Diving near Christiansted St Croix USVIs

On Wednesday 25 April we made our way over to Dive Experience at 0830am. When we had booked our dives the previous day we had been the only 2 people going out but in the morning the dive shop was full of people milling about. Just after we had booked our dives, 5 other people had done the same and, additionally, they had 2 chaps with their sons arrive that morning wanting to do a dive refresher course. The result was that the dive shop was rather busy getting gear ready and it took a bit longer than expected to get going.

We had specifically asked to dive on a sea wall and so after a 30-minute boat ride we picked up a mooring buoy at our first stop, Salt River Reef East Inner. It turned out to be less vertical than we had expected (the really vertical one is at the western end of the island) but it was a brilliant dive despite that.

A nocturnal nurse shark resting under a rocky ledge

As well as lots of corals we spotted a nurse shark sleeping under a rock…

Michelle spikes a lionfish

… and it quickly became apparent that lionfish were not welcome on the reef. The diver centre actually runs specific lionfish hunts and the divemasters always kill any lionfish that are seen because of the damage that they do to the reef ecosystem. Lionfish, are an invasive species from the South Pacific, Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and they are doing immense harm to the balance of small and juvenile fish on the Atlantic reefs. They have voracious appetites, no natural predators on the reef and a mature (1 year old) female can release a staggering 10,000-30,000 unfertilized eggs every 4 days. Currently, divers are the main defence against them but you have to be careful because lionfish are armed with 18 venomous spines that easily penetrate human skin delivering a very painful sting. We did our bit by pointing out any we saw so that they could be spiked by Michelle, our divemaster.

Later on in the same dive we were lucky enough to see a stingray…

… as well as lots of large corals and reef fish.

Our second dive was in Turquoise Bay, a much flatter area than the reef wall we had dived on earlier. Even so, we still found plenty of undulations and on one of these, Turtle Ridge, we saw half a dozen or so Green Turtles resting on the seabed.

With 7 divers in our group there were lots of eyes to spot interesting things. We saw another nurse shark snoozing under a rock and several brightly coloured fish. At the 25-metre diving depth most of the red colour is washed out and everything looks blue and grey, however, most of the other divers were carrying a flashlight and we learned that was good gadget to reveal the wonderful colours. For example, the red fins on the fish pictured above only stood out as red when they were illuminated. Looks like a couple of underwater flashlights are going to go onto the wishlist.

Nicky watching a circling reef shark to check that it stays at a safe distance

Just on the periphery of the underwater visibility we saw a couple of reef sharks. As the dive progressed they became braver and came much closer which was a little disconcerting. The reason for their interest became very apparent a few moments later.

Sam spears another lionfish

Sam, our divemaster for the dive, tried to spear a lionfish that had hidden in a deep crevice. Unfortunately, he didn’t get it on his speargun, so it may well have survived his attack, but the sharks immediately sensed the blood in the water. From a lazy patrolling stance, one rapidly became quite agitated and when Sam switched targets to another lionfish out in the open, the moment the killing blow was struck both sharks became very active. As soon as the dead fish was off the spear the sharks rapidly moved in, each trying to eat the body and, as you can see from the photographs, it happened right in front of us!

Sharks are incredibly sensitive to blood in the water and the fight/flight/fear hormones and electromagnetic impulses that other animals produce but it seems likely that there is also an element of their learning that the divers here kill lionfish which can make an easy snack for them. Seeing the sharks so close up to us was definitely an unexpected highlight of the dive. Michelle told us later that you have to be very quick in getting the dead lionfish off your spear or risk the sharks coming in and taking off both the dead lionfish and the spear.

Both dives were great experiences and we learnt a lot, particularly as we were, for the first time, in a large group with much less detailed supervision from the divemaster. A difference in opinion on how long we should stay at the 5-metre safety stop and the failure of Nicky’s depth gauge early on in the dive, led us both to agree that we should get dive computers to monitor exactly what depths we had been to and to tell us the exact safety and, if necessary, decompression stop times that we would need at the end of a dive.

Also, having really enjoyed these dives, and wanting to do a lot more, we decided that ideally we should start collecting our own diving gear; the only problem is finding the space in BV to store it.

Christiansted, St Croix, USVIs