Our second day of diving was what many consider to be the best in Puerto Rico and left us wishing we had a few more days to dive here. For day two we took off from a beach called Playa Santa in the city of Guanica, Puerto Rico with Island Scuba. Owned and operated by Dive Masters Pedro and Nayda Padilla, Island Scuba is a professional and well run dive operation with quality equipment to rent and a spacious dive boat that can handle up to 30 divers. A huge plus to diving with Island Scuba is that they are only a 10 to 20 minute boat ride to some of the best diving that Puerto Rico has to offer. If the short boat ride isn’t enough to entice you, the beautiful wall diving should be enough to put even the most traveled divers over the top.
We had two dives with Island Scuba along Puerto Rico’s famous wall and we quickly saw why it is one of the most dived spots on the island. The first site we dove was called Two For You. This site has amazing topography. When you make your initial descent and see the bottom there is an undulating landscape with sandy bottom and large bommies covered with fish and coral scattered all around. Swim just a 30 or 40 feet and you fly out over the ledge looking down a beautiful deep wall down into The Continental Shelf. As you level out between 70 and 90 feet there are huge crevices in the wall running from the top and down as deep as you can see. There are large rock formations that have flat sandy cut outs that you can explore, and all along the wall, there are crevices to explore, so bring your torch to get a good look into the crevices and overhangs. Although the topography is the main attraction at this site, there is abundant coral growth with all sorts of trigger and surgeon fish, regular white and black tip shark sightings and many other beautiful reef fish. The coral is healthy and we were surprised to see scholemia (donut coral) and many plate corals along the wall along with sea fans, whips, xenia and many other colorful corals.
Our second dive with Island Scuba was a site our Dive Master Pedro called the No Name Reef. This was a great shallow dive to finish the day and we would highly recommend that you bring Nitrox for this one so you can extend your bottom time. Our dive was 50 minutes and we came up according to our computers but still had over 1000psi left in our tanks. This dive is 50 to 60 foot at its deepest points and filled with large reefs separated by white sand. You can swim along the white sandy bottom looking under the overhangs for turtles, lobster, crabs, sharks, grouper and all sorts of fish resting during the day. While you are searching the walls of the reef, there are all sorts of blennies, gobies and small fish darting in and out of their sand homes, these are always entertaining to watch as they poke their heads out looking at you as if they would take you on before darting back into their hole. Overall No Name Reef was a relaxing and beautiful dive that we would recommend if you have the chance.
Diving Puerto Rico has been a very pleasant surprise. To have such a great place to dive this close to the mainland US will definitely get us in the water much more often as we plan to come back soon. We hope that if you have been considering Puerto Rico or just wondering where your next dive trip will take you, that this blog has been helpful in making your decision.
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Ever since I was a 10th grader in high school and went on a snorkeling trip to the Florida Keys as part of an ecology class field trip and saw some sharks in the water, I think I decided then and there that snorkeling and scuba diving was not for me. Now, some 42 years later, I have been won over by the enthusiasm and love for scuba diving that Esther-Dan-Lana-Tim have shown. Each their faces light up at the slightest hint, suggestion or opportunity to scuba dive. May they continue to love what they do, do what they love, educate others and “meet people, go places, and do things”