AggieDiver
Contributor
i have only been here since Sunday afternoon, but since Kathy asked nicely, here are a few thoughts based purely on my first impressions. First, the renovation of the dining area and the lobby were very well done and give it a bit of a more upscale feel. There is more space in the dining room and with the outdoor tables and the screened area, there are lots of options. One thing I do wish they would have done was put some sort of noise baffling on the ceiling or maybe put in some dividers to break up the space, as the room can get quite noisy now. But maybe that is just the 2 large dive groups sitting together causing that impression. Some of them could use a little work on their “indoor voices”.
The food has been quite good so far, there are fewer overall choices of sides, salads, and I haven’t seen soup available yet, but the food that is out there has been very good and my first impression is that it is slightly better than what we ate last year. I know they just brought in a new chef, so maybe what we are seeing is a bit of learning curve for the kitchen staff. Overall, I like the upgrades and changes so far.
As for the diving, with one dive day under our belts on the south side, the only thing that has stood out is that there has been a lot of coral bleaching. Not sure if it is relatively recent or not, but the sites we were on had large patches of pillar coral and stag horn coral bleached white, which is a change from what we saw last year. Some of it appeared to still be alive, so I am not sure if it is in the process of recovering or if it just hasn’t died completely yet. The waters have been 86 lately according to the online logs, and the CCMI buoy is actually reporting 84, so I am not sure if it is something else triggering the bleaching. One other thing is that the drying room now opens and closes when the dive shop does. So if you need something out of the drying room, make sure you get it before dinner.
No sargassum whatsoever on the beach or in the lagoon right now. We saw some from the air flying in, but with the wind out of the northeast and east last night and today, it hasn’t hit the beach. Wind is supposed to die down and turn to the southeast and south beginning tomorrow so I will let you know if that changes. It looks as though the area of sand just below the water line was hit pretty hard recently, as there is no turtle grass within about 10-15 feet of the water line, which I surmise is because it was scoured by mats of piled up sargassum earlier this year.
The food has been quite good so far, there are fewer overall choices of sides, salads, and I haven’t seen soup available yet, but the food that is out there has been very good and my first impression is that it is slightly better than what we ate last year. I know they just brought in a new chef, so maybe what we are seeing is a bit of learning curve for the kitchen staff. Overall, I like the upgrades and changes so far.
As for the diving, with one dive day under our belts on the south side, the only thing that has stood out is that there has been a lot of coral bleaching. Not sure if it is relatively recent or not, but the sites we were on had large patches of pillar coral and stag horn coral bleached white, which is a change from what we saw last year. Some of it appeared to still be alive, so I am not sure if it is in the process of recovering or if it just hasn’t died completely yet. The waters have been 86 lately according to the online logs, and the CCMI buoy is actually reporting 84, so I am not sure if it is something else triggering the bleaching. One other thing is that the drying room now opens and closes when the dive shop does. So if you need something out of the drying room, make sure you get it before dinner.
No sargassum whatsoever on the beach or in the lagoon right now. We saw some from the air flying in, but with the wind out of the northeast and east last night and today, it hasn’t hit the beach. Wind is supposed to die down and turn to the southeast and south beginning tomorrow so I will let you know if that changes. It looks as though the area of sand just below the water line was hit pretty hard recently, as there is no turtle grass within about 10-15 feet of the water line, which I surmise is because it was scoured by mats of piled up sargassum earlier this year.
