Thunderball Grotto Bahamas

We had a busy day of motoring and anchoring but not going anywhere too far planned for Friday 29 March.  First up was to move from Big Majors Spot to the anchorage close to Thunderball Grotto, a distance of all of 1.5nm, so that we could swim in the cave (as featured in the James Bond film Thunderball) with hundreds of fish.

It was a blustery and fairly overcast day and, to be honest, the water didn’t look terribly inviting as we motored up the shallow channel past Staniel Cay towards the islet which houses the grotto.

Left: Thunderball Grotto is a cave at the northern (far) end of the islet on the left.  Right: Looking south just after entering the pool.  The motoryacht is moored at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club

Between the south end of Big Majors Spot and the northwest side of Staniel Cay there’s a large, sandy shallow area with 3 islets on the eastern side and a relatively deep pool (max 3m) in the centre; Thunderball Grotto is at the northern end of the chain of islets.  We could have reached the cave by dinghy from the anchorage off ‘pig beach’ but it would have been a 1nm or so ride in a fully laden dinghy and, with a brisk breeze blowing and plenty of cloud cover, the ride would have been wet, cold and slow, hence the decision to move BV closer and to anchor in the pool west of the islets.

Thunderball Grotto entrance with a plethora of small tripper
boats outside – this will be slack water then!
This picture was taken as we departed

The cave is accessible at all stages of the tide but due to the tidal flow through the area it is best to visit at slack water.  However, slack water rarely occurs at exactly high water or low water, it’s usually a little after – how far after we didn’t know.  We anchored in the pool at low water and, after a short faff getting everything together dinghied across to the cave entrance which we had identified by the simple expedient of watching where a couple of other dinghies were heading.  The cruising guide talks about dinghy mooring balls but there were none in evidence so we anchored off and jumped in……into a huge shoal of fish.  Even outside the cave there were loads of fish to see.

Inside the grotto looking out through the narrow
entrance we used (though the picture makes
it look narrower than it really is)

Despite it being low water, the was still flowing onto the Grand Bahamas Bank (in) quite fast so we needed to swim strongly against it to get to the cave’s entrance.  The advantage of arriving at around low water is that you don’t need to swim underwater to get into the cave.  Despite this, the entrance is narrow and can be a little tricky to negotiate; fins are a great help.

View into the roof of the second chamber

Once inside we found that the cave opens out into 2 main areas.  The first, next to the entrance we swam in through, has a lower ceiling but the water here was filled with huge numbers of colourful reef fish. The second chamber is much higher and larger and there are holes in the roof here through which, on a really nice day, the sunshine pours through, spectacularly illuminating the water below. Being a bit grey on the day that we visited, we didn’t get quite that effect but it was still impressive and there were absolutely enormous shoals of grunts hovering near the eastern (Exuma Sound side) entrance.  Wow! But not as colourful as the myriad fish in the smaller chamber.

Thunderball Grotto views.  There was a huge number of fish just inside the western entrance to the grotto, many of them a good size and very colourful. Bottom left: Queen angelfish and Sergeant majors.  Bottom right:   Queen angelfish, Sergeant majors and White grunts

Underwater in the second (larger) chamber.  Being larger the density of fish was much lower here but there was an enormous school of grunts (partially depicted bottom right) close to the western entrance to the grotto (always underwater, shown bottom centre)

Left: Sergeant majors (vertical stripes), White grunts (yellow tails and fins), Clown wrasse (horizontal stripes) and a Squirrelfish (red, on the right of the picture)

Whilst the size of the schools in the larger chamber was impressive, we all particularly enjoyed watching the swarms of bright colourful reef fish in the first chamber we had entered and spent a long time floating around, enjoying the spectacle.

Left: French angelfish. Right:  More Sergeant majors, a White grunt and (we think) some Blue chromis

Top: looking north as we left the pool where we anchored.  Behind the yachts is the southeast point of Big Majors Spot.  Centre left: Thunderball Grotto is at the northern end of the islet on the right.  Centre right: heading south towards the Staniel Cay Yacht Club on Staniel Cay after leaving the pool anchorage.  Bottom: Looking west into the pool anchorage.  Note the deep water channel (dark blue), the shallow bank around the anchorage (brownish) and the shallow water in the anchorage (turquoise)

Eventually, slack tide approached and suddenly we found lots more groups of people arriving to join us in the cave. It was time for us to leave to let them enjoy the experience, so we headed back to BV….

…. took a last look at the Thunderball Grotto dinghy anchorage (now busy with small tripper boats) ……

Leaving the anchorage close to Thunderball Grotto with a trawler-motoryacht anchored just outside one of the entrances. From this angle there looks to be (and there is) plenty of space, but when we arrived the yacht appeared almost to be blocking the entrance

…… and headed off toward Bitter Guana Cay for lunch and a spot of iguana watching.

Thunderball Grotto, Staniel Cay, Bahamas