October 2010    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 25, No. 10   What's this?

Why You Need Undercurrent

we really give you the truth about “undiscovered” dive sites: Florida, Borneo, Grand Cayman …

from the October, 2010 issue of Undercurrent  

Subscriber Content Preview
Only active subscribers can view the whole article

From the first day of publishing Undercurrent, my goal has been to provide accurate and honest information about diving and dive destinations. There was too much foolishness in the print publications, with articles like the best 10 undiscovered Caribbean dive destinations or the five best dive destinations in the world, inevitably chosen because advertisers had ponied up. Well, it’s still going on. Recently the website WideWorldMag.com picked the 10 “best dive sites on the planet that you didn’t know about.” Most every destination listed we have written about endlessly, as have our readers. Ari Atoll in the Maldives, the Galapagos Islands, Saba, the Similan Islands in Thailand, Curacao and the Orkney Islands’ Scapa Flow are six of the top ten sites “you didn’t know about.” Balderdash.

The others have some merit - - drysuit liveaboard diving in Spitsbergen, Norway; Farne Islands in the U.K.; Pemba Island, Tanzania (not everyone raves about the diving); and liveaboard diving in the Red Sea from Port Sudan. So rather having you rely on sources more interested in hype than truth, let us tell you about a few destinations to consider . . . and some maybe not to consider.

Jupiter Dive Center, Florida. This dive shop north of Palm Beach gets continuing good reviews from Undercurrent readers. The Gulf Stream runs a mile off shore, making dives here far more fishy than most other spots in the Caribbean/Atlantic region. Brent Barnes (Edmond, OK) writes that Jupiter’s boats are “equipped with all safety equipment, and excellent dive briefs were given. With 18 divers on Saturday, the boat was crowded. All diving is done as drift dives, and the captain is excellent at following the divers. In August and September, the goliath groupers congregate. In our three dives on Sunday in mid-August, we counted 57 goliath grouper! Many were enormous. This is the same area where lemon sharks congregate for mating in the late winter/early spring. We saw several reef sharks, nurse sharks and many green and hawksbill turtles.” Veronica Harding (Valrico, FL) also finds Jupiter hard to beat. “They are organized and efficient both on land and in the water. JDC has two boats and pack in a lot of divers, particularly on summer weekends, but this is the only dive center we don’t mind diving with a full boat. Marine life there appears to be on steroids - - sharks, goliaths, massive morays, turtles the size of boulders . Visibility varies from 40 to 80-plus feet. Some dives in summer season are 82 degrees top to bottom, but be prepared for upwellings and thermoclines (down to upper 50s once in a while). Diving is drift, and currents can range from benign to really ripping. Some dives took us well over a mile on a single tank. Once at depth, most of the dives are at a very relaxed pace. Dive depths range from 60 to 90 feet. Divemasters know their sites, and the deckhands assist wherever necessary. Divers are responsible for setting up and changing out their own tanks. If you’re an experienced diver, make sure to do the three tank dives on Friday and Sunday mornings. These offer a wider variety of sites, along with fewer and more experienced divers.” (www.jupiterdivecenter.com) ...