Diving In St. Lucia

[Arsalan Ahmed]

Hi

I have about 21 dives under my belt but still a nervous diver. Friend of mine will be recently certified and I'm trying to understand how difficult the diving is in St. Lucia? Are there surface currents? In addition, I heard some of the best diving might be drift with very strong currents? Do you recommend that for a new diver and one that hasn't done drift diving before?

Also, if I decided to stay on the north side, will the dive operators still take us to dive in Soufriere? We will probably be renting over airbnb as opposed to staying at a hotel.

How is the diving there in general? I was trying to decide between Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Lucia (Dominica was my number 1 choice but I need to visit that with my wife) .. moved over to St. Lucia mainly due to a lesser language barrier.

 

[ColoDale]

The better diving in St. Lucia is in the south and IMO, drift diving - been there 2x. I would not say the current are very strong. I have experienced much stronger currents in Cozumel and Fiji.

We had divers with us that stayed on the North end and for them they generally had ground transportation to the harbor in Castries, then left by boat to the South. Your dive op can tell you more.

The diving is decent in general. They have a couple of good wrecks and some decent wall/drift dives. I've dived worse places. Last time I was there a hurricane had stripped some of the shallower and closer to the island sites but they many have recovered since then. Superman's Flight and those to the south were in much better shape.

I would recommend you let the dive op know you are new to drift diving and talk about it. They may want to take you to areas first that have little current then move up to sites like Superman's Flight, which I did not find at the time to have ripping currents. I did not notice any differing surface currents. Watch your time, depth, air and dive group.

In general I don't see a problem for new divers in St. Lucia. I think there are alot of new divers (especially honeymooners) that dive St. Lucia. The Cozumel forum will have many discussions on drift diving techniques.
You should get an SMB if you don't already have one - good idea for any location.

There are quite a few posts in the Lesser Antilles forum, which you have obviously found, on St. Lucia (discussions and trip reports) and a few in other forums for tips . I recall that most posts on St. Lucia are positive and don't have many complaints about the currents or dive sites.

 

[Arsalan Ahmed]

Thanks

A lot of posts I'm reading actually word St. Lucia the way you did which is 'i've experienced worse diving' ... which makes me a little vary. Some people seem to love it.

I'm interested in understanding how well people would rate it compared to other places. Bonaire, Cozumel and Roatan seem to rank the best but where would St. Lucia lie within the Caribbean islands (pacific is too expensive) ?

For some understanding, this is how I rate my dives on a scale of 1 to 10

Grenada: 8.5/10
Phi Phi (Thailand): 8.5/10
Zanzibar: 7.5/10
Catalina Island: 3/10 (not my type of diving. Overly technical, I had a bad operator, horrible visibility and no life)
Dominican Republic: 7.5
Belize: 8.5/10

 

[ColoDale]

Ok my ratings for my dives, best first

Fiji - Taveuni area
Cozumel - many times
Grand Cayman/ St. Lucia - Limited diving in Cayman - my first dive trip. Therefore for me, close with St. Lucia
Bahamas - New Providence (Nassau), Exuma - Lot's of sand. A few decent walls. Bond wrecks are broken down. Exuma wreck and blue hole much better than New Providence. In general, Bahamas are not my thing.

Your listed choices were Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Lucia. I have only dived St. Lucia.

I really enjoy drift diving. St. Lucia was not that strong for currents comparitively in my experience.

You have Dominican Republic in your list of dived locations and rated 7.5/10. I have not dived it but from reports (like your are trying to review), DR is not usually listed in top Carribean dive locations. Your rating suggests you liked it. So my advice is to look at the St. Lucia dive sites and decide if that is the kind of diving you like, take the reports on SB into account, the experience of the poster and their preferences if you can discern them and decide if St. Lucia suits you.

Like you have found in posts, I found diving in St. Lucia to be good just not great. I am still glad I dove it though. It has good sites. Who knows, you may love it and St. Lucia becomes your favorite. I assume you will have chances to dive other places in the future so don't over emphasize the decision.

 

[dalaimama]

We did our very first post-cert dives with Scuba Saint Lucia. As far as difficulty - the dives we took were fairly easy.