Diving in The Out Islands
The phenomenal clear waters of The Bahamas Out Islands are a diver’s dream.
Scuba divers travel the world primarily to find three things: dramatic walls, lush coral reefs and exciting animal encounters. The Out Islands offer all this in warm extraordinary clear water (that’s perfect for learning to dive, too), and then adds the fascinating lure of blue holes and the thrill of diving into the past on historical shipwrecks.
Imagine flying over the edge of the Grand Canyon – not in a plane, but like Superman. That’s the feeling you get as a scuba diver when scuba diving the Bahamas Out Islands. One minute you’re floating above a plush coral reef surrounded by schools of brightly colored fish and then, suddenly, the bottom drops into the deep blue. You’re suspended over the abyss with a tingly feeling in your belly. The guide from one of the Out Islands’ many excellent Bahamas scuba diving operations signals for you to follow, and you descend along a vertical wall of coral festooned with bizarrely shaped sponges. Keep your eyes open, because out on the edge, you never know what might swim by – graceful eagle rays are common, and the sighting of a shark always adds excitement to a dive. Bimini, Andros and Conception Island (off Long Island) offer some of the bubble-blowing world’s most sought-after wall dives.
There’s nothing that matches a reef dive for combining relaxation, fascination and exhilaration all in one activity. The Out Island waters are thick with coral reefs up and down the chain that are alive with every imaginable ocean critter from the living jewels – angelfish and butterfly fish – to the charismatic food-chain toppers like grouper and barracuda, and down to the tiniest invertebrates that exhibit wondrous behaviors like the miniature crabs that live within flower-like anemones or the dandy-dressed daredevil shrimp that attract large fish to their cleaning stations and then casually pick morsels from between the predator’s teeth. For the ultimate in reef-diving excitement, don’t miss a chance to try night diving when you’ll see an entirely different group of critters and bevy of behaviors not visible during the day.
The newest rage among divers is seeking out close encounters with sharks, and diving in the Bahamas Out Islands is one of the top destinations for those looking for an exciting and safe experience. The Abacos’ Shark Wall and Shark Dive and Long Island’s Shark Reef are the prime spots to see the toothy predators up close.
Blue holes only form under very special circumstances in places where the land is a porous limestone. Fortunately for Out Island scuba divers, this includes all of the Bahamas. The king of blue hole diving destinations, however, is Andros, where you’ll find these entrancing entranceway's to underground rivers in the middle of forests, out amid rocky landscapes and even offshore where they appear as underwater caves. Your dive operator’s experienced guides will safely lead you to these legendary sites where you can peer into the lair of the lucsa (a mythical blue hole dwelling monster) or even see the holes “breath” as water flows in and out with the tides.
Seeing a sunken ship is every scuba diver’s daydream. In the Out Islands, you can literally dive into history on sites like Train Wreck and the San Jacinto both in the Abacos, and the Sapona off Bimini, which was once used to store whiskey for bootleggers and is now one of the world’s great shallow wreck sites for diving and snorkeling.
And Out Islands Bahamas diving doesn’t stop there. Swim-through caves in the Abacos completely filled with glistening schools of silversides, the rip-roaring drift dive called Current Cut at Eleuthera, the abyssal Tongue of the Ocean off Andros that fronts the world’s third-largest barrier reef, the pristine reefs of the Exuma Land and Seas Park: The Out Islands offers endless opportunities for underwater excitement.
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As of January 23, 2007 all U.S. citizens are required to carry valid U.S. passports when traveling to and from The Bahamas.
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