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Under the sea in Nassau
WHAT-TO-DO - NASSAU, CABLE BEACH & PARADISE ISLAND - JULY 2004
Under the sea in Nassau
Dives for everyone
If you haven?t yet seen the underwater beauty of the ocean around Nassau and Paradise Island, prepare yourself for an unforgettable experience. It?s ?a world of weightlessness and wonder,? writes diving pioneer, Dr Joseph MacInnis.
Every year thousands of divers return to The Bahamas to plunge into the pristine waters, lured not only by the natural beauty of the underwater world but by the wide variety of diving and snorkelling experiences available here.
According to the 2004 Bahamas Handbook, there are ?some 900 sq miles of reef in The Bahamas, including the third-longest barrier reef in the world off the east coast of Andros. The reefs are rich with a diversity of marine life, including green moray eels, cinnamon clownfish, queen angelfish, barracudas, the Nassau grouper, the placid nurse shark and inflatable porcupine fish.?
The Bahamas boasts not only reef diving but an abundance of blue holes, walls and caves. The sites include wreck dives on the southwest side of Nassau, including a small plane, patrol boats and two sunken freighters.
There are also exciting shark dives, and dives on the wall, a steep underwater cliff that defines one side of the Tongue of The Ocean, a mile-deep trench that curls around the western tip of New Providence.
Even if you are a beginner and have only a few hours to spare, you can still experience the breathtaking clarity of the water and the stunning diversity of marine life.
Ready to help you are the experienced crews at veteran dive companies, including Nassau Scuba Centre at Coral Harbour, Stuart Cove?s Dive Bahamas at South Ocean, both at the western end of New Providence and Bahama Divers on East Bay Street.
Sea Gardens marine park
A nearby place for beginners to witness all the underwater glory is Sea Gardens marine park, just off the eastern tip of Paradise Island, near Athol Island. This is a great spot for both snorkellers and beginner divers who don?t want to go too deep.
Here, you will see a variety of colourful tropical fish, including yellowtails, tangs, grunts, triggerfish and angelfish. You can pick up a disposable underwater camera for around $20 or $25 to capture the colours forever.
A favourite dive of Leroy Lowe, co-owner of Bahama Divers is not for beginners. It?s a mysterious blue hole, just 11 miles off the eastern end of New Providence.
?The first time you go into a blue hole 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,? says Lowe.
Blue holes occur throughout The Bahamas, but this one has unique features. The entrance, which is surrounded by white powdery sand banks, is about 35 ft below the surface and about 100 ft in diameter. When you look up, you may be lucky enough to see a shark or two, circling around the entrance.
Sharks and wall diving
David Eads, operations manager at Stuart Cove?s Dive Bahamas, has 30 years of experience as a diver but still enjoys the exhilaration of a shark dive.
?It?s still an adrenaline rush every time I get out there. There?s something amazing about being able to observe these creatures up close and personal in their natural habitat,? Eads says.
Shark dives begin with a brief educational session on the background and behaviour of Caribbean reef sharks. After the session divers descend to about 40 ft or more and kneel on the ocean floor, watching as the sharks cruise in for an afternoon snack offered by trained feeders.
Stuart Cove?s also offers ?wall flying,? where experienced divers drive an underwater scooter at about 21?2 knots, travelling up to two miles along the face of a wall. Another motorized vehicle at Stuart Cove?s is the SUB (Scenic Underwater Bubble) that looks like a motorbike with a bubble on top. Even non-divers can ride a SUB and explore a coral reef 20 feet under the surface.
Hole in The Head
For Derek Tozer of Nassau Scuba Centre, an exciting dive is known as Hole in the Head, a wall dive about nine miles south of Coral Harbour at the western end of New Providence.
The wall drops down about 110 ft but part way down there is an arch-shaped coral creation ?about the size of a double-decker bus,? says Tozer, that makes the site different from any other site.
There?s an opening about 10 ft long into a tunnel about 50 or 60 ft long, which divers can swim through. This area is often teeming with sharks and you sometimes bump into them half way through, says Tozer. ?We always give them the right of way,? he laughs.
Nassau Scuba Centre is a PADI five-star instructor development centre that offers complete training from scuba diver through instructor. In one course you can don a chain mail suit and learn to feed sharks!
From snorkelling to feeding sharks: there?s obviously something for everyone to enjoy under the Bahamian sea.
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