St Croix USVI

[_Bella_]

You asked about the best place to dive at Cane Bay. You can go over the wall and perhaps run into sharks or stay in the shallow coral gardens for smaller critters, smaller schools of fish and more likelyhood of turtles and southern stingrays. But, It's not that big of a site. There are sites nearby that can be reached from shore that are also very nice (pavillions, twin palms, northstar) but you need to drive a minute down the road to get to their access beaches.

 

[JenniferDumas]

Just want to give another plug for N2theBlue. We've gone to St Croix three times, and each time dived with Derek at N2theBlue. F'sted is the lee side of the island, which means calmer condition and great viz. Plus, I think most of the wrecks are on this side...this last trip we did 4 wrecks on one dive. F'sted Pier is absolutely NOT TO BE MISSED. It can be done as either a shore dive or boat dive (we did it boat, coming in from the wreck dive, and swam to shore, so no decomp stop nec). We spotted seven sea horses, a frogfish, and scorpionfish. And we did the Pier just last week, so obviously the dredging didn't destroy too much.

I really cannot say enough about Derek and N2theBlue. He broke away from some of the island's larger dive shops because he wanted to see fish while diving, not other divers. His max number at any one time is 6. During our trip last week, there was my husband and I and two teenagers doing a discovery course. Derek was also training another DiveMaster (all of his DiveMasters swear that the Padi course is nothing compared to Derek's requirements) which means that on our dive, my husband and I basically had personal divemasters for the first three wrecks, and then we caught up with the kids and the third DiveMaster on the fourth wreck. On the second dive (the pier), it was my husband and I and three DiveMasters! Everytime we dive on the weekend, most of the rest of the party is comprised of locals, so we've had a great chance to learn a lot about local culture, customs and get recommendations. My general principle when traveling is to follow the locals, and they go to N2theBlue.

Enjoy!