The Ultimate Roatan Diving Experience
Prices
Day dives 1 or 2 dives : $45
3 - 9 dives : $40
10 + : $35
Add $5 for equipment, per dive.
Night dives $60 including equipment and a light, if you need it.
If you are a guest at Hotel Chillies all day dives will be $35 including equipment.
Haven’t dived for a while? We are happy to offer a refresher. It takes 2 hours before your first dive and costs $40. It includes instruction at the shop and then a confined water session off our beach.
We offer full service valet diving. There is no need for you to pick up a tank. Once we know what equipment you need and you sign up for a dive, we will put everything together, you check it and then we load it onto the boat. After the dive we bring it in, disassemble the equipment, if you want us to, rinse everything and hang it up to dry. We store your equipment overnight inside the dive shop.
Right out in front of the West End is the Roatan Marine Park which stretches 8 miles and includes some of the best diving in the world. It’s all wall diving so every site has coral from 20ft to deeper depths than you ever need to go.
We have wrecks, caverns, canyons, overhangs and underwater scenery that will take your breath away. We have plenty of turtles, rays, dolphins, eels and king crabs, a huge variety of fish life and lots of really healthy coral.
Because of the speed of our boats we dive the largest range of sites and can even arrange day-long charter trips to the remote outer islands.
We often organise trips to the Odyssey, a 320 ft cargo ship sunk just east of the reserve. On a two week dive holiday, you need never repeat a dive site.
Our groups are small. So, if you let us know what your interests are, we will find the perfect dive for you.
Our Favourite Dive Sites
Texas
This is the best dive site on Roatan. It is at the end of the island where the currents keep the reef wonderfully healthy and you will see plenty of fish life; groupers, wrasse, angels, hogfish , huge barracuda. If you get out far enough you will also see the elusive Sargassum triggerfish that is not found anywhere else around Roatan. If you are keen on photography bring your wide angled lens for this dive.
West End Wall
This dive starts off just west of West Bay beach and ends up at Texas. The wall is gorgeous and the reef gets better and better as you get further out and start to catch the current. Clouds of fish cover the top of the wall, wrasse, durgons, barracuda and chromis all swimming together.
Deep Seaquest
One of our favourite sites. The light is so beautiful here. There is a sand bottom dotted with healthy, colourful coral mounds. It starts at 40ft and there is a gentle slope down to the wall. You can often see atlantic rays, eagle rays and turtle here. This is one of the few places we have seen atlantic spadefish. If you look carefully in the sand near the mooring you might find some sailfin blennies dancing in and out of their holes. A great dive for macro photography.
Half Moon Bay Wall
Right out the front of Native Sons is one of the best walls off the island. There are 3 moorings here, Dixie’s, Half Moon Bay and Divemaster’s Choice. They are all great dives and go from 10ft to way deeper than we would ever take you. Down deep are lots of gorgonions, huge orange elephant ear sponges and lots of interesting overhangs, under which the corals are so beautiful. In the shallows look out for flamingo tongues on the fans and lobsters and crabs in the crevasses.
Hole in the Wall
If you want to go deep this is the site. Swim down through a large tunnel that goes through the wall and you come out at 110ft. Another 20 ft is our maximum depth and you hang out over the deepest blue you will ever see. There is no sign of the bottom here and it’s a great moment to contemplate life, the universe and everything while enjoying a touch of nitrogen narcosis. Back up in the shallows, while decompressing, we swim you through the Swiss cheese, a network of caves, tunnels and canyons, all filled with natural light, glassy sweepers and with any luck a scorpion fish or two. There is also a great cave, filled with silver-sides in the summer, with a large entrance and quite often king crab hiding on the ledges.
The Aguila Wreck
This 210ft cargo ship sits on the sand at 110ft. It was sunk intentionally by Anthony’s Key Resort in 1997, broken into 3 by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and further rearranged by Hurricane Wilma in 2005. It’s a great dive. As you go down you are met by huge friendly groupers and blue parrot fish. There is a resident eel and some wonderful coral has grown on the ship. Don’t forget to check out the garden eels covering the deep sand as far as you can see. We usually do this dive as a drift, starting at the wreck and then decompressing in the shallows and gradually making our way to Pillar Coral, to the west. For some reason there is an area between these two sites where there are so many fish, Bermuda Chubb, black durgons, groupers, schoolmasters, all hanging out at the top of the wall. What a great place to do a safety stop!
Peter’s Place
This is a site with some great formations and lots of stuff to see. Near the mooring is a huge canyon, about 30ft deep. There is a very shallow wall that starts at about 15ft, and then a deeper wall at about 50ft with lots of fish at the top of both. From 50 ft down the wall is vertical with some wonderful corals, barrel sponges, tube corals, gorgonians. In amongst the corals are crab, huge parrotfish, eels.
Spooky Channel
The main feature of this site is a canyon that runs from the inside to the outside of the reef. The visibility is always bad, hence the spookyness, and it’s strangely devoid of life. At it’s deepest point it is about 90ft deep and the coral nearly meets at the top, where it is only about 2 ft below the surface. If your buoyancy is good try swimming on your back for a while. It’s a great view as the sunlight filters through the gloom and you can make out the vertical walls rising 90ft on either side of you. The mooring is on the outside of the reef so we swim you in and out of the canyon and then you emerge on a beautiful wall with lots of big groupers, a huge barracuda who seems to be always there and plenty of little fish too.
The Odyssey Wreck
This is the largest wreck on Roatan, a 300ft long cargo ship, that was intentionally sunk in 2002. It lies on a sand patch at 110ft and has been a little rearranged by some storms. The stern is almost upright and stands 85ft high. The cargo hold has collapsed and the bow lies on her side but the size of this wreck is truly stunning and the coral has started to grow all over her. There is some nice shallow reef nearby where we decompress.
There are some other great sites around Roatan.
These sites are done as day trips from West End, need good weather conditions and a minimum of 6 people. Talk to our staff and see what we can organize for you.
Mary’s Place
This is Roatan’s most famous site and it is stunning. There is a canyon formed when a peninsula of the wall cracked away from the main wall. You swim into the canyon at 90ft, passing beautiful fan corals, entrances to other canyons, and come out at 120ft where a sand shute drops away into the deep blue. Swimming back around the peninsula you will pass some of the best coral on Roatan and look out for seahorses. They are commonly found here. You can then swim over the canyon, at about 30ft and take a good look at all the fans of beautiful coral growing around the top.
The Prince Albert Wreck
This stunning wreck was an island freighter that sank in Roatan in 1987 and has been under water long enough for an amazing amount of coral to have grown on her. Every part is covered with a great variety of soft and hard coral and lots of fish have made it their home. The wreck is 140ft long and lies on a sloping shallow sand patch from 40 – 70ft in depth. If you visit in the summer you can sometimes find schools of silversides inside her. Close by is the wreck of a DC3 airplane.
Morat Wall
Morat Wall is one of the most exciting dives in the Bay Islands. The 3 miles long offshore reef offers great drift diving. Due to its far distance from settlements and most dive operators this site has a healthy collections of large sponges, almost pristine communities of elkhorn and staghorn corals, as well as large outcrops of star, brain and plate corals. The vertical wall is broken by numerous sand chutes and covered with large barrel, vase and rope sponges. Black coral dominate the depths. There is also a good chance to see large pelagics like nurse sharks, eagle rays, barracudas, tarpon and tuna.
Dolphin Graveyard
This is an amazing network of caves, tunnels and canyons leading from the inside to the outside of the reef. It starts in about 15ft and comes out at 40ft near the wall. The bottom is sand and there is plenty of natural light shining through the holes in the top. In the summer it is filled with silversides. In the 1980’s some divers went into the cave system and found the remains of a dozen dolphins. No-one really concluded on why they were there. However in the summer of 2007 the tragedy was repeated when 10 more dead dolphins were found and this time it was decided that maybe the dolphins followed the silversides inside leading to a feeding frenzy. They became disoriented. Three were found trying to get through the openings at the top of the caves. Some others had broken beaks and broken fins.