Willis Chung's Dive Log

Went north from the Cliff entry site, towards the desalination plant, and the reef past the heavy chain is in pretty bad shape. We went further north for a while, but got discouraged, and returned to the entry site where we cruised around looking in the deep and shallow areas. Going south is a much better choice: takes you through healthier reef, to the wall, and into the tarpon hunting grounds. Visited by reef squid. Saw sharptail eel in the clear area around the pipe protecting the cable that runs off into the deep, and saw a nice large moray eel at about 40 feet just to the south of the pipe.

This is an excellent place for a night dive, or diving any other time as well. There is a large pipe protecting some sort of underwater cable that goes out from the entry/exit area into the depths. It is nearly impossible to miss this and makes navigation on the return trip nearly a no-brainer. Makes the return leg of a night dive much more relaxed. Pretty short swim to the reef drop-off, and the reef looks pretty healthy now. Going south, the reef becomes the vertical cliff, and there appears to be more varied life in the reef just short of the cliff. There are abundant banded coral shrimp and arrow crabs at night. Several moray eels and sharptail eels, as well as peacock flounder in the shallows. The tarpon will hunt using your lights if you do a night dive. Awesome having 4-5 foot long fish flash past you at 1-2 feet distance.

The best thing about this site is the ease of entry. You park across the street from the marina, and walk off the boat ramp right into the water, with coral rubble and sand at the bottom. There is a mild amount of trash in the marina area, a few tires, a few marine engines, but not too bad. The fish hanging out by the disused pier are fun to look at and swim through. The swim out to the reef is quite short, but as has been mentioned, it should be done underwater to avoid unpleasant interactions with boats. However, the reef is clearly under stress. We went north from the entry site for 30 minutes, and the further north we went, the more brown algae was on the coral, and the fewer fish and other critters. Saw hardly any shrimp. A fine dive, if you are new to scuba and want to get used to being underwater in a more controlled, calm environment. There are much better spots otherwise.

Fun site to dive, with a nice thatched cabana area next to the parking lot, giving really nice shade for relaxing before or after the dive. Variable activity, sometimes deserted, sometimes 4 trucks of divers. Entry/exit easy north of the big yellow painted rock. Snorkelers will really like the large batch of coral just to the south of the big yellow rock. Reef looks pretty good, nothing special to report, but didn't notice signs of stress.

The site is no longer accessible due to development of buildings in that area. We spent 1/2 hour driving around and could not find the site. Talking to our dive shop at Buddy's they confirmed that the site is no longer available.