As well as our exciting shark dives that you can read about in our previous two posts about Grand Bahama, there are plenty of colourful reef dives, as well as some great wrecks to explore. We got to fit in three reef dives and two wreck dives on our underwater tour of the island. The reef systems here vary between patchy bommies, creating bursts of colour coming up from the sandy sea bed, and finger-shaped reef systems, with gullies between each finger. Plenty of hard and soft corals, anemones and sponges fill any space available and a variety of reef fish make this their home.
We dived Picasso’s Gallery, Reef Caribe, Theo’s Wreck and the Papa Doc wreck with Reef Oasis Dive Club, and also Plate Reef with UNEXSO. The reefs were teaming with life, both big and small, and we were treated to tiny Flamingo Tongue Snails, as well as Hawksbill Turtles and Caribbean Reef Sharks.
Theo’s wreck is a signature dive on Grand Bahama, and in fact was one of the first dives we did when working on Grand Bahama some 15 years previously. It lies at 30m on a sandy bottom and is a large wreck that you can swim through and around quite easily on a dive. Alas, we had an unusual ripping current on our dive on this trip, making photography nearly impossible, and in the end, it forced us to finish the dive early and head back to the boat. Even on our disrupted dive, we managed to enjoy a brief glimpse of dozens of Horse-Eyed Jacks swimming alongside us as we ascended. Papa Doc wreck is a more relaxed dive on a much smaller wreck. Here, we had plenty of time to explore, enjoy some close encounters with a curious shark and visit the reef close by, all in a single dive.
There are plenty of great dives in Grand Bahama, and we were very lucky to include the reefs, wrecks and shark dives in our itinerary. Before we moved on from Grand Bahama, we had a dry day before flying to fill. Find out what we got up to in our next post.
For more information about diving Grand Bahama:
Images & Text by Nick and Caroline Robertson-Brown: www.frogfishphotography.com
