Diving off the Turks & Caicos Islands in the Caribbean exceeded all expectations. We saw big pelagic creatures every day and almost on every single dive, including reef sharks, nurse sharks, hawksbill turtles and southern stingrays. The health of the reefs was excellent, and we found the walls full of large corals and schools of fish. By the end of the trip our party began calling it “fantasy diving.” Photos are linked here.
Our group included four divers of varying experience levels. With six people along, we rented a house with a pool on the island of Providenciales, a/k/a Provo (the Turks & Caicos main islands include Provo, West Caicos, Middle Caicos, East Caicos and Grand Turk Island; Provo is the most heavily populated and developed, but Grand Turk is where the cruise ships dock).
We dove with Dive Provo, which has several larger boats and offers nitrox with an analyzer on each boat. May and September are the slowest months for diving – which made it easy to rent a place to stay and go out to eat - but the boats were consistently carrying a 2/3 or more capacity with 12 to 20 or so divers of varying skill levels, often including a few open water students with an instructor. Dive Provo’s crew will change over tanks for you after each dive, and they will store your gear at the marina including a freshwater rinse at the end of the day, but they let us handle our own gear and do our own changeovers as we prefer and treated all divers as responsible adults.
Although Grace Bay has many dive sites, the weather was not cooperating; the wind blew hard from the east all week, creating bad chop and terrible visibility in Grace Bay. Instead of a short 15 minute boat ride to the Grace Bay sites, we went an hour or more each way, to sheltered western areas at French Cay, West Caicos and the Northwest Point of Provo. Due to longer trips, we fit in only two dives each day. However, the crew explained this weather was unusual for May; they commonly offer 3-tank dives and night dives in Grace Bay.
Our first trip Sunday was to French Cay, where our first dive site was called G-Spot. The color of the water was striking as we motored along the coast and then out over the ocean, changing abruptly from light above the wall to deeper blue where it drops off. Once anchored a few hundred yards off shore, Dive Provo’s crew went through their routine of reminding everyone of the no-touch rule of diving in a marine park, the dive site layout and the safety rules: you are responsible for your own safety, no solo diving, no deco diving, one hour time limit, 100’ depth limit, and the boat’s dive safety equipment arrangements - including a line off the back of the boat, a hookah with oxygen hanging at 20’ and a safety bar hanging at 15’ below. Typically, one divemaster went in the water with a few buddies teaming up with him or her, and on some trips we had a small student group with its own instructor. Unlike some other Caribbean dive operations, we were not required to follow a divemaster so we didn’t; Natalie and I dove as a buddy team, and John and Rose dove as a team when Rose wasn’t involved in her Rescue Diver course, or else we would dive with John as a 3-person team. Because of his camera rig, John tends to move slowly, which suits us just fine. There was plenty to see in any given small area, so no need to rush around trying to see more and more. I was comfortable diving without a wetsuit, in water temperatures that were generally 79-81 degrees F from top to bottom. I quickly pared my weights down to 6 lbs. and stayed with that all week.
Like all of the dives we did off Provo, G-Spot is a wall dive; the walls around the Turks & Caicos drop away to about 6,000’ depth. We started out down the front mooring line to relatively open bottom with coral heads scattered at about 40’, then made our way to the wall. Within the first 5 minutes of the dive, we had found the edge at 50’ depth, where a grey reef shark was casually making its way along the wall no more than 20’ away. Beginning with that first dive, I was impressed with how healthy the reefs were.
Monday we went to the Northwest Point of Provo to dive a site called Boo’s Garden. At about 100’ we found a hawksbill turtle feeding on a coral outcrop. He was unconcerned about us and kept right on eating as we hovered. Good-sized Nassau grouper appeared under more than one ledge, hunting or else hanging out. Lionfish showed up at the deeper depths (I don’t recall seeing one above 80’
. Dive Provo’s crew told me they sometimes organize lionfish hunting trips and are trying to convince Provo’s chefs to put lionfish on their menus. Our second dive of the day was on the Crack. We descended as a group and poked slowly along the wall, finding another turtle and a lionfish. The boat ride back was enjoyable, though it takes an hour or more, as it runs past cool looking houses that must have wonderful ocean views including a few that probably qualify as mansions. Back at the marina we came in past a couple of rusted hulls being salvaged, one of which boasted an osprey perch. As we drove around Provo we noticed many half-completed and seemingly abandoned construction projects, which we were told resulted from bank failures. Despite the island’s natural beauty, with glowing blue waters and white sand beaches, Provo also has a problem with trash dumps which local headlines said they are trying to clean up.
On Tuesday we traveled all the way out to West Caicos, for a dive at Boat Cove (named for the boats that used to dock here) followed by the Magic Mushroom site (named for the many coral heads). Right under the boat at a depth of 40’ or so, a southern stingray fed on the sandy bottom while surrounded by a cloud of 18 or 20 yellow snapper. This was another beautiful healthy area, with plenty of large corals, queen angelfish, grouper at a cleaning station … and more sharks. We spotted a large reef shark while we were cruising along the wall at about 90’; there was no chance to get good pictures as he was probably 40’ away and below us, so I just stared until he swam out of sight. The corals and sponges were fantastic. I remember a grouper hanging out with a trumpetfish who had camouflaged itself with nearly the same colors as the grouper, stripes and all, and stayed within inches of each other. We noticed that unlike other Caribbean locations where barracuda take over the spot right under the dive boat, here the dive boat was usually staked out by schools of yellow snapper; however, large barracuda can be found hovering close to the bottom – in this case, a big guy was hanging out on top of the wall just over a coral head.
We returned to West Caicos on Wednesday to dive Rock Garden Interlude (named for the rocky shoreline) and The Driveway (named for the broad white sand leading between two sharply defined coral ridges down to the edge of the wall). We found plenty of life and colorful corals, with lionfish hanging out at the deeper depths, large queen angels and French angels. John found a small black and white spotted moray eel. The Driveway was striking. Around 100’ I found three queen angels schooled together. We saw a large barracuda with dark markings hanging near the bottom, and took close-ups of a large Nassau grouper resting in the rocks above the wall’s edge. Then as we returned, a turtle swam right past us along the top of the wall. A curious barracuda rested quite close to us at our 3-minute hang point under the boat.
Thursday’s dives were off the Northwest Point of Provo, including Thunderdome, named for the heavy gauge wire mesh cage sitting on the bottom at 40’, a relic of a short-lived British TV game show, and Eel Garden, named for the garden eels in the sandy area right under the mooring point, which attracted several stingrays. My camera housing developed a leak on the first dive; I felt fortunate to escape any damage to the camera itself.
Natalie and I took a day out of the water to offgas and visit West Caicos and Middle Caicos by ferry on Friday. The ferry is for people only, no cars, so we picked up another rental car and took it slowly over the causeway between West and Middle Caicos. It was obviously a major construction project, but storms had scraped off the road surface like icing off a cake. Lunch at Daniel’s Café included fresh snapper and the best conch we’ve had anywhere. Eventually we located a dirt road leading past the air strip on Middle Caicos, and luckily (should have called ahead) we caught a guided tour of the extensive Conch Bar Caves. The caves are enormous and beautiful, with flowstone curtains, stalactites and stalagmites from ceilings up to 30’ above, long passages and deep crevasses, archways, pools of water and bats. After a walk on the beach, we drove back to the ferry point, stopping along the way at Flamingo Pond where we could see bright pink flamingo dots in the far distance with binoculars (drought has left the water far distant). Just as on Provo, we saw “potcakes” (local dogs) everywhere.
Meanwhile, back on Provo, John reported that for once he dove without his camera rig, and had the best dive of his life; a fantasy dive featuring multiple stingrays, turtles and sharks, and they just kept coming almost too quickly to take in. Considering John has logged thousands of dives – I think he quit counting at 3,000 when he turned into a fish – for him to come up saying it was the best dive ever is remarkable. I made a mental note that the dive site was The Gully off West Caicos, planning to cajole the dive crew to head back there right away.
After a couple of dives off West Caicos on Saturday, the next day was my turn to have fantasy diving. Sunday we returned to the Northwest Point of Provo to dive The Chimney and The Crack. We descended the Chimney swim-through and on exiting around 90’, we watched a huge, no doubt older hawksbill slowly fly by. A moment later, an 8-10’ reef shark passed below, at a depth of around 120’; we saw him again several times as the dive continued. Another large lobster out was walking around in the open at the top of the wall. On the way back to the boat, I stopped to take pictures of a few glass jawfish hovering over their holes in the sand, and then another of those hubcap-size grey angelfish. Once again, I was impressed by how healthy the reef is, and how much variety there is in the coral formations. We saw one more reef shark, a small one this time, for a total of four sightings of two individuals. Even after a week of diving that exceeded all expectations, I was surprised by how much big sea life we were seeing at close range.
The second dive of the day was my 100th logged dive, and it was even better than the morning experience. Right at the start I spotted a stingray on the sand. Then when we first dropped down the wall and came out of the swim-through at about 90’, I looked back and up to see the silhouette of a reef shark disappearing over the edge of the wall near where we had just descended. I managed to tell myself not to chase him and continued on with my buddies Natalie and John. As we paralleled the wall to our right, I spotted two reef sharks swimming close together, perhaps 30’ distant below us (and John tells me I missed seeing a third, larger shark following them). The wall featured large lobsters hiding under the ledges. When we turned to head back, Natalie pointed out a large turtle free swimming towards us at a depth of around 70’; I took a series of pictures of her approaching, passing by no more than 15’ away, and landing on a large coral knob behind us. After that, yet another reef shark passed us close enough for pictures. On top of the wall, John found a green moray that was willing to let us take close-ups, and a scrawled filefish darted past us as we followed a piece of cable back towards the boat. Once again we were seeing so much impressive sea life that I was reluctant to end the dive, but told myself not to be greedy after such a fantastic day underwater.
Monday was our last day of diving, and at last we got to try out Grace Bay. The wind had died down at last, although Grace Bay was still feeling the effects and our dives had poor viz (30’ at best) and a bit of current and surge on top of the wall. John had to fight his way across the sand flats as the current caught at his big camera rig like a sail. Still, we saw a 6’-8’ long nurse shark resting on the bottom at 40’ or so on the way out, and another on the return leg of the dive. After we dropped over the wall to around 90’, John and Rose turned their dive early due to the current making it so difficult to dive with the camera rig, and Natalie and I continued on by ourselves. There were clusters of black coral sprouting like trees at the bottom of the wall. I spotted several lionfish and stayed down near 100’ for a few minutes in order to take pictures. We also saw several large grouper, which seemed to be common to the areas around Provo. The second dive also had poor viz and surge, so we agreed to stick even closer together than usual and stay in a smaller area. We bounced down to the bottom and back up quickly because of the conditions, and spent most of the dive at a depth of 25-35’ in an area of coral formations close under the back of the boat and the edge of the wall.
Since the Grace Bay sites are so close to the marina, we got back to the dock after diving around 12:45, far earlier than our usual 2 p.m. arrival time when diving off the western sites. Natalie and I took advantage by going for lunch at Somewhere on the Beach (Mexican, fresh, very good food, in a comfortable bar and grill with outdoor seating next to the beach). We ate out infrequently as prices were high, but the quality of dining and service was also high everywhere we went. The local people we spoke with were also friendly and laid back.
After lunch, we took to the same beach for snorkeling, at a spot called Coral Gardens on Grace Bay. The snorkeling turned out to be great, with Natalie pointing out a juvenile hawksbill turtle, and schools of yellow snapper, blue tang, plenty of parrotfish and grouper, a coney or two, and lots of pretty juvenile fish including a French angel with its distinctive gold bars on black. Added to the snorkeling off the back of our rental house, where Nat found a small spiny lobster hanging out under the rocks behind the steps down into the water, we concluded the snorkeling was almost as good as the diving.
Our group included four divers of varying experience levels. With six people along, we rented a house with a pool on the island of Providenciales, a/k/a Provo (the Turks & Caicos main islands include Provo, West Caicos, Middle Caicos, East Caicos and Grand Turk Island; Provo is the most heavily populated and developed, but Grand Turk is where the cruise ships dock).
We dove with Dive Provo, which has several larger boats and offers nitrox with an analyzer on each boat. May and September are the slowest months for diving – which made it easy to rent a place to stay and go out to eat - but the boats were consistently carrying a 2/3 or more capacity with 12 to 20 or so divers of varying skill levels, often including a few open water students with an instructor. Dive Provo’s crew will change over tanks for you after each dive, and they will store your gear at the marina including a freshwater rinse at the end of the day, but they let us handle our own gear and do our own changeovers as we prefer and treated all divers as responsible adults.
Although Grace Bay has many dive sites, the weather was not cooperating; the wind blew hard from the east all week, creating bad chop and terrible visibility in Grace Bay. Instead of a short 15 minute boat ride to the Grace Bay sites, we went an hour or more each way, to sheltered western areas at French Cay, West Caicos and the Northwest Point of Provo. Due to longer trips, we fit in only two dives each day. However, the crew explained this weather was unusual for May; they commonly offer 3-tank dives and night dives in Grace Bay.
Our first trip Sunday was to French Cay, where our first dive site was called G-Spot. The color of the water was striking as we motored along the coast and then out over the ocean, changing abruptly from light above the wall to deeper blue where it drops off. Once anchored a few hundred yards off shore, Dive Provo’s crew went through their routine of reminding everyone of the no-touch rule of diving in a marine park, the dive site layout and the safety rules: you are responsible for your own safety, no solo diving, no deco diving, one hour time limit, 100’ depth limit, and the boat’s dive safety equipment arrangements - including a line off the back of the boat, a hookah with oxygen hanging at 20’ and a safety bar hanging at 15’ below. Typically, one divemaster went in the water with a few buddies teaming up with him or her, and on some trips we had a small student group with its own instructor. Unlike some other Caribbean dive operations, we were not required to follow a divemaster so we didn’t; Natalie and I dove as a buddy team, and John and Rose dove as a team when Rose wasn’t involved in her Rescue Diver course, or else we would dive with John as a 3-person team. Because of his camera rig, John tends to move slowly, which suits us just fine. There was plenty to see in any given small area, so no need to rush around trying to see more and more. I was comfortable diving without a wetsuit, in water temperatures that were generally 79-81 degrees F from top to bottom. I quickly pared my weights down to 6 lbs. and stayed with that all week.
Like all of the dives we did off Provo, G-Spot is a wall dive; the walls around the Turks & Caicos drop away to about 6,000’ depth. We started out down the front mooring line to relatively open bottom with coral heads scattered at about 40’, then made our way to the wall. Within the first 5 minutes of the dive, we had found the edge at 50’ depth, where a grey reef shark was casually making its way along the wall no more than 20’ away. Beginning with that first dive, I was impressed with how healthy the reefs were.
Monday we went to the Northwest Point of Provo to dive a site called Boo’s Garden. At about 100’ we found a hawksbill turtle feeding on a coral outcrop. He was unconcerned about us and kept right on eating as we hovered. Good-sized Nassau grouper appeared under more than one ledge, hunting or else hanging out. Lionfish showed up at the deeper depths (I don’t recall seeing one above 80’
. Dive Provo’s crew told me they sometimes organize lionfish hunting trips and are trying to convince Provo’s chefs to put lionfish on their menus. Our second dive of the day was on the Crack. We descended as a group and poked slowly along the wall, finding another turtle and a lionfish. The boat ride back was enjoyable, though it takes an hour or more, as it runs past cool looking houses that must have wonderful ocean views including a few that probably qualify as mansions. Back at the marina we came in past a couple of rusted hulls being salvaged, one of which boasted an osprey perch. As we drove around Provo we noticed many half-completed and seemingly abandoned construction projects, which we were told resulted from bank failures. Despite the island’s natural beauty, with glowing blue waters and white sand beaches, Provo also has a problem with trash dumps which local headlines said they are trying to clean up.On Tuesday we traveled all the way out to West Caicos, for a dive at Boat Cove (named for the boats that used to dock here) followed by the Magic Mushroom site (named for the many coral heads). Right under the boat at a depth of 40’ or so, a southern stingray fed on the sandy bottom while surrounded by a cloud of 18 or 20 yellow snapper. This was another beautiful healthy area, with plenty of large corals, queen angelfish, grouper at a cleaning station … and more sharks. We spotted a large reef shark while we were cruising along the wall at about 90’; there was no chance to get good pictures as he was probably 40’ away and below us, so I just stared until he swam out of sight. The corals and sponges were fantastic. I remember a grouper hanging out with a trumpetfish who had camouflaged itself with nearly the same colors as the grouper, stripes and all, and stayed within inches of each other. We noticed that unlike other Caribbean locations where barracuda take over the spot right under the dive boat, here the dive boat was usually staked out by schools of yellow snapper; however, large barracuda can be found hovering close to the bottom – in this case, a big guy was hanging out on top of the wall just over a coral head.
We returned to West Caicos on Wednesday to dive Rock Garden Interlude (named for the rocky shoreline) and The Driveway (named for the broad white sand leading between two sharply defined coral ridges down to the edge of the wall). We found plenty of life and colorful corals, with lionfish hanging out at the deeper depths, large queen angels and French angels. John found a small black and white spotted moray eel. The Driveway was striking. Around 100’ I found three queen angels schooled together. We saw a large barracuda with dark markings hanging near the bottom, and took close-ups of a large Nassau grouper resting in the rocks above the wall’s edge. Then as we returned, a turtle swam right past us along the top of the wall. A curious barracuda rested quite close to us at our 3-minute hang point under the boat.
Thursday’s dives were off the Northwest Point of Provo, including Thunderdome, named for the heavy gauge wire mesh cage sitting on the bottom at 40’, a relic of a short-lived British TV game show, and Eel Garden, named for the garden eels in the sandy area right under the mooring point, which attracted several stingrays. My camera housing developed a leak on the first dive; I felt fortunate to escape any damage to the camera itself.
Natalie and I took a day out of the water to offgas and visit West Caicos and Middle Caicos by ferry on Friday. The ferry is for people only, no cars, so we picked up another rental car and took it slowly over the causeway between West and Middle Caicos. It was obviously a major construction project, but storms had scraped off the road surface like icing off a cake. Lunch at Daniel’s Café included fresh snapper and the best conch we’ve had anywhere. Eventually we located a dirt road leading past the air strip on Middle Caicos, and luckily (should have called ahead) we caught a guided tour of the extensive Conch Bar Caves. The caves are enormous and beautiful, with flowstone curtains, stalactites and stalagmites from ceilings up to 30’ above, long passages and deep crevasses, archways, pools of water and bats. After a walk on the beach, we drove back to the ferry point, stopping along the way at Flamingo Pond where we could see bright pink flamingo dots in the far distance with binoculars (drought has left the water far distant). Just as on Provo, we saw “potcakes” (local dogs) everywhere.
Meanwhile, back on Provo, John reported that for once he dove without his camera rig, and had the best dive of his life; a fantasy dive featuring multiple stingrays, turtles and sharks, and they just kept coming almost too quickly to take in. Considering John has logged thousands of dives – I think he quit counting at 3,000 when he turned into a fish – for him to come up saying it was the best dive ever is remarkable. I made a mental note that the dive site was The Gully off West Caicos, planning to cajole the dive crew to head back there right away.
After a couple of dives off West Caicos on Saturday, the next day was my turn to have fantasy diving. Sunday we returned to the Northwest Point of Provo to dive The Chimney and The Crack. We descended the Chimney swim-through and on exiting around 90’, we watched a huge, no doubt older hawksbill slowly fly by. A moment later, an 8-10’ reef shark passed below, at a depth of around 120’; we saw him again several times as the dive continued. Another large lobster out was walking around in the open at the top of the wall. On the way back to the boat, I stopped to take pictures of a few glass jawfish hovering over their holes in the sand, and then another of those hubcap-size grey angelfish. Once again, I was impressed by how healthy the reef is, and how much variety there is in the coral formations. We saw one more reef shark, a small one this time, for a total of four sightings of two individuals. Even after a week of diving that exceeded all expectations, I was surprised by how much big sea life we were seeing at close range.
The second dive of the day was my 100th logged dive, and it was even better than the morning experience. Right at the start I spotted a stingray on the sand. Then when we first dropped down the wall and came out of the swim-through at about 90’, I looked back and up to see the silhouette of a reef shark disappearing over the edge of the wall near where we had just descended. I managed to tell myself not to chase him and continued on with my buddies Natalie and John. As we paralleled the wall to our right, I spotted two reef sharks swimming close together, perhaps 30’ distant below us (and John tells me I missed seeing a third, larger shark following them). The wall featured large lobsters hiding under the ledges. When we turned to head back, Natalie pointed out a large turtle free swimming towards us at a depth of around 70’; I took a series of pictures of her approaching, passing by no more than 15’ away, and landing on a large coral knob behind us. After that, yet another reef shark passed us close enough for pictures. On top of the wall, John found a green moray that was willing to let us take close-ups, and a scrawled filefish darted past us as we followed a piece of cable back towards the boat. Once again we were seeing so much impressive sea life that I was reluctant to end the dive, but told myself not to be greedy after such a fantastic day underwater.
Monday was our last day of diving, and at last we got to try out Grace Bay. The wind had died down at last, although Grace Bay was still feeling the effects and our dives had poor viz (30’ at best) and a bit of current and surge on top of the wall. John had to fight his way across the sand flats as the current caught at his big camera rig like a sail. Still, we saw a 6’-8’ long nurse shark resting on the bottom at 40’ or so on the way out, and another on the return leg of the dive. After we dropped over the wall to around 90’, John and Rose turned their dive early due to the current making it so difficult to dive with the camera rig, and Natalie and I continued on by ourselves. There were clusters of black coral sprouting like trees at the bottom of the wall. I spotted several lionfish and stayed down near 100’ for a few minutes in order to take pictures. We also saw several large grouper, which seemed to be common to the areas around Provo. The second dive also had poor viz and surge, so we agreed to stick even closer together than usual and stay in a smaller area. We bounced down to the bottom and back up quickly because of the conditions, and spent most of the dive at a depth of 25-35’ in an area of coral formations close under the back of the boat and the edge of the wall.
Since the Grace Bay sites are so close to the marina, we got back to the dock after diving around 12:45, far earlier than our usual 2 p.m. arrival time when diving off the western sites. Natalie and I took advantage by going for lunch at Somewhere on the Beach (Mexican, fresh, very good food, in a comfortable bar and grill with outdoor seating next to the beach). We ate out infrequently as prices were high, but the quality of dining and service was also high everywhere we went. The local people we spoke with were also friendly and laid back.
After lunch, we took to the same beach for snorkeling, at a spot called Coral Gardens on Grace Bay. The snorkeling turned out to be great, with Natalie pointing out a juvenile hawksbill turtle, and schools of yellow snapper, blue tang, plenty of parrotfish and grouper, a coney or two, and lots of pretty juvenile fish including a French angel with its distinctive gold bars on black. Added to the snorkeling off the back of our rental house, where Nat found a small spiny lobster hanging out under the rocks behind the steps down into the water, we concluded the snorkeling was almost as good as the diving.
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