Best Marine Life destination, reasonably priced

[gt2003]

@KathyV , not a lot of diving on the video but the island is gorgeous! Good and plentiful marine life?

 

[KathyV]

@KathyV , not a lot of diving on the video but the island is gorgeous! Good and plentiful marine life?

I think so! It's different from Cozumel - mostly reef diving on walls and no drift diving. Healthy reefs with lots of groupers and turtles and plenty of the usual suspects like eels, crabs, lobsters, octopus, tarpons, barracudas, parrot fish and other colorful tropicals. You are also likely to see a few sharks (nurse and reef sharks) but not many.

Brac is said to have good shore diving also but I haven't tried it.

The Caymans are known for good Caribbean diving but it is an expensive destination, but I feel that the all-inclusive packages at the Cayman Brac Beach Resort (and also the Little Cayman Beach Resort) are a good deal.

You can usually find decent airfare to Grand Cayman and then you have to take a 30 minute flight to Brac or Little Cayman. The round-trip flights to the sister islands cost about $160. You can only fly small twin otters into Little Cayman, but Brac has a larger airport and you can get there via jets, turboprops, or twin otters. There are also a few direct flights to Brac from Florida that bypass Grand Cayman.

Diving the Bloody Bay Wall off of Little Cayman is some of the best diving in the Caribbean IMO, even better than Brac, but LC is a little more expensive and it may be harder to get reservations because it fills up quickly. Brac is more budget-friendly and it is very, very nice.

I think that the diving around Brac is really good and there is more stuff to do topside than LC, but not a lot, it isn't a big tourist destination. You said that your wife isn't into wreck diving and that's fine, but there is a sunken Russian Frigate (renamed the Tibbetts) off of Brac and it is a nice dive.

I would rank the diving on the Cayman Islands as follows:
1 Little Cayman
2 Cayman Brac
3 East End and North Wall Grand Cayman

Here are some more links about Cayman Brac:

http://www.xray-mag.com/pdfs/articles/Travel_CaymanBrac_LawsonWood_60_locked.pdf

http://caribjournal.com/2015/09/15/journey-to-cayman-brac/

http://www.islands.com/free-tour-you-cant-miss-cayman-brac

 

[Pullnglide]

+1 for diving Florida. Plenty of diving filled with marine life in Destin or PCB with great beaches while on land. If your looking for a winter trip then this definitely wouldn’t be a great option however the Keys would work out well. Nassau has never let me down for a trip away from the cold weather either as far as diving is concerned. Good luck on wherever you decide to go.

 

[PatW]

I have dove the Cayman "out islands" quite a few times. At Cayman Brac, you will see Nassau Groupers. They can be quite tame. Nassau Groupers are endangered and I rarely see them anywhere else. The out islands make an effort at keeping healthy fish populations. The local people actually seem to buy into the policies more so than far more affluent Americans who fish protected sites in the Florida Keys with impunity. Many places in the Caribbean let the locals fish the heck out of the reefs with predictable results.

Hawksbill turtles are common. They are often used to divers and can be very approachable. The out islands are probably the best place I know to see Hawksbill turtles up close. They sometimes flee divers. Usually they just ignore divers. Sometimes they will interact with divers. I have also seen Loggerhead and Green turtles at the Brac.

There is a dive on the south side, that has a resident school of tarpon. Every time I have dove that site, I have seen the tarpon. But they do not dive the south side as much as the north.

The Brac has decent schools of grunts and other fish. It has a fair number of trigger fish, spotted file fish, tiger grouper, some yellowfin grouper, bar jack, horse eyed jack, sometimes you see a goliath grouper. There are morays. I see mainly green morays and spotted morays. But there are golden tailed morays also. There are stingrays and golden rays. There are nurse sharks usually snoozing under ledges. Sometimes I wonder if nurse sharks ever "do anything". On the south side walls, you will usually see a reef shark or two.

The out islands of the Caymans have really good marine life. I would say that Cozumel has good marine life and so does Key Largo and some of the places in the Turks and Caicos.

 

[chorse]

We have vacationed on Curacao and dive for the last several years. There are dozens of beaches many with full facilities, food, bathrooms and rental equipment at their dive shops. Beaches are cleaned and raked by the government after storms. Divers and sun fanatics benefit the most on a visit to Curacao. We are primarily divers. You could shore dive and skip the boat diving expense altogether. But boat diving is easier the older we become. Renting a vehicle with a spacious trunk is a good idea. Small double cabin pickup is the best way to go. Stay somewhere near Westpunt for easy access to the great shore diving beaches. It's safe and there is usually a security person somewhere there to deter opportunists. Never had a problem. All West apartments is a dive motel with kitchens and truck rentals. They also have a super house reef with a dive shop, tanks and a couple of boats. I recommend them.

 

[drbill]

Personally I think Florida diving is less interesting than most destinations in the Caribbean, but personally I prefer Asia and the South Pacific. Of course flights are more expensive and time consuming.

 

[Diving_Parrot]

West bay beach in Roatan has what your looking for covered.

 

[drrich2]

Personally I think Florida diving is less interesting than most destinations in the Caribbean,

I have far less dive experience than you. I dove 20 dives in a week out of Key Largo, and 17 dives spread over 2 separate weeks/years out of Jupiter vs. 8 weeks in Bonaire, a week each via live-aboard in the Caymans and Belize, land trip to St. Croix and a smattering of cruise ship stops. My anecdotal thoughts:

1.) Key Largo diving was fishier and larger than Bonaire. In Bonaire, I might see a school of French grunts, in Key Largo a school of blue-striped grunts, and KL had more large barracuda and more decent-sized grouper (and more species; black and Nassau, even Goliath if I did deep wrecks, vs. just tiger grouper I saw in Bonaire). But Bonaire had better viz. (maybe 50' vs. 75-100'), and shore-diving rocks. KL's shallow reefs over hard bottom; offered good lighting for photography; Bonaire's sloping reef wall is often as deep as you want it to be.

2.) The Caymans (mainly Little) & Belize probably had more large grouper (but not Goliaths!), closer encounters with reef sharks, and definitely better viz. Plus deeper average & max. depths on the guide-led dives (ignoring Key Largo wrecks).

3.) I enjoyed St. Croix a lot, but I'm gonna give Key Largo the nod on fishiness. St. Croix had some shore diving, nice sandy beaches and a more interesting topside in my view.

4.) Jupiter, FL part of the year offers reliable lemon shark encounters, and another part of the year aggregating Goliath grouper encounters. If you're willing to join dives where the leader hand-feeds fish chunks to sharks, then lemon, bull and tiger sharks can be seen in close-quarters, and I hear hammerheads, too. Granted, you could head to Tiger Beach off Grand Bahama where I hear some of the tiger sharks tend to run larger (near 10 feet was big enough for me, thanks), or dive with great hammerheads (off Bimini was it?) or even seek out the Oceanic white-tips off Cat Island, but my point is, Jupiter's got some rocking shark diving on offer.

And that's not even considering the west coast FL diving (which I haven't done), the spear fishing done out of Florida (how many Caribbean destinations let you do that, I wonder?), and the fresh water options (e.g.: springs & caves) for some.

I can't say definitively who's got the most interesting diving, and interesting is in the eye of the diver, but I think Florida is at least competitive with most other regional (e.g.: U.S. & Caribbean) warm-water offerings. I'm not talking coastal California (cold, keep, seals & sea lions), Sea of Cortez & other Pacific sites, etc...

Richard.

 

[JamesBon92007]

Does she like moray eels, seasnakes, octopi, stingrays, manta rays, spotted eagle rays, and lots of fishes? I really like Puerto Vallarta (so does my honey) but we seem to be the only ones on here that consider it a dive destination. SouthWest has some very cheap flights from LAX--don't know about Oklahoma.

 

[scubadada]

Personally I think Florida diving is less interesting than most destinations in the Caribbean...

Hi @drbill

I would not tell people Catalina is inferior to the the other Channel Islands, inferior to other sites in Southern or Northern California. Though I have a fair experience in Southern California and the Channel Islands, much of it is dated and not terribly extensive. Heck, I used to commonly see Blue Sharks off Catalina in the 70s

On the other hand, I have just under 950 dives in SE FL and the Keys, and just under 400 dives in the Caribbean, including Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, Cayman Brac, Bonaire, Curacao, Turks & Caicos, Roatan, and Cozumel. I can honestly say that the reef fish numbers, size, and diversity on the reef in Boynton Beach can compete with any of the sites in the Caribbean. I dived in Roatan, Cayman Brac, and Bonaire this year, all were wonderful trips with great dives, but, where were all the fish, some species just seemed to be missing. Of course, In SE FL and the Keys, the visibility is not as good, the water can be much colder, conditions may be more variable, and there are not the gorgeous walls. There are the sharks in Jupiter and West Palm, nearly the number seen in Turks & Caicos, with much greater diversity. I have never done the feeding/baited shark dives but have seen Hammerhead, Bull, Sandbar, Silky, Lemon, and Tiger Sharks in addition to the Reef Sharks. We see Loggerhead, Hawksbill, and Green Turtles frequently. I've see a couple of Leatherbacks and saw my first Kemp's Ridley Turtle this year in West Palm. There is Lemon Shark aggregation in Jupiter each winter and Goliath Grouper aggregation in Jupiter, West Palm, and Boynton Beach at the end of each summer/early Fall. SE FL has many fine wrecks, the Keys have some very good ones, Spiegel Grove, Duane, Bibb, Eagle, Vandenberg and more.

Florida has some very good diving, I'll continue to dive the Caribbean and elsewhere to enjoy the variety and diversity that diving has to offer.

Good diving, Craig