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The Dive Sites of Bequia
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. Bullet
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Bullet is a rock 144 feet high, which rises out of the sea with sheer vertical cliff faces. It is at the north end of Bequia's east coast a few hundred feet offshore. It is open to both wind and sea and the currents can be fierce. For a lot of the time the seas in this area gives a dive boat a good imitation of being inside a washing machine. This means the dive is only accessible in very calm settled conditions. This adds to the excitement and feeling of accomplishment when one does this dive.
If there is no current it is possible to anchor the dive boat in on the shore side of the rock and swim right round. More often there is a current and it is best done as a drift dive in the direction of the current, going around the seaside of the rock. The dive boat will normally anchor where you come up so you can come up the anchor line, make a safety stop and avoid spending too long in rough surface water.
Therock drops below the surface as steeply it rises and its wall-like sides are covered in a wide variety of colourful corals and sponges. It bottoms out at about 90 feet around the outside edge. Around the base of the rock there are valleys, plateau's, big boulders and a smaller pinnacle rock. The views are always dramatic with Bullet forming a wall on the inside and other rocks providing a wild underwater seascape. There are many overhangs and caves. You will usually see many big snappers, jacks and tunas, large angelfish and schooling chromis plus the occasional great blue parrot fish up to four feet long. If you peer in hollows and crevices you will find lobster. There is always a good chance of finding a nurse shark napping under a ledge or a turtle or giant pelagic swimming off into the blue.
Follow the rock wall up if you want to get to a more shallow depth before the end of your dive. Normally it is best to stay at 25 or 30 feet as the surge can get bad above this level. There is plenty to examine on the wall. It is covered in a large variety of corals and sponges including the very delicate yellow calcareous sponge. These invertebrates form a home for lots of goby's, blenny's and shrimps. If you look carefully you can find many giant truncates.
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Long Point
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Long Point is on the north side of Anse Chemin, an uninhabited bay on Bequia's northern coast. There is often current in this area, and it then done as a drift dive. The current can go in either direction, and on a bad day you will set off with the current only to meet a counter current halfway down, stopping you in your tracks.
The anchorage is inside Long Point, and the best dive is northwards out around the corner. Should current not allow this, it is possible to go southwards back into the bay which is a somewhat shallower dive.
Long Point is a slope of large boulders ending in sand at about 40 feet at the anchorage, and 90 feet as you follow the coast. The boulders are large - in some cases 10 feet high, making for a dramatic bottomscape enhanced by giant vase sponges and forests of gorgonians, particularly various sea whips but also sea rods. In places you can swim right through them with the top branches well above you.
A most delightful aspect of this dive is that it attracts huge schools of small feeding fish, particularly gray and blue chromis, but often also visiting youngsters of pelagic families. They feed on passing plankton which sometimes lowers visibility a little, but adds a feeling of mystery and romance to the fairy-tale underwater views.
The reef is very active and you will often be delighted by some surprise - a shark, a turtle, a murex eating a clam, an octopus or a giant grouper.
In the shallower water there are many beautiful smaller fish such as spot fin butterfly fish, saddled blennies and spotted drums. As in nearly every Bequia dive there will be trumpet fish and also sergeant majors who can often be seen guarding their patches of eggs.
Take time to examine some of the invertebrates - you will find lots of golden zooanthids encrusting green finger sponge, there are corkscrew anenomies with their attendant cleaner shrimp, mat zooanthids, red boring sponge, and giant tunicates. I have also found black condominium tunicates here, but you need good eyesight to distinguish them from some black sponges. The openings on the tunicates are outlined in white and if you brush the tunicates very gently with your finger, they close their siphons, but as these are small it is not all that easy to see. There are quite a few bushes of green colored black coral, and this is a good place to see flat stony corals and bright green solitary disk corals.
If you go up the coast beyond Long Point, the boundary between the boulders and the sand is much less clearly defined at about 40-50 feet. You can swim along a sandy bottom right among the large tree-like soft corals - swollen knob candelabrum, giant slit pore sea rods, long spine sea fans and sea plumes. Among these are boulders, each one with its own community of sponges and corals with the attendant small reef fish and invertebrates.
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Northwest Point
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Northwest Point is below the cliffs just north of Admiralty Bay. Northwest point is very close to the harbor and suitable to those diving on their own from a yacht dinghy. Currents are sometimes strong and they are usually strongest right at the northwest point. In this case one can dive a little further south more in the lee of the land. Dive shops sometimes run this as a drift dive. Two dive-shops moorings are normally maintained - one right out at Northwest Point, another a couple of hundred yards further south.
The underwater topography is a steeply sloping bank of big boulders and corals which start right off the cliffs and continue down into a more gently sloping sandy bottom. This sandy bottom is at 25 feet to the south, deepens to about 80 feet at Northwest Point and then get shallower again if you continue round the point to the northeast.
The boulders that form this slope, both big and small create many caverns, hollows, overhangs and pockets which make an ideal habitat for all kinds of reef fish.
The surface is generously endowed with many sponges and corals both hard and soft. Both on the slope and at the bottom there many tree-like soft corals. Northwest Point is a rich feeding ground for small schooling fish and it would be unusual not to see magnificent schools of blue chromis feeding above the coral. You will also see big schools of gray chromis and probably yellowtail snapper.
There are excellent examples of pillar coral here as well as many kinds of encrusting star corals which have completely covered many boulders. You will also find flower corals and solitary fleshy corals. Some of the giant vase sponges have grown into twisted unusual forms, and there many azure vase sponges, encrusting star sponges, and finger sponges.
Numerous moray eels hide in crevice, and among other reef fish you can find four eye butterfly fish, damsel fish, filefish, trunkfish, angelfish, puffer fish and hog fish. Trumpet fish are common here, as on most dive sites, but here you can get granddaddies here that have grown to their full three feet. Three spot goat fish are quite common on this dive and you sometimes see them undergo dramatic color changes as they move from one background to another. You will often see a barracuda or three patrolling the bottom of the reef where it joins the sand.
There are many healthy porous sea rods here, polyps fully extended during the day. touch one polyp and you often see the whole branch slowly close as the message gets passed down the line.
If you look inside sponges and hollows you will see rough file clams, arrow crabs and shrimps, various anenomies, and sea urchins. You have a good chance of spotting scorpion fish and decorator crabs.
If you look closely at some of the larger boulders you can find giant and encrusting tunicates.
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The Wall
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Bequia's southwestern coast is formed by a steep ridge of land which is broken by the sea at the western tip to form two islands. The outer island is called West Cay. There is nothing beyond West Cay till Panama. The Wall, around West Cay, is deep and dramatic, right on the edge of the fathomless blue. It is accessible in most conditions but strong currents make it a drift dive.
Typically the dive boat anchors just south of West Cay in the gap between the two islands. You sink to bottom of the anchor line in about 15-20 feet of water. There is a shallow pass between the two islands where you swim through a narrow sand cut with rising walls on either side. The last part of this passage rises to just a few feet from the surface and the current here can be strong. Sometimes you have to grasp on a rock or two and pull your way through. As you rise over this last ridge the bottom drops away steeply into what seems like nothing. Time to relax, breath out and sink gently down into the depths below.
The bottom of the wall is at around 120 feet, and if you look out to sea as you round the western side you have a good chance of seeing giant groupers, sharks, rays or turtles. It is easy to get distracted by both the shape and beauty of the wall itself, or the myriad of sponges and corals which call it home.
As you come round to the southern side of the wall, the bottom rises, and you start to make your ascent. There is plenty of time to enjoy the big schools of chromis, the sea fans the crinoids and other creatures. Divers normally ascend as a group when the first one runs out of air, the dive boat stands by waiting for the pick up.
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