Blogs
14 beginner-friendly dive sites in the Bahamas

Whether you’re a seasoned diver or just getting your feet wet, the Bahamas offers a diverse array of dive sites to explore. From vibrant coral reefs to mysterious blue holes and thrilling shark encounters, this Caribbean archipelago has it all.
As a new scuba diver, you might be wondering what sets the Bahamas apart and why you should choose it as your next diving destination. The Bahamas offers not only beginner-friendly reef diving, but also the opportunity to meet some of the ocean’s most fascinating creatures, from graceful sea turtles to dolphins and stingrays. Read on for our pick of 14 beginner-friendly dive sites in the Bahamas.
Andros Island
Andros Barrier Reef: Start your Bahamian diving journey at the third-largest barrier reef in the world. This idyllic wonderland is characterized by shallow, calm waters, making it perfect for novice divers. Here, you can encounter a diverse array of marine life, from playful dolphins to Nassau grouper, marlins, sailfish, and plenty of colorful reef fish.
Blue Holes: Venture into the mesmerizing world of underwater sinkholes, such as the famous Blue Hole on Andros. With its crystal-clear waters, this site offers excellent visibility and a sense of mystery as you descend into its depths.
The Crater: Dive into an inland blue hole near Small Hope Island known as The Crater. This unique site was once the ocean floor and collapsed in on itself, revealing a captivating cave system. Here, you can witness sea turtles peacefully resting on the bottom, swim alongside graceful stingrays, and marvel at the walls adorned with vibrant corals.
Bimini
Bimini Road: Explore an underwater rock formation often compared to an ancient road. This extraordinary path of paving stones stretches along the seafloor for half a mile and is made up of large blocks, some of which are 12 feet (4 meters) across.
The origin of this structure is highly debated; some people believe it is manmade and might be the Road to Atlantis. Whether you believe that or not, the easy diving conditions and encounters with nurse sharks and stingrays make this site a fascinating dive for beginners. Dive depths are typically around 16 to 33 feet (5 to 10 meters), with water temperatures hovering around 75 – 85°F (24 – 29°C).
Cathedral: At the Cathedral dive site you can explore an ocean floor adorned with vibrant corals, creating a colorful and stunning underwater landscape.
Victory Reef: Descend to depths ranging from 30 to 79 feet (9 to 24 meters) and encounter green turtles, sharks, stingrays, and numerous reef fish at Victory Reef. The coral formations make this dive truly memorable.
Nassau
Shark Arena: If you’ve ever dreamed of coming face to face with sharks, Nassau’s Shark Arena is the place to do it. Experience shark feeding dives with trained professionals in a controlled environment, providing a safe opportunity to see various shark species up close. Dive depths typically range from 30 to 59 feet (9 to 18 meters).
Exuma Cays
The Exuma Cays offer a delightful mix of calm diving conditions and vibrant marine life.
Amberjack Reef: This shallow reef boasts colorful corals and thousands of fish, including angelfish, grouper, and barracuda. Multiple reef sharks also call this reef home. Explore this world of thriving corals in waters that range from 16 to 49 feet (5 to 15 meters) in depth.
Thunderball Grotto: Made famous by James Bond in the film Thunderball, this impressive underwater cave system is a must-visit. This jaw-dropping cave has light filtering in from holes in the ceiling, the sides, and through underwater holes. Numerous fish and vibrant corals are lit up by the sunlight, creating a mesmerizing underwater wonder for snorkelers and divers to enjoy.
And don’t forget the unique opportunity to swim with pigs at Pig Beach on Big Major Cay.
Abaco Islands
Pelican Cays Land and Sea Park: This protected area offers easy and calm diving conditions, making it perfect for beginners. Dive into a world teeming with marine life, including colorful corals and playful bottlenose dolphins. The average dive depths here range from 16 to 49 feet (5 to 15 meters), making it accessible for all skill levels.
Long Island
Dean’s Blue Hole: Plunge into the world’s deepest known saltwater blue hole, which reaches depths of over 656 feet (200 meters). It’s a very popular place for freediving, snorkeling, and scuba diving, and boasts water visibility reaching up to 98 feet (30 meters). This unique dive site is home to numerous reef fish, snappers, tarpons, sea turtles, seahorses, and rays.
Grand Bahama Island
Tiger Beach: If you love sharks, make sure you visit Tiger Beach. There you can encounter tiger sharks, lemon sharks, Caribbean reef sharks, and nurse sharks. Dive depths are typically between 20 and 49 feet (6 and 15 meters), and you simply kneel on the sand and watch the shark around you.
Cat Island
Cat Island is a paradise for divers, boasting dozens of dive sites along a reef-laced coast, far from the crowds of more popular destinations.
Columbus Point: Located at the very southeastern tip of Cat Island, this remote spot is best suited for advanced divers. However, if you’re eager to upskill, this site is worth the effort before your trip. Get a Deep Diver and Drift Diver certification under your belt and make sure you have some experience of diving in open waters.
Underwater pinnacles rise up from the ocean floor at Columbus Point, attracting large grouper and impressive sharks. Be prepared for strong currents and depths ranging from 59 to 131 feet (18 to 40 meters). Oceanic whitetip sharks are seasonal visitors and there are large game fish in the blue.
Eleuthera
Current Cut: If you have experienced divers in your group, Current Cut is a must. This dive site is thought to be one of the best drift dives in the world and offers a high-speed dive through a narrow channel with currents that can reach remarkable speeds. The water moves through this channel at up to 10 knots! Diving there is something to aspire to as you get move dives in your log book.
The Bahamas is a haven for scuba divers of all levels, including beginners. With its array of dive sites, there’s no better place to embark on your scuba diving journey. For more information about the Bahamas’ top dive spots, including dive sites reviews, check out this guide to diving in the Bahamas.
Kathryn Curzon, a shark conservationist and dive travel writer for SSI (Scuba Schools International), wrote this article.
Blogs
The healing powers of adaptive diving

PADI highlights how scuba diving helps enrich and heal lives
This International Disabilities Day (3rd December) PADI is reminding the world of the healing aspects that the ocean (or any body of water) can provide and how important it is for helping those with physical or mental challenges improve their wellbeing. From simply being within close proximity of it or diving beneath the salty surface for an underwater adventure, the ocean has the power to heal.
Regardless of your age, ability, or even limitations, the ocean can benefit us physically, emotionally and even spiritually. This is why PADI is on a mission to make those benefits accessible to all, with their Adaptive Techniques Diving Course in the hope that all of humanity can experience the full transformational power of the ocean.
While many are more familiar with traditional therapies, diving, mermaiding or freediving, has changed the lives of those around the world by connecting with the water and enabled them to conquer mental or physical perceived limitations.
The PADI Adaptive Techniques Specialty course is unique in that it’s a pro-level specialty designed to educate and empower PADI Professionals who wish to make scuba and freediver training more accessible.
Through classroom, confined water and open water workshops, dive professionals further cultivate their ability to be student-centered and prescriptive in approach when adapting techniques to meet diver needs. This hands-on training increases awareness of differing abilities and explores adaptive teaching techniques to apply when training divers with physical and mental challenges. PADI Pros learn to adapt course content to accommodate virtually any student diver.
PADI Members Helping those with Disabilities
This International Disabilities Day PADI highlights a shining example of a member who is championing teaching those with disabilities how to dive.
DiveHeart Empowers Individuals Worldwide Through Adaptive Scuba Programmes
DiveHeart, a PADI Dive Centre founded by PADI Scuba Instructor Jim Elliott in 2001, continues to revolutionise the world of adaptive scuba. Using zero gravity and adaptive scuba, DiveHeart aims to instil confidence, foster independence, and elevate self-esteem among individuals facing physical and cognitive challenges.
DiveHeart has established Adaptive Scuba programmes across North America and the Caribbean and reaches global destinations including Malaysia, Australia, China, Israel, and the UK. Through a combination of donations, grants, and strategic partnerships, DiveHeart ensures inclusivity by providing services to children, veterans, individuals with ALS, autism, and others, irrespective of their abilities or financial means.
A significant milestone in DiveHeart’s journey was the hosting of the inaugural Adaptive Scuba Symposium in 2009, held at the prestigious Our World Underwater event in the Midwest. This pioneering symposium attracted a diverse array of experts, including researchers, physicians, professors, therapists, adaptive dive professionals, and participants from across the globe. The event delved into the current state and the future of adaptive scuba, scuba therapy, the adaptive scuba market, the latest in adaptive scuba training techniques and the latest in scuba therapy research.
At the forefront of adaptive scuba initiatives, DiveHeart offers specialised training courses for certified scuba divers to become adaptive dive buddies. Every diver with a disability is paired with two dive buddies to form a cohesive dive team, ensuring a safe and empowering experience.
DiveHeart further hosts regular pool diving programmes catering to divers of all skill levels nationwide and organises immersive week-long adaptive diving trips to ocean locations like Cozumel, Roatán, and others at least three times annually.
Jim Elliot, the Founder and President of DiveHeart, a scuba diving instructor since 1997, recognised the transformative potential of adaptive diving for individuals with physical disabilities. Witnessing firsthand the holistic benefits encompassing physical fitness, emotional well-being, and mental health, Elliot embarked on a mission to make scuba diving accessible and empowering for all.
DiveHeart remains committed to breaking barriers and creating opportunities for individuals facing challenges, enabling them to explore the vast wonders of the underwater world while unlocking their true potential. For more information on DiveHeart and its impactful initiatives, visit www.diveheart.org
People Who Have Healed from Diving
For people with disabilities—whether they use a wheelchair, have a sight impairment or a neurological condition like cerebral palsy—scuba diving can be a fun activity that offers freedom and mobility in the weightlessness of the water. PADI’s Adaptive Support Diver specialty is a course designed to teach friends and family adaptive techniques for diving with a buddy who has a disability. Many students take the course to support a particular person in their life, and the instructor can work with them on the specific skills they require.
Ryan Chen: Diving to Heal the Mind, Body and Spirit
Ryan is a PADI Open Water Scuba Diver who was in a tragic accident as a teenager that left him paralysed. He found healing and clarity through scuba diving with his dive buddy Kent Yoshimura – so much so that during one scuba diving trip he and Kent ended up creating their current company Neuro Gum – a collection of functional gum and mints that help you get energised, calm or focused that has now led him to be named on Forbes 30 under 30.
“Scuba diving was one of the ways I learned that I can do anything, I just have to do it differently,” Chen says, “Scuba diving is one of those things that can change your whole framework. There’s no cooler feeling than taking that first breath underwater. All of a sudden you have this superpower, to breathe underwater and explore.”
Scuba diving continues to be his physical and mental therapy he continually seeks out amidst his busy entrepreneurial life. Now, with Neuro a national success and leading wellness brand in the United States, Chen has kept up his diving, and remained close to PADI as an organisation. Neuro even has a collaboration with PADI’s coral reef restoration project coming up—a special pack of Neuro, with proceeds going to PADI’s non-profit foundation.
Blogs
The life of a Great White Shark

The great white shark, known scientifically as Carcharodon carcharias, embodies the apex predator of the ocean. This majestic creature’s life is a testament to survival, adaptability, and the intricate balance of the marine ecosystem.
Born in the waters off coastal regions, a great white shark begins its life as a pup within the safety of nurseries, typically found in warm, shallow waters. The pups, measuring around 5 feet in length at birth, are immediately equipped with an innate instinct for survival.
As they grow, great whites embark on a journey, venturing into deeper and cooler waters, often covering vast distances across the ocean. These apex predators are perfectly adapted hunters, relying on their impressive senses to detect prey. Their acute sense of smell, aided by specialized sensory organs known as ampullae of Lorenzini, helps detect the faintest traces of blood in the water from several miles away.
Feeding primarily on seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals, great whites are known for their powerful jaws lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth. Their hunting techniques often involve stealth, utilizing their streamlined bodies to approach prey from below and striking with incredible speed and force.
Despite their fearsome reputation, great whites play a crucial role in maintaining the health of marine ecosystems. As top predators, they help regulate the population of prey species, preventing overpopulation that could disrupt the balance of the food chain.
Reproduction among great white sharks is a slow and careful process. Females reach sexual maturity between 12 and 18 years of age, while males mature earlier, around 9 to 10 years old. Mating occurs through complex courtship rituals, with females giving birth to a small number of live pups after a gestation period of about 12 to 18 months.
However, the life of a great white shark is not without challenges. Human activities, including overfishing, pollution, and habitat destruction, pose significant threats to their population. Additionally, despite their formidable presence, great whites are vulnerable and face dangers from entanglement in fishing gear and accidental bycatch.
Despite these challenges, great white sharks continue to inspire awe and fascination among scientists and nature enthusiasts. Their presence in the ocean serves as a reminder of the delicate balance and interconnectedness of marine life, emphasizing the need for conservation efforts to protect these magnificent creatures for future generations to admire and study.
Want to learn more about sharks? Visit The Shark Trust website: www.sharktrust.org
Photos: avalon.red
-
Blogs2 months ago
Discover Peace and Tranquillity in Egypt’s Eastern Desert and its Amazing Red Sea
-
News1 month ago
Emperor Echo liveaboard sustains “irreversible damage” in lightning storm at Fury Shoals
-
Blogs2 months ago
A Flying Visit to Nusa Penida, Bali
-
Blogs2 weeks ago
My week on Scuba Scene: simply the best Red Sea liveaboard experience
-
News2 months ago
2023 Ocean Art Underwater Photo Competition Announced
-
Marine Life & Conservation2 months ago
Book Review: The Lives of Octopuses and Their Relatives
-
Equipment2 months ago
Oceanic+ Now Has Freedive Mode on Apple Watch Ultra
-
News2 months ago
Miss Scuba UK on Bridging the Gender Gap in Commercial & Recreational Diving