Pro Divers, St. Kitts, Caribbean: Undercurrent 09/2024

Pro Divers, St. Kitts, Caribbean

pleasant diving for beach lovers and foodies

from the September, 2024 issue of Undercurrent

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Dear Fellow Diver,

Pro Divers dive boat While planning my honeymoon years ago, I purchased a Fodor's Caribbean travel guide. The now dog-eared volume, while well out-of-date, still remains my first resource (well, Undercurrent too, my editor reminded me) for deciding my "next" Caribbean dive vacation. Over the years, I've marked up its island finder with three ink colors of checkmarks, arrows, strike-throughs, and bullet-points, and I circled the four- and five-star islands. St. Kitts, at four stars, has always on my radar, and I finally visited in May. It's a tourist-oriented, sandy-beach, good-restaurant kind of destination, with, I am pleased to say, interesting and easy diving, including fishy wrecks, volcanic structures and nice reefs. While perfect for a diver with a nondiving spouse, mine has been my good underwater buddy for many years.

In about 40 feet of water, the River Taw wreck was so good that we requested a second visit. I captured video of four octopuses tucked away inside pipes, in tight spots in wreck wounds, and in a deteriorated school bus' suspension coil spring. A squadron of squid came by, and the wreck's stern was home to a huge barracuda whose long white teeth startled me when I put my head into the dark wreck. So many lobsters inhabited a deteriorated bulldozer, it looked furry from their antennae. Being in construction, I attempted to get a photo "seated" in the 'dozer wreck until I realized a good-sized spotted moray made it home. A huge school of Southern Sennet, which some divers falsely identify as barracuda, finned in unison past our awestruck dive group.

To choose a shop before I left home, I called both Kenneth's Dive Center and Pro Divers St. Kitts. My call to Kenneth Samuel came at a bad time for him as he answered yelling, "You're not listening to me!" followed by (repeated) walking directions to heed more accurately. Unfortunately, my call was made exactly while cruise ship divers were trying to find his operation. He calmed down quickly after I yelled back that it was he who was "not listening to me." My next call to Pro Divers St. Kitts was answered nicely by owner Auston Macleod, who, speaking kindly of his competitor, told me Kenneth was a very nice fellow and must have been having a really bad day. Nice guy, that Auston. As it was a coin toss, I booked with Auston. At least he didn't yell at me....

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