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Dive Fest Diaries – Day 1
Each year the magical, Caribbean island of Barbados holds a festival to celebrate scuba diving, free diving and marine conservation. This year, Nick and Caroline went along to see what it was all about…
Wednesday 4th July: Day 1
We arrived in Barbados last night, and headed straight to our hotel: Coconut Court. We have a large room, with plenty of space for all our camera equipment and a stunning beach view from our balcony. We had dinner with the group and then headed back to our room to prepare our cameras for the diving tomorrow. At breakfast, we discovered that if you do not cover up your food, whilst heading to the buffet to collect items, the bananaquits, pearly-eyed threshers and any other savvy bird, will come in and steal your food and drink!
We are diving with West Side Scuba Centre for the first couple of days of Dive Fest Barbados and on this day one, we have two morning dives planned, before joining in the underwater clean-up dives that all the dive shops will take part in. West Side Scuba Centre is based at The Boatyard, and we met the team early in the morning to start to prepare for our day ahead. Peter, the owner, greeted us and informed us that the plan for the first dive was the SS Stavronikita wreck – a huge wreck that is a highlight of the diving here. It was going to be a great start.
The wreck does not disappoint. We made a tour of the exterior, marvelling at the incredible, lush coral growth on the deck and masts. The top of the deck lies in about 20 metres of water, with huge a-frame style masts reaching up to the surface, but not breaking it. These structures attracted schooling fish and even, at the very end of the dive, a solitary turtle. What a great start to Dive Fest Barbados.
Our second dive led us to explore a shallower reef, with a small wreck thrown in too. Alas, a tropical storm was heading our way and the waves and surge were picking-up and hence the visibility was not so great. However, even in these conditions, we found plenty to enjoy, hunting out tiny Flamingo Tongues, huge lobster, Moray Eels and Drumfish.
It was a short ride back to The Boatyard and time to grab some lunch at this busy and popular tourist hangout. While youngsters soaked up the sun and partook in drinking games, we re-hydrated in a more sensible fashion, as we still had another dive to do! Once we had eaten, we jumped back on the boat and headed to the National Park area to help out on the underwater clean-up. West Side Scuba Centre offered this dive to its customers for free, to ensure a large turn out to help collect any rubbish we found.
Underwater, all the volunteer divers formed a large line and we started our search for trash. Each diver had a mesh bag to collect the detritus and we found items of clothing, lighters, plastic cups and other plastic utensils, discarded fishing gear as well as plenty of undetermined pieces of plastic. Between us we pulled up a good amount of rubbish, but not as much as we had expected to – which is good news for this area.
Our day was rounded off with an exceptional Thai meal at the Zen Restaurant, where we watched the storm clouds build from behind the huge glass windows of this tranquil dining room. Our first dive of Dive Fest Barbados had given us some great diving, and shown us the spirit of this event: to bring together divers who are passionate about protecting marine life. Now we needed some well-earned rest…..
BVI Wreck Week allowed us to dive several of the wrecks the BVI has to offer, as well as sampling some of the best reef sites too. Our previous blog focused on the wreck of the RMS Rhone, so in this one we will try to give you a taste of the rest of the diving on offer.
And there is a great deal of wonderful diving to tell you about. Our first day of diving did not offer the best visibility due to heavy rain earlier in the week. However, we were taken to a rugged dive site that had Caribbean and Lemon Sharks swimming all around us. If we had been able to see the usual 20m+ I am sure we would have been able to talk of dozens of sharks on the site.
The BVI has plenty of artificial reefs, created from wrecks deliberately sunk. A couple of these are artistic creations from Beyond the Reef. The Willy T is a pirate themed party boat sunk in shallow water that now has skeletons of pirates duelling on the deck and going about their dastardly ways. It is a lot of fun and once you have had your fill, you can head up onto the shallow reef. Shark-plano is a series of three planes that were damaged in a hurricane, that have been turned into shark species and sunk. Both these sites are perfect for the diver that loves a bit of Instagram appeal!
Wreck Alley has a series of three boats sunk to create a super dive site perfectly aligned for a single dive where you can explore them all. Moray eels can be seen free swimming along the decks, huge stingrays back the sandy seabed their home. Turtles cruise past as you make your way around and then up onto the reef for your safety stop.
On every dive we did we saw sharks which absolutely delighted us. The local dive shops seem to be particularly engaged in conserving the reefs, taking part in coral reef restoration, lionfish hunting, cleanups and logging their sightings. We were filled with positivity at the end of each day.
We hope that we can return to do it all again at BVI Wreck Week 2024!
Watch out for our full feature on BVI Wreck Week in the next issue of Dive Travel Adventures coming out in July.
For more information about BVI Wreck Week 2024 visit their website here.
Nick and Caroline were hosted by BVI Wreck Week
The Moorings provided their yacht for the week
Host Dive Centres:
You cannot talk about BVI Wreck Week, or diving in the British Virgin Islands, without spending some time on the jewel in their crown of wreck diving – the RMS Rhone. So this blog is going to be dedicated to a wreck dive that we were happy to dive three times on our trip and would have been happy to dive every day!
The RMS Rhone was a UK Royal Mail Ship wrecked off the coast of Salt Island on 29 October 1867 in a deadly hurricane. Now it is the most popular dive site in the region. The dive briefings for the site are filled with stories of the fate of the ship and some eye-opening tales since.
The wreck and surrounding area become the British Virgin Island’s first national marine park in 1980. Many of the underwater segments of the 1977 thriller The Deep were filmed on the Rhone, requiring actors Jacqueline Bisset, Nick Nolte and Robert Shaw to learn how to scuba dive.
You’ll need at least two dives to fully experience the RMS Rhone. The ship split apart on sinking and the bow drifted just a little before sinking. The two halves are about 100 feet apart with the bow sitting in deeper water (around 25 meters / 80ft). So you are best to explore the bow fully on a single dive and then head to the stern on your second dive.
Whilst the history, artifacts and stories from the movies are absorbing, as soon as we got underwater to dive her, it was the incredible marine life that had us hooked. Two seahorses had made their home right at the bow of the wreck. Stingrays lay buried in the sandy sea bed. The structure is covered in colourful corals and sponges. Schools of fish occupy the overhangs and metal remains. We saw sharks on all three dives and were treated to a huge spotted eagle ray gliding over the wreck. Lobsters waved their antennae at us from every crevice. Life is everywhere you look on this dive.
The marine park status has certainly ensured that this is one of the best wrecks we have dived in the Caribbean. Whilst we did not get the chance to do this – we bet it would make an awesome night dive.
Check out our next blog to find out more about the diving and watch out for our full feature in the next edition of Dive Travel Adventures Magazine in July!
For more information about BVI Wreck Week 2024 visit their website here.
Nick and Caroline were hosted by BVI Wreck Week
The Moorings provided their yacht for the week
Host Dive Centres:
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