Dive Review of Anthony’s Key Resort in
Honduras/Roatan

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Anthony’s Key Resort: "An old standard continues to thrive", Jul, 2015, by THOMAS SMITH, MO, US ( Sr. Reviewer 7 reports with 11 Helpful votes). Report 8302 has 3 Helpful votes.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	It had been 15 years since I last visited Anthony's Key Resort, but much was the same, including many of the staff. AKR is a clean, well run resort dedicated to divers. Our package included 3 meals a day and 3 boat dives daily (plus 2 night dives during the week). Food is decent to good, with hot breakfast to order, and at least two entree options for lunch and dinner, sometimes three. Fish was usually one choice. Meals included soup or salad, and dessert. Wait staff was attentive and friendly. My only complaint on food was that I found it overly salty, but I seldom use salt at home. The dining area, main bar and reception are up a couple of flights of stairs from the waterfront on the main island. Most guest rooms are on the key, with a short (30 yards?) water taxi ride between. The taxis run 24 hours at no expense to guests. Between the main bar, pool bar and pavilion on the key, there was some kind of happy hour going on most afternoons. The dive operation is well organized and efficient, with friendly, well trained dive-masters and boat captains. AKR runs a bunch (6-8?) of custom built dive boats. Divers sign up for dives by marking their dive number on chalk boards for their assigned boats. Nitrox is available for $8/tank (rather steep) or $120 for the week. In our 5 1/2 days of diving, 19 boat dives were offered. Shore diving is also available at no cost. Most dives are just a few minutes from the resort, although some dives might go around the other side of the island. Most dives offer some version of a wall, steeper at some places than others. Two wreck dives are available, although with the wrecks in the 100-110 foot range there isn't much life on them. Dive-masters gave general profiles for dives, then left computer divers to their own devices for the most part. A dive-master led each dive, setting a slow pace and pointing out various fish and creatures. There was seldom any current to speak of, although there was some chop at the surface once or twice. The water was a balmy 82-84 degrees F (July). Most of the group wore 3mm suits; I dove with a 1 mm, and several folks dove in t-shirts. Our group got shut out on Eagle Rays for the week, which was a disappointment, be we did see lots of turtles, mostly Hawksbills. Some sites were crowded with grouper due to DM feedings. Green morays were plentiful, with the occasional spotted moray, and at least one goldentail. Tropical fish were plentiful: tons of parrotfish (including several midnight PF), queen, french and grey angels, schools of blue tang and creolefish, lots of grouper, plenty of 4 eye butterfly fish, various damsels, hamlets, squid, 4 octopus on one night dive, huge yellow frogfish etc etc. Arrow, hermit, king and neck crabs, plenty of lobster. We saw a couple of nurse sharks but no reef sharks except on the shark feeding dive. One highlight of AKR is their dolphin program, though no dolphin dives were offered during our week due to mating season. Various dolphin encounters are available at RIMS (Roatan Institute of Marine Science) from snorkeling to a full specialty course that includes being a trainer for part of a day. (I took this course in 1999 and loved it.) The dive shop offers a marine life slide show on Sunday evening which I highly recommend as an introduction to what you should be looking for out on the reef. The instructor recommended small marine life behavior over "your 21st turtle sighting of the week", and highlighted the cool little stuff you need to slow down and look for, such as yellow headed jawfish incubating eggs in their mouth, sailfin and secretary blennies, and the various types of cleaner fish and shrimp, all of which we saw when diving. Shark feeding dives are available throughout the week for an additional $100. A larger deep V boat takes you around the island back in front of the airport for the dive. The water can be rough for the ride. Our feeding had over 20 quite large (5-6') Caribbean reef sharks milling about while the divers swam with them. Divers then put their backs to a small wall and knelt in the sand for the release of the bait. After the feeding frenzy, divers had a frenzy of their own as they crowded the sand looking for lost shark teeth. Our boat captain, Kenly, and dive-master, Jeromie, were professional and knowledgeable, but better than that they were friendly, funny and extremely personable. They really made the week fly by. My one complaint is that our DM did nothing to stop/help the horribly over-weighted newbie diver, with the giant knife strapped to his leg, who walked and dragged his feet and fins across the reef all week while he tried to take the 1000th picture of his daughter underwater. It is a marine park for Pete's sake. Bottom line: easy comfortable diving for novice and advanced alike; not much big stuff but plenty of little stuff if you slow down and look. Top notch resort and dive center.
Websites	Anthony’s Key Resort
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	Belize, Cayman, Dominica, Saba, Bonaire, Fiji, Cocos, Galapagos, Palua, PNG, Solomons, French Polynesia, etc etc
Closest Airport	Roatan	Getting There	Direct from Dallas for us
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, dry	Seas	calm, choppy
Water Temp	82-84°F / 28-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	50-100 Ft/ 15-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	?
Enforced diving restrictions	General profiles were provided, but seldom enforced.
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	1 or 2	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	> 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities
UW Photo Comments	Macro heaven

Report currently has 3 Helpful votes

Subscriber's Comments

By Jay Jones in CA, US at Sep 16, 2015 11:08 EST

Would concur with all comments above as we did two weeks there end of August. This was our first trip to Anthony's and clearly the best of our Roatan experiences having been to Co Co view, Laguna Beach and Fantasy Isle.The only thing that will keep us away are the "bugs". They are horrible w/deet,premethrin, picaridin, c

By Jay Jones in CA, US at Sep 16, 2015 11:09 EST

By report author: THOMAS SMITH in MO, US at Apr 28, 2018 16:13 EST

Yes, the sand fleas were everywhere. I had no problem with them as long as I used Cactus Juice on my feet/legs, but when I stopped they ate me alive.

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Dive Review of Anthony’s Key Resort in Honduras/Roatan

Anthony’s Key Resort: "An old standard continues to thrive", Jul, 2015,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Subscriber's Comments

Dive Review of Anthony’s Key Resort in
Honduras/Roatan