Text by Jeremy Cuff/www.ja-universe.com
Photography by Jeremy & Amanda Cuff/www.ja-universe.com
Liveaboards provide that perfect opportunity to get completely absorbed into the diving lifestyle, if only for a week. Having done the Cayman and Belize Aggressor’s Family Weeks in the past with our son Zac, next on our list was the Turks and Caicos Aggressor, which helpfully coincided with the school holidays. We would live the dream again, this time Turks and Caicos style…
We always prefer not to go straight from a plane onto a liveaboard after a long journey, so we were glad of a couple of days to “rest up” after our trans-Atlantic flight. This gave us a chance to get onto “local time”, check out a few of the shops, bars and eateries of Providenciales, and have a couple of wanders along Grace Bay, dipping our toes in the calm turquoise shallows.
Having regularly checked out the Aggressor Fleet’s website on the lead up to the trip (the “Meet the Crew” and “Captain’s Log” sections), we were fairly certain that Lowel, one of the crew who looked after us on our 2009 Cayman trip and who Zac especially remembered would be onboard.
Like our aforementioned Cayman and Belize trips, this charter was also one of the Aggressor Fleet’s “family weeks”, unique in that children of six years or older are welcomed onboard. The family week itinerary is based on the normal “grown ups” trip, but with a few subtle tweaks to make it more “child friendly” both onboard and in the water. The difference this time was that Zac (now aged eleven) had achieved his PADI Junior Open Water Diving certification, so he could do some of the dives as a “real” diver.
We arrived at Turtle Cove Marina early to meet the boat and settled into the nearby Tiki Bar for conch fritters and fish sliders whilst we waited for the time to board. The excitement of seeing the Aggressor moored up, getting cleaned, stocked and ready for our week was too much for Zac, so we wandered over to see who was about and to his delight, Lowel was there. After all the divers he must have seen since our 2009 Cayman trip (when Zac was only six), it was nice that he remembered us, despite Zac having grown a lot in the five years that had passed. He would say to Zac later in the trip “we’re reunited and it feels good.”
Once on board, we were able to meet the rest of the crew and get checked into our cabin. We found them to be a great bunch of enthusiastic dive professionals captained by Amanda Smith from the UK. During the week, Amanda, Lowel, Rob, Kelly and Roy would provide endless enthusiasm to the visiting divers – not that we needed the “enthusiasm bit” as we’d had plenty of that anyway, but it’s always good.
We found the boat very similar to the Cayman and Belize Aggressors, so the routines of liveaboard life soon came back to us. And as with all liveaboards, it has its own unique quirks and onboard highlights such as abundant crisps and a “promise fulfilled” of endless orio biscuits!
Somehow, despite many years of diving in all sorts of places, Amanda and I had managed to avoid doing a Nitrox course, but Rob suggested that if there’s a good place to do it, it would be onboard the liveaboard here in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The reason for the recommendation was the topography of many of the dive sites, where the reef tends to start deeper than in other locations, sometimes at a depth of 12 or even 15 meters. Repeated dives like this would make any air breathers very tight and marginal on bottom time unless we wanted to spend lots of time anxiously watching computers in the mid-water whilst others remained happily exploring the reefs. We decided to do the course whilst onboard, and found it very helpful to the diving we encountered.
With the safety briefings, introductions and diving overview done, we could start the trip in earnest. Captain Amanda confirmed that the weather outlook looked good for the week, and that we would be able to do the planned itinerary. So, with everyone onboard and eager to get started, she navigated carefully out of Turtle Cove (a very tight exit and entry for a vessel as large as the Aggressor) and into Grace Bay for the check out dive at a site called Pinnacles.
Amanda and I set off on our own to explore the reef slopes and to get back into “diver and underwater photographer mode” while Zac would do his first dive of the trip with Lowel in the shallower parts of the reef. Later in the dive, we found them on the reef top following a turtle (they later said they had two with them at one point), all OK signs and underwater smiles. Zac looked very happy and comfortable on the dive – it was a nice start to the week.
Next, we headed to Northwest Point, to dive the Thunderdome (often called just “the Dome” locally) and Chimney sites, which are popular with day boats though we thankfully had them all to ourselves.
Once the site of some daft French television quiz show (apparently called Escape from Pago Pago Island in case you hadn’t heard about it!), the remains of the Thunderdome provide an excellent “wreck” dive in easy conditions. It’s very photogenic to keep the photographers happy, it’s got plenty of life living on and around it, there’s little or no current and it’s great for “new divers” like Zac who really enjoyed going under the most intact part of the structure to see the resident school of snappers up close. After a later dive at Chimney, we returned to the “dome” for an excellent night dive, with Rob using a “black light” to show everyone that Lizardfish fluoresce under these conditions.
The Chimney is more typical of the sites we would visit during the week, with a flattish reef top, steep drop off and wall that are regularly patrolled by sharks of the Caribbean Reef variety. For macro fans, the crew pointed out numerous golden crinoids, which if observed very closely, are home to tiny shrimp.
After getting into the groove at Grace Bay and Northwest Point, most of the week is spent at West Caicos and French Cay (pronounced “Key”). Here, most dive sites are combinations of spectacular walls, steep slopes and drop offs cut with swim throughs, fissures and overhangs that are adorned with sponges and corals, and other assorted reef growth. There are also reef flats and sandy expanses, sometimes with sea grass beds which provide a nice “balance” to the reef diving.
At West Caicos, Driveway and Magic Mushroom were active and enjoyable sites, where lobster, channel clinging crab, scorpionfish, peacock flounder and jawfish could be found by looking carefully up close, whilst down by the wall the local Caribbean reef sharks tirelessly cruised the reef edges, sometimes granting us with a close pass, along with the occasional Eagle Ray.
The Anchor site was next on the schedule, where we were able to view an old coral encrusted anchor that had snagged in a cut in the reef. It is thought to originate from the 17th century. Rob waited for each diver to pass through the gulley, recording an underwater “holiday snap” of everyone posing alongside the anchor. Many “little things could be found here, such as blennies and arrow crabs. Nearby, resident stingrays could be seen grubbing around on the sandy expanses looking shrimp and garden eels.
As already alluded to, the Turks and Caicos Islands are good place to visit for shark action, with some great encounters possible with the local Caribbean Reef and Nurse Shark populations at sites such as Half Mile, Rock and Roll and G-Spot. On occasions, other shark species can sometime be glimpsed or encountered such as hammerheads, though their appearances are random and unpredictable. On our trip, they stayed clear of us.
Zac’s underwater competence meant that he could participate in the shark dives, which he really enjoyed, taking his Go Pro to get some footage at the Rock and Roll site, as reef sharks cruised around him and a small nurse shark investigated the reef around the diver’s fins.
G-Spot is a great place to dive, night or day. We really enjoyed the night dive here, which “guarantees” (as much as it’s possible to guarantee in diving) encounters with nurse sharks. We weren’t disappointed, as these magical sharks hunted tirelessly for prey during the hour that we were underwater. Other life that caught our attention included a large channel cling crab and some lobsters out for a “night walk”.
Past the halfway point of the trip, we headed back to West Caicos with a visit to another “shark mecca” called Gullies. Here, we encountered a good number of Caribbean Reef sharks including a large female known as Sully. At the end of the dive, I lingered below to get a few more images, as other divers began their ascent. Whilst “on my own” Sully came in very close and circled me a few times which was somewhat intimidating. I was told afterwards that this sometimes happens, especially if the diver is “alone” (even though I wasn’t really!).
Elephant Ear Canyon was nice contrast to reefs and hugely enjoyable we opted to potter about amongst the sea grass looking for pipehorses, sea slugs, baby lionfish and other macro life, whilst the occasional stingray and shark cruised past. Try as we might, we couldn’t find the batfish that had been reported from the site during previous trips!
Rock Garden Interlude proved to be one of my favourite sites, with a nice wall and plenty of shark action to keep everyone happy and also yielded one of my favourite night dives (ever) with Caribbean Reef sharks coming in an out of the lamplight, hunting jacks, lobsters, a slipper lobster, scorpionfish and even a pair of flying gurnards among the sightings.
After a late night voyage back to Northwest Point, we would do our last dives in the morning at Stairway. As I failed to get up for the early morning dive, Amanda and Zac colluded with everyone to say that saw a hammerhead (which they later admitted that they didn’t) which I had no option but to believe until their guilt got the better of them! Later in the morning, we would do our final dive, watching the change of shifts as the “day fish” follow each other to their favourite parts of the reef as if commuting to work.
Were there any negatives? Well, certainly not from our onboard or diving experiences, but you can’t help but be aware of the “invasion of the lionfish” which has happened at an incredible pace across the Caribbean, as this non-native species establishes itself in any suitable habitat. We spotted some big specimens during the week and where there are big ones there are small ones; Amanda spotting a tiny lionfish that confirmed their continued invasion. Efforts to eradicate them are almost certainly futile.
Despite the apparent remoteness and untouched nature of the area around West Caicos and French Cay, we were unfortunately reminded of the destructive activities of humans as we trained our binoculars on a sport fishing boat that was illegally fishing inside the conservation area. They were hauling aboard what appeared to be a tiger shark. It was very sad to witness and seemed completely pointless. Captain Amanda and the crew were also very unhappy and vowed to report it upon return to port.
As we neared the end of the trip, news came in of the path of a tropical storm (called Bertha and later upgraded to a hurricane) that had been lurching about to the south east. It would pass through the Turks and Caicos, possibly disrupting the following week’s itinerary, but we’d been lucky as it had worked out brilliantly.
Our week onboard the Turks and Caicos Aggressor was a great liveaboard experience, hugely rewarding for us as individuals and as a family. We had been attentively looked after by the Aggressor crew, the weather was good and we enjoyed great dives. We had indeed “lived the dream” – Turks and Caicos style.
Turks & Caicos Factfile
Geography
The Turks & Caicos Islands consist of 40 islands and cays.. The islands are located 550 miles southeast of Miami, Florida, just below the Bahamas chain and just to the east of Cuba and the island of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti.) Strictly speaking, the Turks and Caicos are located in the Atlantic Ocean, not the Caribbean Sea, though it is always mentioned as being “in the Caribbean”.
How To Get There
To reach The Turks & Caicos Islands, we travelled via Miami using a combination of British Airways and American Airlines.
Liveaboard Information
The Turks & Caicos Aggressor liveaboard is based out of Providenciales and runs year round itineraries.
The Aggressor Fleet run special “Family Weeks” on their Caribbean based liveaboards – dates can be found on the Aggressor Fleet website.
Full details of itineraries, schedules and contact information can be found on the Aggressor Fleet website at: www.aggressor.com
Turks & Caicos Accommodation
There are plenty of choices in Providenciales with a choice of budgets.
Prior to joining the liveaboard, we spent two nights at the modestly priced Villa Del Mar.
This two night stay proved to be a good idea, especially for our son Zac, ensuring that he wasn’t jet lagged and tired when we joined the Aggressor.
Visas
Visas are not required by British Citizens.
Divers travelling via the USA must ensure that they check on the latest entry requirements even if you are in transit only.
Language
English is the official language.
Currency
US Dollars is the official currency and Credit Cards are widely accepted in areas frequented by tourists.
Health
Visitors should ensure correct inoculations prior to departure. The latest recommendations can be obtained from any doctor.
Currents are certainly possible at some of the dive sites visited by the Aggressor, so a reasonable level of fitness will definitely be of help anyone participating in these dives.
Also, anyone with a proneness to seasickness should also be aware that some of the voyages (outbound, inbound and between the islands) can be rough.
Weather & Seasons
The Turks & Caicos Aggressor runs a year round itinerary, although it can be subject to changes/cancellation in the event of adverse weather, especially in the storm/hurricane season.
Dates Travelled
We travelled via Miami to the Turks & Caicos on 24th July 2014, departing on Saturday 2nd August.
Dive Sites Visited On Turks & Caicos Aggressor
Pinnacles
The Thunderdome
Chimney
Driveway
Magic Mushroom
Anchor
Half Mile
Rock And Roll
G-Spot
Gullies
Elephant Ear Canyon
Rocky Garden Interlude
Stairway
Diving Information
Nitrox is available on the Turks & Caicos Aggressor.
Diving is usually conducted from the dive deck of the Turks & Caicos Aggressor, or from an inflatable depending on the dive sites visited and the prevailing conditions.
It’s also a good idea to check that all of your equipment has survived the journey and that you’ve got everything you need before setting out.
Underwater Photographers Information
The Turks & Caicos Aggressor is well equipped for the needs of underwater photographers and videographers, with a large camera table, camera towels, fresh water rinses (filled daily) and plug points for charging strobes and batteries. The crew are also familiar with the needs of photographers/videographers and treat equipment with care and respect.
Other Useful Information – Books
Reef Fish Identification – Florida, Caribbean & Bahamas by Paul Humann and Ned DeLoach