Diving in Grand Turk

Saturday 26 January dawned bright and a little breezy, perfect for a day’s diving.  Anchored on the shelf behind the reef we were ideally placed for diving on Grand Turk’s world famous wall/drop-off and, as it happened, we were conveniently located for some of the most well-known dive areas.

Dive site 1 – The Anchor (named for the Admiralty pattern anchor close to the dive boat mooring buoy).  Top left: Nicky over the anchor in about 9m. Bottom left: The Green turtle that met us as we descended.  Right: the wall is covered in corals and teems with fish.  The top of the drop-off is at about 9m depth and we estimate the bottom of the wall is at about 50m, perhaps more.  Being PADI Open Water qualified our limit is 18m

We had decided to do our morning dive at ‘The Anchor’, a site named after the old Admiralty pattern anchor lying on the sand at the top of the wall, close to which the dive boat mooring is located.  And, wow, it’s an impressive dive site.  The water is incredibly clear and when we first entered the sea we both took one look down at the anchor and thought that it would make an ideal safety stop – which it would do if only it were located in about 5m rather than in nearly 10m! As we got our bearings a turtle swam past in a very stately fashion and then disappeared off over the edge of the wall. We followed, at slower pace.

Wow!  Wow!  And wow again!  Whilst the wall here isn’t one of those which just plunges to the abyssal plain, for us it’s still a very impressive drop-off.  And the number of corals and reef fish is incredible.  The pictures don’t really do it justice at all.

Barrel sponge

We swam out along the reef to the south at about 18m and then retraced our bubbles higher up the wall.

Queen angelfish

We saw clouds of fish including many that we haven’t seen before.  Our favourite of this dive had to be the beautifully coloured Queen angelfish all neon blues and violets and fluorescent greens and yellow.

Another huge shoal of Blue chromis

But we also saw hundreds, if not thousands of Blue chromis, bright blue clouds of the fish almost wherever we looked.

Garden eels in a large sandy area close to the anchor.  These funny little creatures look a bit like a thin covering of turtle grass……right up until they sink down into the sand when you get a bit too close.  When you move a safe distance away they pop their heads back up again

Reluctantly, after about 30mins at around 15m we ascended to the top of the wall and spent 5mins or so exploring around near the anchor before beginning our ascent to the surface ‘proper’. In a sandy clearing not far from the anchor we found a small field of Garden eels, creatures we haven’t seen for a long time.

Nicky above the anchor

Even though we had to do the 5m safety stop hovering around well above the anchor, rather than swimming around close to it as we had originally hoped (that’s the danger of looking through crystal clear water!) because of that crystal clear water we had a great view of the anchor and of the passing traffic of fish; the safety stop time just flew by.

Catamaran tour for cruise boat visitors with a short snorkelling stop at ‘The Library’, site of our second dive

We took a couple of hours’ break for a bite to eat and to change air tanks before heading back to the reef and ‘The Library’ a dive/snorkelling site popular with tripper boats.

Right: Bluestriped grunts (black tails) and striped Sergeant majors with Common sea fans, Brain coral, Corky sea fingers and Sea rods

As it turned out, Nicky’s sinuses decided to play up as we descended so, although we did get down to about 15m and worked our way along the reef for a short distance, she was mutch more comfortable at near snorkelling depths and, coincidentally, the best views were at 5m or so.

Sergeant major with Grooved brain coral (below the Sergeant major), Giant brain coral (middle foreground and middle mid-ground), Elliptical star coral (left of mid-ground Giant brain coral), Mustard hill coral (left of the Common sea fan) and 2 or 3 clumps of Green cactus coral (foreground below Common sea fan and left mid-ground)

We found it to be another fabulous site. We saw masses and masses of coral and huge shoals of all sorts of reef fish.  Just as in the morning, we saw here fish we had not seen before.

Top left: White grunt (I don’t know why it’s called that as it’s mostly blue and yellow!).  Bottom left: Blue tang.  Bottom right: schooling White grunt

Once again, the water was just so clear and because I took most of the pictures in relatively shallow water where there’s good light, the clarity of the water is more apparent compared to some of the pictures from the morning’s dive.

Top left: Blue parrotfish and a Bluestriped grunt.  Top right: Silver porgy.  Bottom: Schooling Bluestriped grunts with Grooved brain coral (centre), Stoplight parrotfish (left of brain coral) and Banded butterfly fish (right of brain coral)

Right: Pillar coral

Because we spent most of the dive at relatively shallow depths, we were able to stay down for much longer – getting an extra 15mins in the water compared to the morning’s dive.

Clouds of fish everywhere!  We couldn’t believe how many fish we saw

Even so, it was hard to tear ourselves away from the fabulous sights, even though we have been feasting our eyes the teeming reef for nearly an hour by the time we surfaced.  We both agree that, for the sheer variety and profusion of reef life, the 2 dives off Grand Turk are by far the best dives we have yet completed.

Back at BV we, sadly, returned to normality.  Cleaning, drying and stowing the dive kit takes a surprisingly long time and with that job in progress we needed to decide how best to go about checking out of the Turks and Caicos and work on our plan for the passage to Great Inagua.

Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Islands