Cane Bay

3 sharks Barracuda Blue Tang Turtle Carousel Horse

This is the parking lot just across the highway. You may also park on the beach side of the highway if you arrive early enough. Food and drink are also available just across the street. Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate! Notice the waves breaking well before the beach. This is a small reef that stretches the length of the shoreline. There is a small channel just to the left of the picture, cut out for boat launches. Herein lies the danger. All the water that makes it over the reef will rip its way to the channel to exit back to sea, causing a healthy rip tide that will quickly carry you away from the shore.

My daughter and I dove here last August. Literally, it was the dive-master and us in the water. Cane Bay Dive shop was awesome. Very friendly and we had a fantastic, relaxing dive. Not much in the way of larger fish, but the coral was in great shape. Lots of purple fans.

See my North Star review. I dove St Croix 2007 & 2008 in Spring. Cane Bay entry is right across from Cane Bay dive shop. Enter by or very near the cement ramp. If you go straight out, this will be a deeper dive. If you head slightly west from the ramp, it is more shallow dive. Beware of rental car break ins. They are hitting the diver's cars when they go in the water & are under.

If you were a dive operator and you wanted to pick the best place to have a dive shop…this would be it. Grab your tank walk across the street, very little traffic, walk into the ocean (usually the surf is low) sometimes the surf kicks up in the Winter but that does not mean the visibility is bad. Kick out on your back for 100 yards. Drop down and find NIRVANA. Wall is incredible (starts at 60 feet) get as narc'd up as you can stand (or Nitrox available), surface and walk across the street. The bar serves food and the Dark Cruzan Rum will is SMOOOOOTH! I LIKE IT!!!

My first shore dive as I was just certified the previous month. Diving the wall with an infinity of blue indigo under me felt like flying. Great variety of plants and animals - saw a seahorse, several turtles, octopi, and squid. Also did a night dive there - awesome! The kick out was about 10 min max and I thought fairly easy. Loved the crew at the dive shop and the Blue Moon Restaurant has great fish tacos!

Cane Bay's best attribute is proximity to a nice customer friendly dive shop (30 yards) and very easy entry/exit on a beach. Even in big waves you should be able to get out. It is the busiest site on North shore (most others are empty). Swim 200-250 yards (10 minutes or so) to the buoy and drop into steep sand slopes covered with coral. Almost all dives on North shore are very similar so this is a good starter to see what you will find on the others. Fish life has been decimated by over fishing/hunting, but there are lots of tiny fish and coral. The best stuff is in less shallow waters, and below 90 feet is pretty barren.

Still one of the most memorable dives I've done. Surface swim 75 yards to a buoy in about 40 fsw. Drop down the line and then continue about 30 yards more. Then it drops off 6000 feet! Incredible plant life. Some very good animal life. Spectacular boulders on the edge of the cliff. Amazing.

Great dive-as everyone else has pointed out. I personally found it a little tough to swim against the waves out to the drop off- also of note, the drift of the incoming waves tends to push you to the left- so when you return to shore, you have to swim at an angle to the drift. I did not see anyone night diving when I was there, the entry and exit would be easy enough, but there are a lot of urchins in the shallows which might cause a problem. It is a great site though- I did 6 dives here and I saw turtles and lots of bigger fish- really great soft corals.

We Stayed at Villa Dawn, a beautiful villa just across the street from the Cane Bay wall, and dove the wall several times. We rented gear from Cane Bay Dive Shop just across the road from the beach where you enter the water for your dives. The wall was amazing. Beautiful coral, lots of fish, even saw an 18th century anchor! Don't forget to dive in the coral gardens just before the wall...very nice...and great for beginners. Loved diving in St. Croix's waters!

Cane bay has easy access via a paved road next to the beach. There is only a small town about 1 mile away so the beach is not crowded. There are apartments you can rent nearby within walking distance of beach. The beach at cane bay is nice. It has a wide beach area ( 30 yd. ) that runs about 500 yd along the side of road. Nice open air beach bar/restaurant across the street with dive shop. The facilities are about as good as you can get. The swim out is not long maybe 100 yd. to the top of the reef. Drop down 50' to top of reef which runs parallel to beach. The dive is really more of a wall type dive running from a depth of 50' to deep blue. The wall is covered with coral, tube sponges and plant life. There is a good variety of tropical fish. You also can see larger fish cruising the wall looking for smaller fish. Visibility was about 75' there was little if any current. The swim out and back was nice because there were fish and coral in the shallows. Myself and my dive buddy spent most of the week we were in St. Croix diving this same site because it was a nice place to be at the beach and rather than drive around and look for different sites we chose to stay and do the same dive. It was nice and we saw no reason to look elsewhere.

This is THE place on St. Croix. I have 20 dives here. The coral heads are immense, the fish life is varied. There are rays, lobsters, octopi, and every swimming color there is. There are even secretive seahorses, but you will need a local guide to find them. Watch your depth. When you go over the wall, it goes to 3,000 feet.

Great place to go. My wife and I would love to go back.