This my last trip report on diving New Providence (Nassau):
Part I:
"The Diving
The best dive ops are down in the S-SW sector of the island, largely around Coral Harbour. These include Stuart Cove's, Sunskiff, Nassau Scuba Center & Dive, Dive, Dive, Ltd. In fact, the latter 3 are within steps of each other. They are about 20+ minutes from the Cable Beach area & 40+ minutes from Paradise Island, depending of course on traffic & aggressiveness of driver. All offer free shuttle service, which is a blessing as cab fare would exceed your diving costs if you weren't staying locally at such places as the Orange Hill, Clarion, Coral Harbour Beach House & Villas, etc. DDD has some accommodations on site with kitchens and utensils, which could prove quite convenient & economical. Do be aware that you're a long way from any apres scuba "action" if that is important.
Each op offers its own attractions. SC, the most vigorously entrepreneurial of the lot, is a PADI Gold Palm shop which offers Nitrox as well as rebreather & DPV experiences. DDD offers Nitrox and mixed gases training & availability, and is PADI, NAUI, SSI, ANDI, NASDS & TDI certified. NSC is a PADI 5 Star IDC facility which in addition to the usual shark feed offers a diver feed experience ala UNEXSO in Freeport. Sunskiff is a no frills op which can serve small groups & other than the usual local dives. While prices vary somewhat according the training, dives or packages involved, overall of the big ops DDD seems the least expensive and SC the most.
This trip I dove with DDD. Their van picked me up & returned me on time each day. The shop has some very limited gear for sale, a full line of seemingly well maintained rental gear, including Sherwood regs, a drying room for storing gear overnight, rinse tank, and cooler with drinks & some munchies for sale. They will also serve you a basic lunch from the grill. Orders are taken on the boat on the way in between AM & PM dives. They have two boats which appear well maintained, although the larger boat is quite slow. They have radio, O2, first aid kits, marine heads & bottled water.
Offered are 2 AM & 2PM dives, a night dive with a minimum number of divers (think it's 4), the Shark Alley/Shark Feed dive, and excursions to Exuma, AUTEC Buoy & Blue Hole by special arrangement.
Sounds okay so far, eh? Well, the op falls down badly in several areas, most notably in the mixing of experience levels of divers and the need to adhere to a tight schedule given its 2AM & 2PM dive program, and there are some personnel and communication problems as well.
The combo of mixing of divers & tight scheduling results in what I term the dreaded "least common denominator diving." Unless you can make special arrangements with your own DM, you go down together, stay together & come up together according to the weakest diver, no matter that you may have more experience than the DMs. Unfortunately, there were some grossly inexperienced divers on my boat, including a very nice woman from Texas who guzzled air faster than I thought was compatible with life. Despite doing only relatively shallow dives (bounces to maybe 70' & then cruising at about 50') in easy if any current, they had to find her 100s for the next day just to get her (and us) a modest amount of bottom time. The combo also resulted in much "mother henning" and u/w regimentation regarding profiles, etc. It was a pain in the a**. After a morning of two very ho-hum dives on Friday (a chap on the boat from Montreal called them "bland," which describes them well), I skipped the PM dives I was scheduled to do. The viz was poor, coral & sponges not especially colorful or healthy looking, and marine life sparse, although the first "wall" (started around 65' & plateaued at about 100', with the group not going below 70'; they would scoff at calling this a wall dive in San Salvador) dive yielded a nice school of mixed Creole Wrasse & Blue Runners, while the Bahama Mama wreck dive on a small sunken booze cruise craft produced a couple of massive Nassau Groupers, a good sized Rainbow Parrotfish & Crevalle Jack, a pair of Midnight Parrotfish, and some of the usual smaller tropicals like Blue Tang & French Grunt.
Disappointed, I was nonetheless buoyed by the thought of tomorrow's dives at Shark Alley & the Shark Feed. And indeed things were looking promising at the dawning: water was calm, took the fast boat, and arrived at the site to find a sweet current going the right way to drift Shark Alley. Gadzooks, my regulator runneth over. We hit the top of the wall and float along ala Coz, watching schools of fish swim on by in bright light which brought out their colors to best effect. All is well. The first bummer, a minor one, was watching the DM, Alda, who was videoing the dive (this & Shark Feed on tape for $50), hit a heretofore extraordinarily healthy appearing pillar coral full on with her back while doing her camera work, and we're not talking a small bump here folks -- that coral was hurt. I could tell she felt badly because she hit herself on the forehead with her hand, but the damage was done. The fact that she was the one who always reminded everyone not to touch anything & was the most egregious "mother henner" made it sadly ironic.
Anyway, things quickly picked up when about a 6-7' Caribbean Reef Shark lazily passed by, lead by two tiny pilot fish finning their fannies off just inches in front of the shark's massive maw. While Remoras went about trying to find purchase for a meal, a school of silvery Black Jacks took turns darting to the shark's skin to pick parasites, while a merry coterie of juvenile Wrasse picked up their crumbs. It was one of those transcendent moments when the extended symbiotic chains which underlie all life on earth became so focussed I wanted to laugh out loud at the ineffable beauty of it all.
Unfortunately, my transcendence came to a jarring halt when one of the newbies swims up & signals Mother Hen that she is down to 1,000 lbs. It's like 20 minutes into the dive, we're at about 50', & Mother starts making the hand signal for "clucking" and we're frigging going to surface. I look at my SPG & have 2,000 lbs. left on a dive that is finally showing promise - I go ape. The minute we hit the surface I yank off my mask, which I proceed to lose, and start yelling about why we're only doing half a dive, but soon realize this is not only bad form, but patently futile, so I stew in silence for a bit.
The next dive is the Shark Feed, which involves dropping to about 50' to a coral rubble bottom. Everyone overweights about 6 lbs. as given the sharks really crappy near vision it's not wise to be flailing appendages during the feed proper. We form a semicircle, after which the DM, on this dive Andy, swims down with a 5 gallon plastic bucket of frozen fish, which he brings out a piece at a time on a long metal rod. The sharks of course gather at the sound of the boat, on this dive about 20 female Caribbean Reefs in the 4-7' range or thereabouts. This feeding apparently takes place nearly every day of the week, with different ops taking turns on different days. DDD has been doing it for 9 years. I do not agree with the severe reservations of some others on this board regarding this type of marine dog & pony show as they are not without value to both sharks & humans. Nevertheless, clearly this was not natural and represented an alteration of behavior, and left me feeling a little guilty. In any event, it was interesting to see them shut their eyes & extend their teeth before striking, and to see the 70 pound grouper who hangs around out maneuver them in tight quarters. One shark had a large fishing hook slowly rusting away in its mouth. Mating season had just ended, and some females showed some wicked scarring & bite marks. Geez, these dewds must have dyn-O-mite sex. Even though one shark did rake my head with a pectoral fin, I remained unfrightened, even though I sincerely wanted to be scared. When the food was gone, the players dispersed, and we spent some time looking for the teeth which they lose during the feed.
Fed up with the diving, I passed on the scheduled PM dives & diving the following day. I was planning on doing >$400 worth of diving with DDD, but they ended up getting $182.
As for personnel, Lindsey, a would be Rasta Man with great 'locks but a lousy Jamaican accent, who I also suspect is way below standard on the righteous herb index, was a true pleasure. Always smiling & easy going, he worked hard to see that everyone enjoyed themselves. Our Captain the first day, Tony, had an odd ball sense of humor & was a hoot once you got past the gruff. DM both days & shark feeder, Andy, was watchful and competent. If you want to make him happy, buy him lunch -- he loves that stuff off the grill. Alda was covered above, and little more needs to be said. She is clearly a well meaning DM and if Romper Room ever initiates an u/w segment to the show, she's a shoe in.
The nasty award goes to Mike, an instructor who seems to be charge of tanks & rental equipment. I had two interactions with him. On the first, I asked him to demonstrate the use of their particular O2 analyzer so I could check the one Nitrox tank I used. He rapidly mumbled a series of instructions, and then turned and walked away. Another diver & I then figured it out. The second interaction was when I came out of the drying room with a nice big hanger for my gear. Upon spying it, Mike said "Where did you get that?" I said it was in the drying, to which he responded, "I doesn't belong there," took it, and walked away.
[TO BE CONTINUED]