Sea Grape

You enter the water by stepping down the platform onto a couple of natural lava steps. Then just slip gently into the water. On a calm day, you can actually exit from this spot, but if there is any surge at all, do not attempt it! It would ruin your day and your vacation to be pounded onto the lava by an unexpected swell! Convenient seating and tank-rests are at the water's edge. Note and beware of the lava ledge to the water. Just beyond the Plantation, you'll see this path to the ocean. Just so you don't miss it, here's a picture of the Sea Grape Plantation. Once in the town of Half Moon Bay, take the dirt road to the right and follow this sign to the Sea Grape Plantation.

Update on Sea Grape: they now have a dive shop if you need gear (all ScubaPro) or air. It opened 10/2005. When you enter the Plantation follow the road (what passes for roads on Roatan) to the right keeping the new Sea Grapes rooms (yellow and orange) to your left. DO NOT dive in the bay where the dive boats are, as this is where the West End dumps its raw sewage! I was unable to check out the shore diving as I had a flight out in the morning to Utila.

My daughter 15, boyfriend and I only could snorkel at Sea grape because no one would rent us a BCD and reg. But the entry is just fine for a shore dive and we snorkeled there for hours in two days. We also did a night snorkel and saw an octopus, but nothing else.

Enjoy the view and the personnel were great. Looking forward to going back next year.

I am glad you found this spot on Roatan. I dove here last year and found it one of my best dives. The Bay is definitely a cool location on the island to stay. Very laid back, and some great locals there to help you with your shore diving. This particular dive site is not that easy to dive for a number of reasons. You got to have a way to get your tanks and gear to the entry, it is not like just being at a resort and stepping in the water, unless you are staying at the Sea Grape. But I don't think they have tanks. I stayed in town about a half a mile away, and had a dive shop drive me and my buddy to this spot. Then they picked us up around the bend at the Half Moon Bay cabins. Anyway, like they say, this is not the easiest entry (and I would not attempt to exit here without someone on the shore helping you, so do not get in here unless you think you can get out again easily). It was a really smooth day, pretty unusual I understand, so crawling down onto the lava steps was not very difficult. We took our time, and Jack, the dive shop guy helped us get into the water. That was the hard part, everything else was great. We headed out to sea for about a 100 yards until it got to around 40 feet and dropped down. Oh yeah, we checked the current before to make sure it was going to push left toward the bay. That is important. OK, immediately, we saw a ray swimming underneath us. We tried to sneak up on it to get a closer look. We stayed with it about 20 seconds, then it shot out sea. Very Cool! Lots of nooks to see the smaller stuff, and we ran across a few cleaning stations, one with a pretty awesome grouper that hovered there in a trance. We were shallow enough that we could stay for a while and watch the action. Give yourself about an hour and a half to get around the bend. Take your snorkel, since the last stretch in the bay is pretty shallow. If you haven't done this dive before, you might want a dive shop guy to go with you, since there is not much room for error. I want to do this as a night dive, but I don't know if that's crazy or not, but I will ask around next time I am there.