North or South sdie od Roatan?

Looking for opinions from anybody has dived on BOTH the North and South sides of Roatan in Jan/Feb. Im not looking for opinions of dive operators,more of the quality of diving in terms of reef health, numbers and varieties of fish etc. I know everybody has differing opinions of what constitutes "quality" diving, but Id like some sort of comparison. Particularly The areas around Coco View/Fantasy Island/French Harbor vs West End. Im familiar with the diving on the West end of the Island, both North and South,but have never dove the South side farther to the East. Thanks for any opinions.

More to your point: It's a matter of weather... see my recent post here on ScubaBoard at http://www.scubaboard.com/t84106-.html

The months you mention, certainly even well into February... it's the end of the "rainy season".

This wekend, January 15... note with care what happend to the weather in Mexico, Belize and the Bay Islands... as cold arctic air pushes South as far as Texas, see what happens to the tropics! The dive sites and operations that are exposed to the "Norther" Storms (in Roatan, anything but the South side) are getting pounded.

If you charter with anything other than a South side dive op (SubWay, FIBR, CCV, etc), you would be lucky if they had their act together enough to ferry you and your gear over to the South side and meet up with their dive boat already moored there. Very lucky.

Go and check out the ScubaBoard post referenced above.

Just a point of information, CCV takes you considerably East, not only to the delightful Calvin's Crack, but to dive sites that are pretty much exclusive to CoCoView's reach. The areas of South side diving that most are familiar with are but the tip of the iceberg. Unless you have your own boat to dive from, I would say that the "quality" absolutely depends upon the operator selected. Got your own boat? I've got the dive sites/gps coordinates... pm me.

Rainy season on Roatan usually lasts until mid February. Its been our experience that there are no set rules on what the weather will do, and dive conditions vary widely on both sides of the island. Usually one side will be calm and smooth and the other side will be rough and rainy. This seems to switch almost daily, and sometimes more than once a day. Your best bet would be to make sure you go with a dive operator that will move the boats to the calm side or has a boat ready on both sides. The larger resorts all do this and some of the smaller operators will also (I usually dive with Native Sons- they can and do usually move their boats). When we want to dive the South side further East we use Subway out of French Harbor- we usually rent a car during our stays so we can move around and have tried different dive ops (if you are there in the off season you can usually go out with any of the resorts for the day if you want to try them out- usually a little more expensive, but if you are planning to book a trip in the future it may give you an idea of what they are like). We have not yet gotten to dive on the Northeastern side yet, but hope to soon (everytime we've made plans with Paya Bay the weather has not cooperated). Have fun, if you are on the island next week we may bump into you!