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Grenada Dive Fest – Our first taste of diving the Spice Island
After a stunning start to our Pure Grenada Dive Fest adventures on the smaller island of Carriacou, it was time for our first dives on the main island. And what a day we had planned – with 3 dives in the day and a night dive to look forward to.
We started the day meeting up with the team at ScubaTech who cater for both recreational and technical divers from their base at the Calabash Hotel. After a bit of discussion, we decided on a reef and a wreck for our two morning dives and headed out for a short boat ride to a site called Purple Rain. A great name for a dive site, that had us humming all the way round, especially when we saw how it got its name, as a huge school of Creole Wrasse descended on us.
Our second dive was on the Tyrrel Bay wreck, a recent addition to the huge fleet of wrecks that have made the diving here famous. It was sunk in 2018, and yet already had signs of life taking hold. The famous compass has a coral fringe and glass fish patrol the rooms within. The wreck lies just off the reef and so once we had explored the wreck fully, we made our way to the shallows along the reef, prolonging our dive time. In just a single morning set of dives, we had already seen why divers flock to the fabulous island.
The ScubaTech guys had dropped us off on the beach in front of Eco Dive Grenada and helped us with our gear, so we had time for a quick lunch from an eco-friendly vegan take away restuarant and we were ready for more diving. News of our love of frogfish had reached the team and so they took us out to a dive site where their resident photographer had found some the day before – Flamingo Bay. This is an easy going, shallow dive site with a mixture of reef and sandy seabed to explore. Sure enough, tucked under a sponge, there was well camouflaged frogfish for us to enjoy.
Our final dive of the day was to be a night dive on the wreck of the Veronica L. This was a dive we were really excited about, as we had heard it is covered in orange cup corals that open up in all their glory as the sun goes down. It exceeded expectations! While Christie modeled for Nick, I went in search of little critters and found tiny crabs covering the sponges, while octopus hunted them. We had to be dragged back to the surface!
After a truly wonderful day of diving the wrecks and reefs of Grenada, our perfect day was topped off by visiting the first craft ale brewery on the island, the West Indies Beer Company. Great beer, food & live music with friends made for a perfect end to our day.
Read more about our trip to Grenada in the new WINTER 2020 edition of Dive Travel Adventures magazine! You can find out where you can obtain your personal printed copy HERE or download a digital version for free, right HERE!
If you want to join in on all the fun at Pure Grenada Dive Fest 2020, save the date: 3rd – 9th October 2020. Watch out for more information coming soon here.
For more information on Grenada visit the Pure Grenada website by clicking here.
Dive Centres featured in this blog:
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:
Seahorse National Park announced on Eleuthera in The Bahamas
PADI Club invites Ocean Lovers on exclusive dive trip to Bonaire this September
BVI Wreck Week – Diving (Part 3)
BVI Wreck Week – Diving the RMS Rhone (Part 2)
Top 5 Caribbean Wreck Diving Destinations
Barbados – The Shipwreck Capital of the Caribbean
Caribbean Conservation in Action: Tagging Turtles in the BVI
Caribbean Conservation in Action: Coral Conservation during Covid
Jeff chats to… Christopher Bartlett, MD of Indigo Safaris, about scuba diving in Dominica and Mexico (3 of 5)
Curaçao Dive Site of the Month – Smokeys (Watch Video)
Jeff chats to… Dr Katey Lesneski from Coral Vita, winners of the Earthshot Prize (Watch Video)
