Dive Locations

Barbados, St Lucia, Tobago Cays, Grenada! I'll try and pinpoint the dive sites here with a review of them on the days we visited!

Barbados

Scuba diving is a very popular tourist activity in Barbados and as a result, the country have created a number of special dive sites, with deliberately sunken wrecks, to complement the natural reefs at other locations on the island. Scuba diving in Barbados is a delight, with crystal clear warm water all year round. If you just watch the dive boats or day trippers with snorkels, you'll usually find the local marine park without paying for a guide to take you 500m!

Carlisle Bay

There are 7 wrecks in Carlisle bay, all within a few hundred metres of each other. Anchor just south of the Boatyard (nightclub) and take your tender south until you see a gap between all the moored boats, about 500m North of the dinghy sailing club. There are 4 white buoys forming the edges of the marine park, with all the wrecks inside the buoyed area. You'll usually see other divers, or day trip boats with snorkellers tied up to the marker buoys.

Just South of Carlisle bay as you pass the Hilton Hotel, there is a beautiful reef where we followed a giant turtle and her baby. In the sand nearby, we spotted stingrays gliding along the bottom.

St Lucia

Scuba diving in St Lucia is only permitted with a local dive guide. We spoke to a dive shop in Rodney bay and they admitted that the water isn't very clear at the moment and that the diving is better in the south of the island. As it turned out, we didn't have time to dive in the South, so the only diving in St Lucia was to refit my rudder!

St Vincent

The Arch, Walillabou Bay,

Just outside the bay is a nice reef, which was perfect for our first dive without the instructor. Maximum depth was only 30 feet, but the corals were great, especially a castle of tube coral, which was surrounded by fish.

Bequia

Devils Table, Admiralty Bay,

Easy to reach by our tender from the anchorage and there's a divers buouy permanently there to tie up to. Another great beginners dive, with a maximum depth of 50ft, but mostly around 30 feet deep.

Mayreau

HMS Purina

We had the directions from our pilot book on how to find the wreck, so we set off in the tender, expecting to be able to see it in the clear water, no chance!!! Back to the boat, plot the location from the chart into the GPS and off we went again. We found a couple of plastic bottles as mooring markers, but they were quite a way from the GPS location, at the bottom of these we found the wreck! Maximum depth was 40ft and the wreck could easily be explored in 30 minutes.

Tobago Cays

Just look at this chart to get an idea what the cays are like for divers, Reef Heaven!!!!

The Valley into Mayreau Gardens was a great dive. We went with Glenroy Adams from Grenadines dive for a drift dive up to 70ft deep. Beautiful coral and an abundance of fish, but there had been a storm the previous night, so visibility wasn't perfect!

Mayreau Gardens, for our second dive we stayed inside Mayreau gardens and remained around 40ft. We'd only been in a few minutes when we spotted our first shark! It was only a nurse shark, about 5 foot long, but great to see it up close. Glenroy pointed out a rock with about 8 lobsters underneath it. They were guarding the entrance, all looking out at us as we peared in. I took a few photos of the shark and the lobsters, which once developed I'll put up here. We saw one more shark and another rock full of lobsters during this dive. Even though we had our own gear, it was well worth paying Glenroy for the tour!

Union Island

Clifton Reef protects the entrance to Clifton harbour and is an easy dive from the tender. We did a short dive to use up the remaining air from our dive on HMS Purina. Drifting with the current, we saw angel fish and yet more reef life before surfacing and returning to the boat. Maximum depth 40ft

Carriacou

Sandy Island is a little piece of paradise less than a mile from Hillsborough Carriacou. It's only 300m long and 30m wide and consists of sand and coral, with a few plants. We snorkelled up the east coast, which was pretty impressive, then dived with the current down the west coast. I saw 6 Moray eels and a similar number of Baracudas during the dive. There are meant to be better dives further out, which require a dive boat, but we really enjoyed this one on our own. Maximum depth 70ft.