Distinctive Caribbean & FL Dive Destinations

[CAPTAIN SINBAD]

Nice thread. My list so far is as follows:

Jupiter FL: I love diving Jupiter area because of interactions with large animals like sharks, turtles, rays and groupers. The biggest turtle that I saw (nearly the size of a volks wagon beetle) was there. This is an area that I intend to make one of my frequent dive places. The best time to go there is November because that is when you get lemon sharks.

Florida Keys: I like these because they offer a nice combinations of reefs, wrecks and large marine life. The reefs are not as good as Caribbean, the large animals may not be as spectacular as Jupiter area but the wrecks are awesome and combined, Florida Keys offers a great bang for the buck since you do not have to leave the country.

Dry Tortugas: I did this liveaboard with Ultimate Getaway. It was a great trip even though we did not get inside the Tortugas area. If someone wants a local liveaboard experience that does not cost and arm and a leg and still gives you a good time then this trip is the one!

Utila (Honduras): I loved my time in Utila because compared to the above list, the reefs were mind blowing. I am not yet spoiled by Asia Pacific or the Red Sea so for me these were breath taking dives. I went there in April so we have some whale shark encounters too. It should also be kept in mind that this was a really economical dive destination. Cost of room was 10 USD per day!10 dive package was 299. The stay and dive package was under 400 USD! Where else in the world can you beat that???

North Carolina: I know we are talking about the Caribbean but if I could dive only one place from the above then it would be NC. Real wrecks with real history. People go to Truk Lagoon or Scapa Flow but here they are lying in my backyard. Sharks! The shark encounters we get here look like those pics from Cocos island, Galapagos or South Africa. NC combines the best shark and wrecks in one place. I dont like the fact that boat rides are long and prices reflect that too but given the quality of diving, I dont mine.

 

[drrich2]

I hear Utila is popular with backpackers, so people willing to go for cheap, hostel-type accommodations might find it a good choice, if I understand correctly.

To update the thread, I made it to get 10 dives out of Jupiter in Sept. 2014; my trip report. Won't rehash the trip report much, but a few pointers; deep diving; we were generally told it was 90 feet to the sand. Nitrox was strongly preferred to get good bottom times, & I dove EAN 36. Jupiter Dive Center had steel 120 cf tanks available for rent; if you're an air hog, that sort of thing alone can make a destination distinctive. Viz. was not 'Caribbean caliber' when I went, but it was okay. The goliath grouper aggregation was nice! I believe thermoclines are unusual there, but my trip it was a daily thing. Glad I went.

Since we last discussed Dominica on this thread, there've been other discussions worth linking to. Seems from the U.S. it tends to be a 2 day trip to get there, 2 days back, it's about the poorest nation in the region except for Haiti (but considerably better off), it's got lush rain forest & is much larger than Saba, there's shore diving but nowhere near what you get in Bonaire or Curacao, and a rainforest nature lover can have a ball exploring the interior.

Dominica...everything I should know but don't.

I was surprised by how nice the diving was in Dominica. Excellent!

-----That's the thread that gets into some reasons somebody might not go back. Worth a read!

Dominica recommendations?

I've never been. To make Dominica 'work' for me, I believe I'd want to take a 2 week trip, so as to absorb the round trip transit time & do a little rainforest touring topside.

Sinbad, I'm aiming for North Carolina (out of Morehead) later this summer, Lord willing & providing. It's taken considerable effort to research the destination from a dive tourist perspective, & if all goes well I hope to generate a trip report with extensive info. that another newbie might use to consider & plan it. My interest revolves around exploring some of the mainstream U.S. warm water oceanic destinations, but chiefly I want to dive with numbers of sand tiger sharks. In the U.S. if you want reliable encounters with 6 - 10 feet 'sharky looking' (i.e.: not nurse) sharks, your main choices are NC wrecks, the lemon shark migration out of Jupiter (but that's seasonal) or shark feed dives out of Jupiter, Fl (such as with Emerald Dive Charters) - maybe someday but I wasn't quite willing to pull the trigger on an Emerald trip yet. I want close encounters with fairly docile scary looking 6 - 10 feet sharks, & tiger sharks coming in looking for hand-outs might not fill the bill. It was sand tigers or lemons, and it's easier to get sand tigers more months of the year without feeding if you hit N.C. vs. Jupiter.

Maybe someday I'll work my way up to a Tiger Beach live-aboard! But not now. Getting possibly surrounded by big tiger sharks hunting food with no cage still feels like a bad idea to me. Some weird neurosis I guess...

Richard.

 

[Damselfish]

2 clarifications-

and perhaps tell us what's great about Bloody Bay Wall. It gets spoken of like a 'must do' so I assume it's a sweet site to hit.

While it's often referred to as a "site", Bloody Bay Wall is not a single site, but a long stretch of more like a mile, with lots of sites.

I hear Utila is popular with backpackers, so people willing to go for cheap, hostel-type accommodations might find it a good choice, if I understand correctly.

The backpacker options are certainly there, but there's other places too, including a couple fairly nice (for Utila) AI dive resorts out of town. And there's the Caribbean Pearl liveaboard too.