charlesml3
Contributor
Gang,
Just got back from a week aboard the Bahamas Aggressor. Mostly diving Exuma and the marine park.
The Aggressor: Well it's always pretty much great aboard the Aggressor boats. That said, this is the oldest boat in the fleet and it shows. As I understand it, this boat will be retired soon and replaced. There were no technical problems that I observed. We had a couple of days where the Nitrox dropped to 27% for some reason. I didn't really care but apparently it bothered the captain enough to waive the $100 Nitrox fee for all of us. That was pretty nice. Anyway, the crew was incredibly competent and the food was as good as always. Aggressor does not skimp there at all.
Travel to/from: The Bahamas are EASY. Lots of flights to choose from and they're inexpensive. This was one of the reasons I picked the Bahamas for this trip. With the week I had to go, it was just too difficult to get to Roatan, Belize, or T&C.
The Diving: The diving was a mixed bag. There were some dives I'd say were quite good. Mostly the ones in the Marine Park. The last day we dove Periwinkle which was the best dive we did all week. This reef is surprisingly healthy and had a LOT of fish and plantlife. Overall, I made 23 dives and probably 4 or 5 of them were pretty good. There were 4 or 5 more that were just terrible and the rest were somewhere in the middle. The vast majority of the reefs were in poor condition. The coral was dead or dying. Very, very little fishlife on most of them. On some dives we'd be lucky to see one French Angel or one lobster. The reefs showed clear signs of overfishing. It was disheartening.
Overall I had a good time but this is not a trip I would repeat. The diving simply isn't there anymore. Maybe it was 10 years ago. I don't know. The Marine Park was most certainly better diving but it's so small. There are only a few dive sites there before we had to move on and back to reefs that looked like they were covered in snow.
After the trip a few of us got together and all said pretty much the same thing. The diving was a C-Minus overall.
Just got back from a week aboard the Bahamas Aggressor. Mostly diving Exuma and the marine park.
The Aggressor: Well it's always pretty much great aboard the Aggressor boats. That said, this is the oldest boat in the fleet and it shows. As I understand it, this boat will be retired soon and replaced. There were no technical problems that I observed. We had a couple of days where the Nitrox dropped to 27% for some reason. I didn't really care but apparently it bothered the captain enough to waive the $100 Nitrox fee for all of us. That was pretty nice. Anyway, the crew was incredibly competent and the food was as good as always. Aggressor does not skimp there at all.
Travel to/from: The Bahamas are EASY. Lots of flights to choose from and they're inexpensive. This was one of the reasons I picked the Bahamas for this trip. With the week I had to go, it was just too difficult to get to Roatan, Belize, or T&C.
The Diving: The diving was a mixed bag. There were some dives I'd say were quite good. Mostly the ones in the Marine Park. The last day we dove Periwinkle which was the best dive we did all week. This reef is surprisingly healthy and had a LOT of fish and plantlife. Overall, I made 23 dives and probably 4 or 5 of them were pretty good. There were 4 or 5 more that were just terrible and the rest were somewhere in the middle. The vast majority of the reefs were in poor condition. The coral was dead or dying. Very, very little fishlife on most of them. On some dives we'd be lucky to see one French Angel or one lobster. The reefs showed clear signs of overfishing. It was disheartening.
Overall I had a good time but this is not a trip I would repeat. The diving simply isn't there anymore. Maybe it was 10 years ago. I don't know. The Marine Park was most certainly better diving but it's so small. There are only a few dive sites there before we had to move on and back to reefs that looked like they were covered in snow.
After the trip a few of us got together and all said pretty much the same thing. The diving was a C-Minus overall.