With so many islands to choose from and a wide mix of marine life and underwater topography to explore, the Caribbean is a big draw for divers.
While diving in August, September and October can be disrupted by the Hurricane season, which officially runs from June to the end of November, some islands such as Aruba in the Dutch Antilles are outside the zone and offer year-round diving delights.
Best for beginners:
Like many Caribbean dive sites, the Cayman Islands have a variety of shallow sites, close to the shores, making it ideal for beginners. What really sets the Caymans apart from the pack, is the fantastic visibility, which often stretches to well over 50m.
Unless your clients crave the Americanised resorts of Grand Cayman, steer them to Little Cayman, a thirty minute prop-hop from her big brash sister. Little Cayman is a somnolent backwater, exuding barefoot Caribbean chic, ideal for your unreconstructed beach bum.
The Little Cayman Beach Resort, the largest on the island, had just 40 rooms and is right on the beach.
Built in traditional Caribbean style, the collection of two-storey wooden buildings, engulfed by lush tropical foliage, is a riot of salmon pinks, turquoises and blues. The sand is of the squeaky-clean variety, dazzling white with just a hint of pink.
The hotel has its own dive outfit and the dive-boats leave form the hotel’s quaint little jetty, an arduous 73 paces from my room.
All the dive sites are a short boat ride, usually no more than fifteen minutes.Barefoot Traveller offers a seven nights half-board accommodation at Little Cayman Beach Resort from £1,385 per person, including scheduled flights on British Airways and Cayman Airways and all transfers.
A Learn to Dive PADI Open Water Course is £250.
Best for luxury:
Good accessible diving and luxury don’t always go together in the Caribbean but on St Lucia you’re spoilt for choice. Most of the dive sites are close to shore, the diving is good, although not spectacular.
One of the very best resorts, Discovery at Marogot is located in a bay described by novelist James A Michener as “the most beautiful bay in the Caribbean.”
Hardly visible from the sea (the British fleet once hid there from the superior French fleet), the bay borders St Lucia’s famous marine park.
The original hotel was a bolthole for Hollywood celebs in the 50’s and the new low-impact, ecco-friendly hotel delivers much the same, with great diving on your doorstep.
Another superb hotel is the Anse Chasanet Resort, nestling in the shadow of the iconic twin Piton mountains.
The rooms are scattered all over the hillside of the 600 acre former French Colonial plantation, so just getting to your room will keep you fit.
There are only 49 rooms and the premium hillside rooms have picture perfect views of the Pitons. For guests who don’t like the hillside, there are 12 beachside rooms.
The reef starts 10 metres from the beach and one of St Lucia’s best reefs is a five minute boat ride away.
Virgin Holidays offers seven nights on an all-inclusive basis at the Anse Chastanet resort from £1,519, including scheduled flights from Gatwick or Manchester on Virgin Atlantic and transfers.
Best for wrecks:
Despite all the exotic movies like Into the Blue and The Deep about treasure hunting on sunken galleons, finding good wrecks in the Caribbean can prove to be something of a challenge. Not so in Aruba, part of the Dutch Antilles group of islands in the southern Caribbean.
Aruba is home to the largest wreck in the Caribbean the 122m Antilla wreck, a German freighter scuttled by the captain in the 2nd world war. It’s located a mere 500m offshore, lying in just 18m of water, which is great news for divers, as it gives nearly an hour’s ‘bottom time.’
There are many other wrecks off Aruba’s coastline, including the alleged scattered remains of The Californian, which achieved notoriety as being the only ship to receive distress calls from the Titanic, which it failed to respond to.
Barefoot Traveller offers tailor-made packages to Aruba. Seven nights bed and breakfast accommodation at The Mill Resort & Suites costs from £1,180pp, including flights and ten boat dives (including tanks and weights) in September.
Best for Pelagics:
With nutrient-rich waters Tobago, located in the southern Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela, has some of the best diving in the Caribbean. Migrating whale sharks, manta rays, Great Hammerheads, schooling jacks and barracudas can all be seen off Tobago’s Caribbean and Atlantic coasts.
Experienced divers will head straight for a rocky outcrop called ‘The Sisters,’ home to a population of Scalloped Hammerheads.
Tobago is also renowned for its excellent drift diving and is now home to a couple of wrecks, including the Maverick, an old 350ft ferry, sunk in 30m in 1997.
Regal Dive offers seven nights bed and breakfast accommodation at the Toucan Inn from £559, including flights and transfers.
A five-day dive package is £165
Best for Variety:
Such is the diversity of the diving in the Bahamas that it could qualify in its own right for any of the above categories.
There are over 700 island and 1,000 regularly dived sites offering pristine reefs, multitudes of exciting wrecks, spectacular walls, blue holes, fantastic caves and the chance to dive with sharks and dolphins.
The Gulf Stream brings large fish to the coastal waters and the sea life is rich and diverse, from sea-horses to Moray Eels.
Guests can choose between diving the challenging wrecks off the coast of San Salvador, cruising the Exumas’ pristine cays for pelagics and colourful reefs or visiting Inagua National Park, with its nesting flamingos and other exotic wildlife.
Adrenaline junkies might opt for a shark feeding dive off the coast of Nassau, with legendary dive resort Stuart’s Cove, who shoot most of Hollywood’s underwater sequences, including the Bond movies and Into the Blue.
Given the vast area of the Bahamas dive sites and the 24 hours no-fly dive rule, the best way to dive the Bahamas is by liveaboard. For those who prefer to be shore based there is a superb range of accommodation from luxury hotels to reasonably priced dive resorts to choose from.
Aquatours offers seven nights full board accommodation on Aquacat from £1,600 including flights and transfers and all diving.
