Carriacou Diving

Diving in Carriacou is an experience no visitor to this tiny island paradise can afford to miss. It would be like travelling hundreds of miles to Paris and missing the Eiffel Tower. Diving is practically synonymous with a holiday here.

The scenery beneath the waters around Carriacou is even more beautiful and spectacular than that on the island, and just as easy to enjoy. With most of the best diving sites around the whole island, diving in Carriacou is unique in that the sites are a short trip of no longer than 15 minutes from the beaches, so you don’t have to book the whole day for the diving but can combine it with other activities.

There are 20 prime diving sites off Carriacou and 30 off the coast of Grenada, and a small army of PADI instructors qualified to teach the necessary skills at all levels of proficiency, from professional scuba divers looking to explore new seascapes to complete beginners who don’t know one end of a snorkel from the other.

The depths at the diving sites range from 15 to over 100 feet, and in these legendary turquoise waters visibility can be startling, up to 150 feet on most days, though turbulence can sometimes reduce it to less.

The time of year for diving is largely immaterial. Air temperatures maintain a fairly steady 83 degrees, and the rain that lashes down in short, sporadic bursts between June and November hardly interrupts the sun or the fun.

Drift diving is the standard practice when you’re out on the boat with a group. The divers in the water are kept on course by guides operated by dive operators on the boat, using buoys. This is like an Ariadne’s Thread, ensuring that nobody drifts off into the labyrinth of coral, never to be heard from again!

The only hazard, if it can be called that, is the sometimes strong surface currents, but an inflatable tube with a whistle and strobe device is often supplied in the remote chance of problems developing and you get separated from the group.

As with the National Parks of Grenada and Carriacou on the islands themselves, preserving natural riches for posterity, so the offshore regions with their aquatic life and coral reefs have been designated as underwater marine parks to afford them the same protected status.

Park rangers keep an eye on things with regular boat patrols, and divers are warned not to interfere with the underwater features. So should you feel an overwhelming urge to snap off a piece of particularly lovely coral for the mantelpiece back home be warned – you may be prosecuted. Eyes on and hands strictly off is the order of the day when diving around these pristine waters!

For beginners, Millennium 2000 is probably the best site to get to grips with the art and science of scuba diving, with only gentle currents and easy navigation.
There are also numerous other diving sites that can be gainfully enjoyed by all divers regardless of expertise, though some have stronger currents than others. Sharkey’s Hideaway goes down 72 feet and has some of the most spectacular underwater scenery and aquatic life, from nurse sharks and chubs to seahorses and stingrays.
Don’t miss the diving experience of a lifetime in the reefs around beautiful Carriacou!

Tagged as: Diving, scuba