inter_alia
Guest
Just returned from a week on St. Martin/ St. Maarten. We stayed in the Terres Basses -- lovely!-- and my rum-o-meter is still in the black. But this is a dive report, so... My dive buddy and I managed two mornings of 2-tank boat dives with Dive Safaris out of their Simpson Bay location. I had done some research and refused to use a dive op closer to Phillipsburg because of the cruise ship factor... and I was right to.
Generally, the seas were choppy with 2-4 foot occassional swells. Nobody got sick on our 38' catamaran which didn't have a head or shower or anything but was in good shape with an excellent crew. On our first boat, twelve divers had two DMs and a Captain. I never handled a tank (hoorah!) and my gear was set up for me just how I like it (I was asked if I wanted trim weights instead of all of them in the ditchable pockets, etc.) None of the dive sites were far from shore, really, great views of the island and the planes landing. We'd leave around 0845 and return before 1230. A 45 minute SI inbetween dives with complimentary water, snacks and sodas.
Currents were negligible and only above 20 feet or so... water temp stayed around 78 with a mild thermocline around 40 fsw dropping to 76 at the worst. My .5mm left me chilly after the first dives but I'm prone to this. The female DM (M_____a is her name... um) was wearing a hood.
Stats:
Dive #1, Porpoise.
Depth-- 85 feet
Vis-- 80 feet
ABT-- 33 minutes
A tugboat wreck sunk upright about six months ago, plenty of life already starting to hide around her and grow over her. Neat to see the first stages of this. Good photo op at the hull since "PORPOISE" is clearly visable. I declined the engine room swim-through, dad said it was great. Saw a stingray fly from canvassing the sandy bottom of the sea up and over the profile of the wreck... awesome.
Considered this a mediocre dive but good for orientation in these waters.
Dive #2, Gregory II.
Depth-- 53 feet
Vis-- 70 feet
ABT-- 45 minutes
Upside-down barge with a decent reef around it. Healthier reef than I've been lead to believe inhabited this place. Loads of nice fans, young purple tube sponges and brain coral. "Young" is the key word, but if I can identify these things they aren't all toddlers. On the wreck, Sargent Major eggs were all over the place. Another swim through that I declined but which the DM would take two at a time... I was very interested in exploring the reef immediately around the wreck, though. Had the sun been out, I'm sure the colors would have been wonderful since my little PCa light was helping me nose around.
Dive #3, Bridge.
Depth -- 54 feet
Vis-- 60 feet
ABT-- 41 minutes
Easily one of my top-five dives in my 73-dive career. This site is like a sandy center with two old sailboat wrecks and bridge rubble equidistant from one another around the circle. Sparse reef surrounds this circle with the according masses of smaller fish. We descended and followed Jefferson (Capt., DM) and immediately he pointed out the two stingrays in the sand. We slowed and hovered. The first stingray was maybe 4 feet in wingspan but this was the largest I've ever been able to study upclose. I hovered to its side, admired the way it was mostly buried, all that. Then my attention moved to where my dad had moved to -- another stingray, much larger, buried in the same fashion nearby. Jefferson was carefully face-to-face with the stingray and slowly moving toward it, eventually able to pet the top of it. He took two divers one at a time to slowly do this, and then as I moved in for my turn, the stingray backed up a little (all the sand trickling off him) and then gingerly flew up, over me, to about 40 feet away where he buried himself again. What a sight! I'm pretty sure dad got a picture of me under this spectacle...
So then we poked around the three sites. Enormous lobsters under ledges, lots of puffers, parrots, lizard fish, a few trumpets and the conch shell critters on the bottoms of things. The Bridge wreck was heavily covered with sponges and coral, lots of color (bring a light) and more lobster, someone saw an eel here... and when we started back to the rope, I looked out in the blue and watched another stingray swimming a pattern in the flat reef around the fish out there. Watched him until my safety stop, when I started watching an old, 4-foot barracuda who wasn't shiny anymore.
I was already cold...
Dive #4, Simpson's Reef
Depth--55 feet
Vis--60 feet
ABT--40 minutes
Yup, already cold on entry. Told the DM that if this got worse I'd have to abort and he said this was fine. I'm a wimp... but I didn't abort.
Nice reef, reminded me of Juno Ledge in West Palm -- not in size, of course, but in composition. Interesting ledges, loads of things hiding under them, and hundreds of feet of coral and sponges and fans and "mountainous" terrain of the reef. Enormous lobsters, really I can't exaggerate how big those things are in St. Martin. More barracuda, parrots and a few puffers.
Overall, I'm surprised at how nice the dives were. I wasn't expecting much, I guess, so that saved me some but "Dive #3" was just so awesome in its own right. I credit Jefferson for being around to point out the macro stuff (the tiny fish sticking their heads out of tiny shells on the wrecks, s____ fish? Incredible.) and he also kept a couple newer divers from just immediately scaring off those stingrays.
Dive Safaris was a great dive op, their Simpson Bay location afforded us easy parking and a quick walk from the trunk to the catamaran out back. There's no way I'd dive from Phillipsburg... it's a madhouse down there.
Generally, the seas were choppy with 2-4 foot occassional swells. Nobody got sick on our 38' catamaran which didn't have a head or shower or anything but was in good shape with an excellent crew. On our first boat, twelve divers had two DMs and a Captain. I never handled a tank (hoorah!) and my gear was set up for me just how I like it (I was asked if I wanted trim weights instead of all of them in the ditchable pockets, etc.) None of the dive sites were far from shore, really, great views of the island and the planes landing. We'd leave around 0845 and return before 1230. A 45 minute SI inbetween dives with complimentary water, snacks and sodas.
Currents were negligible and only above 20 feet or so... water temp stayed around 78 with a mild thermocline around 40 fsw dropping to 76 at the worst. My .5mm left me chilly after the first dives but I'm prone to this. The female DM (M_____a is her name... um) was wearing a hood.
Stats:
Dive #1, Porpoise.
Depth-- 85 feet
Vis-- 80 feet
ABT-- 33 minutes
A tugboat wreck sunk upright about six months ago, plenty of life already starting to hide around her and grow over her. Neat to see the first stages of this. Good photo op at the hull since "PORPOISE" is clearly visable. I declined the engine room swim-through, dad said it was great. Saw a stingray fly from canvassing the sandy bottom of the sea up and over the profile of the wreck... awesome.
Considered this a mediocre dive but good for orientation in these waters.
Dive #2, Gregory II.
Depth-- 53 feet
Vis-- 70 feet
ABT-- 45 minutes
Upside-down barge with a decent reef around it. Healthier reef than I've been lead to believe inhabited this place. Loads of nice fans, young purple tube sponges and brain coral. "Young" is the key word, but if I can identify these things they aren't all toddlers. On the wreck, Sargent Major eggs were all over the place. Another swim through that I declined but which the DM would take two at a time... I was very interested in exploring the reef immediately around the wreck, though. Had the sun been out, I'm sure the colors would have been wonderful since my little PCa light was helping me nose around.
Dive #3, Bridge.
Depth -- 54 feet
Vis-- 60 feet
ABT-- 41 minutes
Easily one of my top-five dives in my 73-dive career. This site is like a sandy center with two old sailboat wrecks and bridge rubble equidistant from one another around the circle. Sparse reef surrounds this circle with the according masses of smaller fish. We descended and followed Jefferson (Capt., DM) and immediately he pointed out the two stingrays in the sand. We slowed and hovered. The first stingray was maybe 4 feet in wingspan but this was the largest I've ever been able to study upclose. I hovered to its side, admired the way it was mostly buried, all that. Then my attention moved to where my dad had moved to -- another stingray, much larger, buried in the same fashion nearby. Jefferson was carefully face-to-face with the stingray and slowly moving toward it, eventually able to pet the top of it. He took two divers one at a time to slowly do this, and then as I moved in for my turn, the stingray backed up a little (all the sand trickling off him) and then gingerly flew up, over me, to about 40 feet away where he buried himself again. What a sight! I'm pretty sure dad got a picture of me under this spectacle...
So then we poked around the three sites. Enormous lobsters under ledges, lots of puffers, parrots, lizard fish, a few trumpets and the conch shell critters on the bottoms of things. The Bridge wreck was heavily covered with sponges and coral, lots of color (bring a light) and more lobster, someone saw an eel here... and when we started back to the rope, I looked out in the blue and watched another stingray swimming a pattern in the flat reef around the fish out there. Watched him until my safety stop, when I started watching an old, 4-foot barracuda who wasn't shiny anymore.
I was already cold...
Dive #4, Simpson's Reef
Depth--55 feet
Vis--60 feet
ABT--40 minutes
Yup, already cold on entry. Told the DM that if this got worse I'd have to abort and he said this was fine. I'm a wimp... but I didn't abort.
Nice reef, reminded me of Juno Ledge in West Palm -- not in size, of course, but in composition. Interesting ledges, loads of things hiding under them, and hundreds of feet of coral and sponges and fans and "mountainous" terrain of the reef. Enormous lobsters, really I can't exaggerate how big those things are in St. Martin. More barracuda, parrots and a few puffers.
Overall, I'm surprised at how nice the dives were. I wasn't expecting much, I guess, so that saved me some but "Dive #3" was just so awesome in its own right. I credit Jefferson for being around to point out the macro stuff (the tiny fish sticking their heads out of tiny shells on the wrecks, s____ fish? Incredible.) and he also kept a couple newer divers from just immediately scaring off those stingrays.
Dive Safaris was a great dive op, their Simpson Bay location afforded us easy parking and a quick walk from the trunk to the catamaran out back. There's no way I'd dive from Phillipsburg... it's a madhouse down there.
