Dive Conditions Question

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11HGrunt

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Messages
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Location
IL
# of dives
50 - 99
Looking for some help and guidance. Four of us are planning a trip for 2015 to the Bahamas, probably to the New Providence area. My only ocean diving has been Cozumel and Bonaire. Coz, of course, is all drift diving (Some fast, some slow) and Bonaire is quite still and calm.

When diving in the Bahamas what is the normal diving depth the operators take you to? For instance, when I dove Coz, the first dive was 70-75 feet, while the second was 55-60 feet. Bonaire we tended to hang around 45-50 feet. I see a lot of posts where people remark their first morning dive was to 85 feet or sometimes deeper, then the second is quite shallow, 30-40 feet. I, personally am most comfortable in the 50 foot area.

Next question are drifts/currents/surges. What are they like in that area of the Bahamas? I have heard in the more outlying islands there can be some pretty potent drifts. One of the people in our group has been to Barbados where she said the surges were horrible and also to Cayman Brac where she said the water was like that in Bonaire. I prefer the nice clam and easy water for diving and am not a fan of drift diving.

I truly like to relax and not work to hard for my diving, so I am trying to gather as much information as possible.

Thanks in advance for any help!!!
 
We New Providence quite a few years ago but the currents were not as strong as Cozumel. Bear in mind we dove New Providence in January with week long cold front with high winds. We dove a wall where the current switched directions, dove some shallower sites (wrecks) with a mild current and had some very shallow sites (~20 ft) with little or no currents. I did not notice any surge to speak of but that may depend on the site. Almost all of the dives were moored dives. The water and air temp was also 64 F. That should be better later in the year. In general, even with a few higher current dives, it wasn't that much work at the sites we did. The wrecks that we dove btw at that time were turning into piles of rubble. We also dove around Exuma later in the calendar year and the currents there were milder. I thought the diving there was better however you should see sharks around New Providence.
 

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