Eons ago during the last Ice Age, an ancient waterfall cut a massive gorge through the very foundations of the island of Roatan. Millennia later, the ten-storey canyon at Spooky Channel rests just under the ocean surface, inviting Advanced Open Water Divers to shine their torches into this monolithic marvel.

You begin the dive in murky green shallows of the Sandy Bay lagoon. The eerie visibility for which this site earns its “spooky” status will gradually engulf you as you follow the rocky bottom deeper into the grotto. You’ll feel almost overwhelmed as the channel walls slowly rise and close in from both sides. At 12m/40ft, you’ll plunge through a large dark hole leading straight down.*

The sun is quickly reduced to a few cascading godrays as the channel ceiling closes together stories above. At the surface, a tiny crack in the reef crest balloons outward to form the main chamber, a 29m/95ft deep cathedral of green sea stars, scurrying lobsters, and grotesque rock formations. While this part of the channel is not terribly dense with fish life, sliver-shaped schools of houndfish— smaller relatives of the barrucuda— often congregate in the shadows.

As you drift out of the cathedral towards the mouth of the channel, the visibility quickly clears to the Roatan’s typical pristine conditions. Parrotfish, groupers, and angelfish pluck algae from the rubble. During the summer months the algae growth in this section thrives on the warmer stagnant water trapped in the channel, transforming the floor into a verdant carpet.

After about 20 minutes, you will reach the mouth of the channel. Most divers pass through the large vertical mouth and onto the coral reef. If you feel confident in small spaces, you can find a smaller swimthru to the right to dramatically exits through tiny blue hole onto the wall. Watch your buoyancy when exiting the channel: the wall at Spooky Channel is deep— over 60m/200ft.

The coral reef wall is populated by large schools of bright blue creole wrasse and very large yellowfin groupers. The groupers have are particularly well-adjusted to diver presence, swimming within a few feet of the group. If you are carrying a spear, you can expect to have several of these fish as hunting partners, eagerly awaiting your next lionfish slay.

Alternatively, you can finish the dive with a series of swimthrus near the back of the channel. About halfway back in the channel on the right, you will find a pair of columns at 14m/50ft. Follow the vertical slope up to 10m/30ft to find a series of easy swimthrus, the last of which shoots you out under the mooring line at a perfect safety stop depth of 5m/15ft.

Aquatic Life: black groupers, yellowfin groupers, barracudas, lobsters, king crabs, houndfish, oceanic triggerfish, various sea stars, toadfish

Don’t Miss… looking under the rocks for a toadfish. Though you will probably spend much of your dive swimming on your back and staring up at the channel, it pays to look down for these odd-shaped and very vocal bottom-dwellers.

Lionfish are an invasive species from the Indo-Pacific that have rapidly spread across the Caribbean. Without a natural predator, they are quickly devouring the native reef fish (especially juveniles) and decimating the natural order.

Lionfish are evil.

In response, the Roatan Marine Park has endorsed the hunting of lionfish as an attempt to curtail overpopulation. Hawaiian slings are available for purchase at the Roatan Marine Park Office after certified Divemasters and Instructors have completed a basic lionfish safety course. With a little practice and good buoyancy control, it’s easy to stab a hefty load of lionfish in a single dive.

So far, the efforts to eliminate the invaders has yielded impressive results: over 1700 lionfish were killed in the first Lionfish Derby hosted by the Roatan Marine Park. The second Lionfish Derby is currently underway; you can find more information at: http://www.roatanmarinepark.com/news/lionfish-derby/.

The reef fish have definitely adapted to the presence of lionfish hunters. Groupers, snappers, and moray eels frequently tail divers wielding slings, waiting for their chance to scarf down a fresh kill.

Also, it’s worth nothing that…

Lionfish taste delicious!

Pictured: Dinner

Their meat is a wonderful cross between grouper and snapper. I had it as a ceviche and it was amazing. I have heard similar reports from it being grilled or fried.

All the venom is contained in the lionfish spines. Therefore, it is advisable to remove the spines as quickly as possible (preferably immediately upon being speared) to reduce the risk of accidentally impaling yourself.

If you do get pricked by a lionfish, well, I can’t sugarcoat it for you…… it will freakin’ hurt. I saw a tiny lionfish cripple a 240lbs man with hours of intense pain. The best treatment is to apply a hot water compress (40-50C/104-122F) through a soaked rag over the puncture wounds, which attempts to draw the toxin towards the site of the injury. Spines should be removed with tweezers only. Also, rum helps pass the time until the pain subsides.

It’s time to break out your underwater cameras: the Roatan Marine Park is holding its Third Annual Marine Photography Contest!

Winning images will be printed in the 2011 Roatan Marine Park Calendar in order to showcase the natural beauty of Roatan’s coral reefs and highlight threats to their future survival.

Entries accepted for six categories:

• macro
• reef inhabitants
• black and white
• divers
• reefs at risk
• invertebrates

Deadline for submission:
31 July 2010

Details:

• All images must be from Roatan
• Images should be in .jpg format. Please include your full name, entry category, where image was taken, and a title
• Photos may be under or above water, but must maintain a marine context
• 1st and 2nd place in each category will be featured in the calendar with small images for runners-up
• Submission of images constitutes your permission for the Roatan Marine Park (RMP) to use these images free of charge for the 2011 RMP Calendar and other RMP publications. All images will be credited to their owners when used.

For more details of the competition, visit www.roatanmarinepark.com.

Email images to: info@roatanmarinepark.net

Lionfish, the beautiful and venomous fish from the South Pacific, have appeared on Roatan. This invasive species has spread at unprecedented rates across the Caribbean and Eastern Atlantic over the last few years.

The Roatan Marine Park is asking for everyone’s help in reporting, capturing, and killing lionfish around Roatan. If you have seen a lionfish on one of Roatan’s dive sites, please submit a lionfish report directly to the Roatan Marine Park.

Below is a letter sent by PADI Master Instructor and marine biologist Marc Cruciani regarding the grave threat posed by invading lionfish:

Hello Everyone,

I heard that the first lionfish was sighted on the north side of the island. They are beautiful fish, and make stunning photographic models, and of course everyone wants to see one. As an invasive species and voracious predator, they also represent the one of the biggest environmental threats to the reef system. I have extensive experience with these fish, both as an aquarist and a diver, and would like to share some of this with you, and impress upon you the importance of dealing with this threat immediately.

I was an instructor in North Carolina for two years. Lionfish were known to be around, and had been for a couple of years. At the beginning of my first year, they were rarely seen, and only on the further offshore wrecks. I was as eager as anyone to see my first lionfish. By the end of the second year, I was seeing them on every dive, at every site, usually in multilple numbers. Some wrecks had populations of 30 or more, and aquarists were flocking to the coast to aquire specimens. By the time NOAA finally got into the act, it was obvious that they presented a major problem.

NOAA brought a large research vessel and a team of scientists to determine the scale of the problem. Their stated goal was to dive twice a day for a week, in the hopes of collecting about 30 fish for DNA analysis. Local divers laughed at this, we already knew how widespread the problem was. In the first two days of diving, over 80 were caught.

They are now found as far north as Rhode Island in the summer months, and have spread as far south as Nicaragua from their original starting point in Florida, wreaking havoc on local fish populations. In parts of the Bahamas, they are the predominant predator on many reefs.

Lionfish are related to scorpion fish, and eat just about anything, from juvenile groupers to cardinal fish to crustaceans. According to the lates issue of Alert Diver, they eat on average .3 ounces a day. Larger fish, up to 18 inches, can eat much more. They tend to eat smaller fish, but will eat anything they can swallow. They hunt like frog fish, and like frog fish, the mouth is the largest part, and can eat prey larger than themselves.

They have no natural predators in the Caribbean. The only fish that do eat them are some sharks and possibly the largest of groupers, both of which are in short supply on Roatan. In any case, natural predation has failed to contain them anywhere in this hemisphere.

When spawning, lionfish can produce up to 30,000 eggs, and can grow 7 inches a year, reaching sexual maturity in just a year or two. In their home environments, they spawn twice a year. For reasons yet unknown, in the caribbean they seem to spawn continuously year round. DNA analysis by NOAA indicate that Atlantic and Caribbean populations are all very closely related, coming from the same source. Considering that they were first documented in Florida in in the mid 1990′s, their range is astonishing both in scope and the short time required.

They are very hardy fish, tolerant of a wide range of water conditions, and notoriously hard to kill. They can go for months
without eating, and even the foulest of fishtanks dont seem to concern them, and are adept at hiding in small crevices. I learned this while trying to dispose of an aquarium specimen without getting stung. Lionfish stings are similar to those of scorpionfish, but much worse. Larger specimens of some species can kill a human being.

Efforts at controlling them have had mixed results at best. Once established, they are impossible to get rid of. The best bet is to keep the populations in check after the first sighting. All lionfish must be removed as soon as sighted. The prevailing strategy is to have a team of trained divers who can respond to sighting.

Under no circumstances should untrained divers be allowed to try, due to the dangers involved in handling these fish, and the skill needed to find and hunt them. The best way to hunt them is to use hand nets for smaller individuals, and pole spears or hawaiian slings for larger ones. Extreme caution must be used, as even a dead fish will still have poisonous dorsal spines.

Lionfish tend to be very territorial, once they find a good hunting ground, they are likely to stay. They also move quite slowly (except for the actually swallowing of prey, which is faster than the eye can see). They prefer to hunt at dusk and dawn, and are easiest to find at these times. The rest of the time they sit on the bottom or hide in crevices, and despite their
very colorful markings, are suprisingly difficult to spot. On the plus side, they do make good eating, similar to grouper.

All dive shops should encourage customers to report sightings so that the fish can be culled, the faster the better. This will require coordination and efforts from all the dive operations and the marine park to have any kind of impact. REEF can help with training and workshops. The man to talk to is Lad Atkins. Paula Whitfield was the original NOAA project head in North Carolina.

Some contacts for more information and resources are listed below. If there is anything else I can do to help in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact me. This is a serious problem and must be dealt with. Please distribute this letter to any interested parties and dive shops who have not received it.

Marc Cruciani
MI 183782
scubadiver101@hotmail.com

I’ve been developing the new website for the Roatan Marine Park (coming soon to http://www.roatanmarinepark.com), and a big part of the site is the interactive map of all the dive sites around Roatan.

Explore the dive sites around Roatan! Powered by Google maps and TIREngine, you can zoom in on beautiful satellite imagery of the dive sites surrounding Roatan’s incredible coral reef system. Click on any site to learn more information, or use the drop-down box above the pull up a full dive site description.

Have you seen some lionfish? Know of a damaged or missing dive site mooring? The map is integrated with the Roatan Marine Park’s online reporting system. Simply fill out a report form and your information will be submitted to the Marine Park for review.

Well this is pretty crazy…

The thought floats to the surface of my consciousness as my bubbles cascade against the gnarled ceiling just inches above my head, slipping through invisible porous slivers in the ironshore and cascading through a impossibly interwoven stream of eons-old coral fossils to escape, unnoticed, on the surface twenty feet above my head.

Twenty vertical feet, I remind myself.

I am wedged forty feet inside a tiny fissure in the fore reef at Hole in the Wall dive site near West End, Roatan, Honduras. An ominous hallway of unexplored darkness looms before me, beckoning me to shed my dive light deeper into the cave. The last inklings of Caribbean sunlight illuminate my hands as I loop my line around an outcropping on the prickly cave wall—in the event that silt from the cave floor obscures my sight, this tie-off may be all that helps me escape from a subterranean drowning.

I draw a slow circle around the next chamber in the cave, memorizing the contours of the craggy walls. I inspect the intermittent puffs of silt tumbling as my bubbles strike the ceiling. I extend a finger into the cave floor. Slime. The organic ooze of congealed decomposition. A chamber of things long deceased. This chamber sees very little tidal movement. Visibility could be an issue on the way out.

Pretty damn crazy.

The tie-off is secure. My elbows push against the walls, gently propelling my forward in the room. I sweep the light to the right. The floor slopes slightly into an impenetrable taper in the wall. Hovering motionless as to not perturb the glob of decay on the floor, I slowly sweep my light across the room.

What is that?

Swollen, slippery, and prickly, a fully exposed Deer Cowery inches along the rocky edifice. A flash of fluorescent red. A copper lobster retreats tail-first into a crevice, startled by the sudden intrusion of illumination in its impenetrable abode. Eyes glow in the darkness.

To the left, the cave slopes slightly upward and into another room. I pull my fins behind me head, give a subtle flick of the ankle, and glide forward. My line pulls taught. Eighty-five feet inside. It’s the end of the line for both my reel and the cave, as my light discloses no further penetrable passageways. The silt is bad in here. Time to turn.

And what is THAT?!

It’s motionless. Hovering, just inches from my light, is an alien. No, wait, it’s a fish. But what the hell is it?! Never in my four-plus years of scuba diving on Roatan have I seen this creature! It doesn’t react to the light. It’s a four-inch-long obsidian rippling tail with an obscenely upturned mouth.

Wait, is that another? And another! Holy crap!

I swing my light around the room, revealing at least twenty Black Brotulas lingering along the cave walls, wiggling like tadpoles from Mars. And then they disappear.

The silt wells up in front of my light, instantaneously reducing my visibility to nil. My light penetrates only inches into the globs of aquatic goo. My fingers lock around my line—my lifeline— and feel the fibers guiding me to safety. I remember my days of Divemaster training frigid murk of a North Carolina rock quarry.

I’ve been here before.

I inch forward, relying on the pressure of the line and my memory of the cave to lead the way. My right hand traces the wall. The light penetrates a little further. This must be the entrance the room. My left hand reaches out.

And then the wall moves. A pair of antennas rake my mask.

Damn lobsters.

I wiggle through the entrance on my elbows. This room is silted too. It’s shadow diving at it’s finest—analyzing the indistinguishable smear of soil and light to discern shapes, walls, ceilings, direction, and ultimately the way out. The reel turns one click at a time in my hand. Regulate the breathing. Focus. One click at a time.

And there’s the light. The cloud of silt dissipates. A quick loop of the reel unhooks my last tie off. Hand spinning quickly, I reel my way toward the cave mouth, undoing the tie-offs from earlier.

And there she is: that blue, that endless blue, the Caribbean blue that sears my soul with my love of life, living, and thankfully staying alive.

And here I am: a hovering cloud of cave dust, metal, neoprene, and smiles.

I love my life.

My heartbeat—the only sound I can hear—marks the time. My lungs are now less than a third the volume they were twenty seconds ago. Abdominal muscles clenched, I restrain the spasms of my diaphragm, willing myself to ignore the steady toxic accumulation of carbon dioxide in my body. Mere minutes from drowning, I am relaxed.

The crack in which I am suspended is visible from the surface. Minutes earlier, as I floated on the surface deliberately slowing my breathing in anticipation of the dive, I studied the contour of this particularly severe crack in the reef, noting its abyssal blue hue atypical of most sand chutes. There was something striking about this crack… something promising, exhilarating. It’s hard to intentionally lower your heart rate when your adrenaline is firing. At some point, you just have to commit.

And committed I am.

I am suspended underneath the wall. At sixty feet, the surroundings of this deep crack have buckled away. Phantasmagoric sponges speckle the underside. Fluorescent wire coral spiral into the dark oblivion below. Even with over 30m/100ft of visibility, there is no bottom in sight.

This is no sand chute. It’s a veritable box canyon in a sliver no wider than the cracks at Mary’s Place. At what I can only estimate to be approximately 36m/120ft deep, the chute tapers back with the concavity of the wall into a small cave. Looking up at the sunlight shimmering over the silhouetted overhanging reef, my last thought before vacating my position is “Next time, we bring tanks.”

Streamlined, I give a solitary dolphin kick to initiate the ascent. I angle back through the underside of the box canyon. Coral blurs by on three sides of my body. My snorkel is bends back from the resistance of the water, slightly jostling my mask.

An eye. Big, cold, and staring. Silver scales the size of quarters. The sharply upturned mouth. Five feet of fish. Could it be?

Holding my breath fifty feet underwater, I am face-to-face with the first tarpon I’ve seen in the wild on Roatan. The colossal fish hovers in the shadows of the box canyon. It retreats, but only slightly, as I ascend upon it. I pause, ignoring the doldrums of my heartbeat and the protests of my lungs, to stare upon this magnificent creature. And to be stared upon. Here we are, two fishes, eye-to-eye, exchanging a peaceful, passing nod.

Time to go. Just stay conscious. Focus on the support divers. Focus on the surface. Steady, easy, in control. Just stay conscious. Just stay conscious.

My head breaks the surface. Sunlight and air. A refreshing breath. I lay on my back smiling, arms raised, and give a triumphant shout:

“I love my life!”

As a PADI Instructor, there’s a lot of dive courses I love teaching. There’s nothing like seeing a student take their first breaths underwater during the Open Water Course, or watching divers make the crucial improvements in self-awareness in the PADI Rescue Course.

However, one course always seems to get glossed over in the PADI system: the Emergency First Response course. It’s sad, too, because in my honest opinion this is the single most important course anyone can take.

The day-to-day applications of Emergency First Response course extend far beyond scuba diving. In just the last year, I have:

• Dealt with the shocking discovery of a freshly-murdered taxi driver’s corpse, during which I was faced with barrier use, lifeline assessment, and the bizarre challenge of convincing over forty PADI professionals to respond without causing chaos.
• Managed a screaming tourist with a shattered leg following a motorcycle accident, during which I had to split the victim’s leg whilst coaxing him out of shock.
• Freed a terrified child trapped under a collapsed motorbike, during which I had to pull the bike off the child, treat her leg for sprains, and assist a distressed mother in getting the girl to the hospital.
• Plucked an unconscious friend from a swimming pool and rolled him into the recovery position, thankfully after which he regained his breathing and recovered.
• Treat a suspected decompression illness victim using emergency oxygen.

The EFR course is so short, so simple, and so invaluable that I personally believe that everyone, diver or not, should sign up. Emergencies are never convenient. Thankfully, they are rare. However, in the unlikely but unfortunate event that they do occur, being trained to quick and adequately respond is, without a doubt, indispensable. After all, the difference between knowing and not is, quite literally, life or death.

My advice: regardless of where you are relative to scuba diving, please, please, take a course in Emergency First Response— trust me, someone else’s life depends on it.

Time is why we watch our bottom timers closely, diving within limits to avoid the unfortunate side-effects of defying evolution.

Time is why we purchase computers, tracking our nitrogen exposure against those ever-ticking no-decompression limits.

Time is why we invest in nitrox-capable tank compressors, why we spend hours learning enriched air dive planning, why we take the additional trouble to analyze our fills: for those precious extra minutes of hovering, blissfully, alongside a massive wreck ten stories beneath the waves.

Time is why we will hang on a decompression line in the open blue for far more minutes than we just spent swimming alongside the wreck of the Josie J at 165ft.

Time is why we plan year-long to save, enduring the long and tedious hours behind the office desk, all for that crucial time of year when we can rediscover the ultimate underwater escape.

Time is why we come from all around the globe, putting aside careers, studies, and myriad pasts for the all-too-few weeks of living the life of a PADI scuba diving professional in the Caribbean.

There is never enough time.

2008 came to a solid conclusion for the Coconut Tree crew. Two full weeks of running eight dives per day plus night dives. Dozens of new divers certified. A massive Christmas feast. Laughs. Smiles. A family away from home.

And what a year it’s been. Annual highlights included:

• Over 800 PADI certifications issued.
• Over 2600 customers submerged.
• Our first PADI Open Water Scuba Instructors graduated from the Instructor Development Courses held under PADI Course Director Will Welbourn.
• Over 60 shiny new scuba tanks added to our stock.
• The return of “the floating classroom” Bottom Time after months of repair in La Ceiba (including the insane six-hour crossing back to Roatan).
• Over 10,000 beers enjoyed during our famous Beer-O-Clocks.
• The hiring of the first Coconut Tree Instructors to have completed their entire training in-shop.
• The largest class of PADI Divemaster graduates in shop history.
• Our insane six-year-old birthday party (don’t ask me for memories, for mine are fuzzy).

It hasn’t always been an easy year. The Cult of Coconut has had to endure some extremely difficult challenges throughout the year, but we have grown stronger and more determined than ever to be Roatan’s #1 PADI Training Center for another consecutive year. If you’re looking for an awesome place to discover scuba diving, aiming to expand on your diving experiences with more advanced drops, or aspiring to work as a professional in the diving industry, there’s no better place to learn than Coconut Tree Divers.

Thanks for the great time. Bring on 2009!

Since then, I’ve had the fortune of diving around the Roatan’s south side near Dixon Cove, Fantasy Island/CocoView, and Oakridge. In my 1200+ dives on this island, I thought I had seen everything. I was wrong. Roatan’s south side has a completely different charm than the West End’s north shores: sheer walls, stunning sponges, and minuscule macro life on the south replace the serene sandy shallows, mountainous coral mounds, and swarming schools of fish to the north.

Consequently, I felt that giving an article the title of “Roatan’s Best Dive Sites” was a bit premature. I have a helluva lot of experience diving this island, but I’m just starting to discover the beauty of the island’s more far-flung sites. Therefore, I’ve decided to limit my “expert opinion” to the sites that I dive on a routine basis: West End and the surrounding areas in the Roatan Marine Park.

West End’s Top Ten Dive Sites

#10. Melissa’s Reef

The stretch of reef from Gibson Bight to Green Outhouse makes for quite a nice dive, especially when the current is running over Overheat Reef. Melissa’s Reef gets my vote for its central location on this stretch and its notable deep sections, including two large sponge-covered protrusions at 27/90ft and 21m/70ft, respectively. With a bit of a north-bound current, this wall is perfect for spotted groupers and eagle rays during multilevel drifts.

#9. Black Rock

Do this one first thing in the morning! The sun-drenched soft corals cast a surreal glow over the reef during the early hours. Nitrox greatly improves this dive as you can spend more time playing with the garden eels that populate the sandy patches at 33m/110ft. If you have at least 24m/80ft visibility (quite common in this area), level off at about 33m/110ft in the blue where the sandy slope extends off the wall. When you spot the trail of rebar leading into the abyss, peer down to spot the eerie silhouette of the Josie J , a natural shipwreck that starts at 55m/180ft.

#8. Canyon Reef

Best with a small group, this dive is a must for the swimthru lover. Twisting and turning through the many cracks that extend from the ironshore, you can easily spend a good 20-25 minutes wedged between two canyon walls. Watch you computer and profile carefully: though shallow (18m/60ft), the swimthrus expose you to a pronounced sawtooth profile, so take care that your exploration doesn’t get you bent.

#7. Dixie’s Place

What a wall! Visibility is typically great around the Half Moon Bay Wall area, and nowhere is it more apparent than Dixie’s Place. The massive gorgonian-covered bulges that protrude from the sandy shallows plummit at a breaktaking angle to depts of 50m/165ft. Immediately following the second bulge, a tight swimthru at 21m/70ft forms the perfect transition from deep to shallow.

#6. Tabyana’s

All the fish life of the shallow reef, all the huge formations of the deep. The first wall bottoms out shallow (24m/80ft) and extends in a stingray-inhabited sandy slope to the second wall at 33m/110ft. Several long-running coral fingers divide the sand patch, peppering the place with barrel sponges, barracudas, and nassau groupers. An excellent nitrox dive.

#5. Bear’s Den

While the forereef itself is a bit unmemorable, there’s no forgetting a foray in the Bear’s Den cave. Inside the  tiny, foreboding entrance is a three-chambered, two-storey, naturally-lit cave packed with silversides, glassy sweepers, and lobster. Hovering in the back chamber, illuminated only by a sliver of light dancing through cracks in the ceiling, you can’t help but feel peacefully secluded from the rest of the world.

#4. El Aguila Wreck

Another fantastic Nitrox dive at a depth of 33m/110ft, the El Aguila wreck features plenty of clean, illuminated swimthrus and penetration opportunities. You will come face-to-face with some fat black groupers, buck-toothed blue parrotfish, and grinning moray eels while swimming laps around one of the wreck’s three sections. The wreck is just starting to get some quality sponge encrustation even as storms continue to rearrange her midsection.

#3. Spooky Channel

If there’s one dive that has an OMG moment, it’s Spooky Channel. Starting in the murky green channel waters, you suddenly plunge through a black, seemingly bottomless hole and emerge into a massive 29m/95ft cathedral-like canyon. While relatively devoid of fishlife itself, the alien topography of the channel is more than enough to keep you enchanted– just don’t forget to look up! Huge groupers and “Barracuda Bob” wait for you at the channel mouth.

#2. Hole in the Wall

I describe this site as a “rollercoaster ride” to my customers. Based on the grins I see coming out of the water after the dive, they agree. Start with a 40m/130ft descent through the eponymous Hole, hover over the Second Hole at 55m/180ft, then charge up the narrow sand chute to the shallows. Explore the mouth of a huge cave at 10m/30ft, then spin through tunnel after tunnel in the Honeycomb Swimthrus. If you don’t emerge dizzy, wet, and satisfied, then you probably haven’t done this site correctly.

#1. Texas

It’s all about the fish. Anything and everything can and will show up on this site as prevailing currents from both the north and south whirl together into a rocketing drift dive off the end of the of island. In the right conditions, you’ll be dodging enormous barrel sponges whilst careening through enormous and varied schools of fish. I personally recommend doing this dive beginning at Pablo’s Place so you have enough real estate to see as much of the site as you can before being swept into the blue. Absolutely do this one on Nitrox!!!

Honorable Mentions: Pillar Coral, Grape Escape, Blue Channel, Turtle Crossing Deep, Lighthouse Reef