Diving in Turks & Caicos
Kenneth Keh`02
Issue date: 4/27/01 Section: Sports
- Page 1 of 2 next >
It was the middle of March in Ithaca and like most students, I couldn’t wait to be somewhere else. I wanted to travel somewhere with lots of sun and do some diving. At that point, I had been dreaming about the beaches of Turks & Caicos for several weeks. ‘Turks and where?’ Many of you are probably asking. Well, Turks & Caicos is a small chain of islands about 600 miles southeast of Miami that has some of the world’s nicest beaches and clearest waters. I soon realized the place is also one of the best-kept secrets of the Caribbean. Surprisingly, Turks & Caicos has remained somewhat obscure and has avoided the commercialization common to other Caribbean islands. Turks & Caicos has seven main inhabited islands: Salt Cay, Grand Turk (the political capitol), South Caicos, Middle Caicos, North Caicos, Pine Cay, and Providenciales.
I felt at home the moment I stepped off the plane; the warm sunny weather reminding me of lazy weekend afternoons that I used to spend back home in Malaysia. I couldn’t wait to put on my diving gear! The next morning, I headed on the dive-boat to a spot about 10 miles south of the islands. The weather was a perfect 80 degrees, the sea was calm with a wonderful shade of turquoise blue. It felt great to have the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. I soon found out that the scenery below the surface was as good as it was above it, with visibility an excellent 70-80 feet at times. The water temperature was around 70 degrees, warm enough that we could dive with a 3mm short dive suit. Among the marine life that I spotted were a variety of reef fish, lots of colorful hard corals, hermit crabs, reef sharks, lobsters, and turtles.
Over the three days of diving we had a good mixture of wall and bottom dives. My favorite dive was a site called “The Aquarium,” where enormous schools of grunts and snappers form an almost continuous school on top of the wall by the reef. The wall is an exaggerated spur-and-groove formation with spectacular sand chutes that run down the reef to a depth of around 100 feet. I was lucky enough to spot a pair of loggerhead turtles feeding on the reef, and several reef sharks resting under some of the rocks at the floor of the ocean.
I felt at home the moment I stepped off the plane; the warm sunny weather reminding me of lazy weekend afternoons that I used to spend back home in Malaysia. I couldn’t wait to put on my diving gear! The next morning, I headed on the dive-boat to a spot about 10 miles south of the islands. The weather was a perfect 80 degrees, the sea was calm with a wonderful shade of turquoise blue. It felt great to have the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. I soon found out that the scenery below the surface was as good as it was above it, with visibility an excellent 70-80 feet at times. The water temperature was around 70 degrees, warm enough that we could dive with a 3mm short dive suit. Among the marine life that I spotted were a variety of reef fish, lots of colorful hard corals, hermit crabs, reef sharks, lobsters, and turtles.
Over the three days of diving we had a good mixture of wall and bottom dives. My favorite dive was a site called “The Aquarium,” where enormous schools of grunts and snappers form an almost continuous school on top of the wall by the reef. The wall is an exaggerated spur-and-groove formation with spectacular sand chutes that run down the reef to a depth of around 100 feet. I was lucky enough to spot a pair of loggerhead turtles feeding on the reef, and several reef sharks resting under some of the rocks at the floor of the ocean.