharks between May and mid-July, says Lowe."It's an excellent dive. Sometimes you can see two or three hundred sharks."
Beginners welcomed
Even non-divers can experiencethe ocean's magic by trying out SNUBA (an acronym joining the words "snorkel" and "scuba") which is being offered to Atlantis guests by Stuart Cove's.
It allows non-divers to explore a teeming reef just off the beach at The Cove hotel on Paradise Island
Guests use an air regulator attached by hose to an air tank on shore that lets them, along with a professional diver, take an underwater tour of the reef, says Hutchinson. "It's a new service for people who are not certified but who want to experience te underwater world of a reef."
Even more popular is Stuart Cove's SUB outing that lets non-divers use a kind of underwater motorcycle, says Hutchinson.
A SUB_-or scenic underwater bubble-is a battery-powered, seahorse-shaped submarine topped with a two-fot clear dome that fits over the rider's head.
Continuous air flow from an on-board scuba tank means the rider simply breathes normally with their head in a dry environment, allowing even non-swimmers to submerge 15 to 20 feet and "drive"over a reef.
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