Antigua 2021

By Sarah and Richard Deal

We travelled out in the last week of November, gaining a most welcome 20 degrees in the process. The diving was all from a hardboat, we waded out from the beach, and jumped aboard. Most dives were some 30/45 minutes travel at high speed, mostly to the south west of the island, with Monserrat and other smaller islands well in view. The seabed at 30m could be seen for most of the journey and occasionally we stopped to view a shoal of fish close to the surface. Most dives were 20/25m onto a reef, with few wrecks, water temp at 27 and reefs looking in reasonable condition.

Sightings included black tip and nurse sharks, turtles, sting rays and eagle rays, many huge shoals of fish, many trumpet fish (one was a beautiful tartan) and puffer fish, yellow grunts amongst many. One large eagle ray was a spectacular sight.

The kit was ali tanks, to DIN fittings, all in imperial units, so some head scratching there. On some days there were some quite strong winds producing large waves/currents making boat access ‘interesting’. The dive started with a buoy thrown out, and we gathered on the line before descent, on one day a diver had the wrong weights and initially could not get down, then disappeared, and by the time he was found and spare weight given, we had used about a third of our air, and on the return he ran out of air and had to have the Dive Guide do an AS to do his safety stop. He was a diver, but from many years back, and thought he would remember it all and did not dive again,…so a salutary lesson there. 

Super week and super dives, our first sharks, sting rays, and wonderful colour in the reefs; we had read some reports that Antigua was poor diving, but we had a great experience, and more wildlife than we had imagined.