Family | Scuba Diving | Sailing
St. Thomas Scuba and Snorkeling Pics
Johnny and I went on our first real vacation to St.
Thomas, USVI in Dec 1998. At the Virgin Islands, we did quite a bit of
snorkeling. We wanted to work our way back into the scuba diving slowly,
because we were still inexperienced, and it had been a couple of months since we
last got in gear. We went to Coki Beach on St. Thomas and rented some equipment
(the Coki Beach Dive Club was there, but
we didn't use them). It was an easy beach entry, and it helped us get our fins
wet again. Coki Beach was a wonderful place for us to get back into diving.
The fish are abundant, and will eat out of your hands (the fish were fed dog
food). As a side note, we had been told originally that the fish love spray
cheese, muffins, etc. DO NOT feed the fish these foods, they cannot digest them
properly and can become sick and die.
After we felt more comfortable with what we were doing, we
called up the Admiralty Dive Center
in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. Admiralty dive is owned by Marty and Portia
Martinez. The dives we went on with them were fantastic! First, Admiralty Dive
does small groups -- 1 to 6 people per boat. This means that you're going to
get individual attention if you have problems, and you're not bumping into a
zillion people down in the water. Another great thing about Admiralty Dive was
that they used dive sites on the western part of the island -- sites that were
not over-dove, as I understand.
We went on two two-tank dives with Admiralty. First we
went on a reef dive off Buck Island. The reef was around 70ft deep. We saw
lots of wonderful fish (we're still learning names, etc), and Johnny saw a sea
turtle (a ways away). For our second dive, we went to the navy barges, which
was about 40ft deep. There, we saw a HUGE blowfish (boy, I wish I had a camera
with me then!), a few barracudas, and lots more fish. We had such a wonderful
time, that we decided to go the next day. Since Admiralty Dive has so many
sites to choose from, we didn't have any problem seeing different areas of St.
Thomas. The next day, we dove Miss Opportunity, a 300-foot WWII hospital ship
that was intact (you can read a little more about it on the Admiralty home
page). This dive was about 90 feet down. We swam through the ship hallways,
actually having about 4 feet of clearance vertically (the ship was rotated about
270 degrees, so the hallways ended up being 4 feet tall and 8 feet wide, or so.
We got a very close view of a sea turtle (it swam underneath Johnny!).
I wish we had more time to explore the ship, but we only
had a small amount of time due to the depth. The second dive was another reef
dive -- by this time we bought a pseudo under-water camera. It was able to go
about 30-35 ft down and had a flash. Here's some pictures of what we saw (we're
still learning underwater photography, so give us a break - should be taking a
class soon!). All in all, we had a fantastic time. Since we've been home our
major diversion has been to look up places we want to dive at. We're looking
into the Florida keys, and maybe going on a trip with Do Dive In, Inc., a dive
shop here in Peoria (309-692-7800) or with Aqua diving in Morton. I'll slowly
add to this page as we get more dives in....
These are some cool pictures Johnny and I
took during our Virgin Islands trip in Dec 1998. Although the pictures may not
be great, some of the fish are really cool! I'm looking into a photography
class to get a better idea of how to take decent pictures. Hopefully it'll help
on the next trip we take. These pictures were taken with a Minolta Vectris
Weathermatic zoom camera. The camera is only rated at a maximum depth of 30 ft,
but it looked good at the time (ah well). Since then, I've bought an Ikelite
Aquashot 3E.
Family | Scuba Diving | Sailing
