Conception Island Diving Sites
Monday, May 21, 2007
023-51.000 N075-7.140 W
I've finally gotten a chance to dive at Conception Island and I'm very happy to report that it has the best diving that we've seen in the Bahamas. The coral at Conception is in quite good shape and there are lots of different kinds of sponges. Once again I see very few larger fish. There are lots of small to medium fish, but not a huge variety of types.
One very nice thing is that there are dive balls on the western edge of the island. These are sturdy moorings designed to support live-aboard dive boats. Most of these are installed right on the edge of wall, but a few are installed on coral mounds in shallow water allowing for exploration by those who don't want to dive the wall.
The top of the wall is between 55 and 80 deep and then drops away into the abyss. There's really no reason to list the maximum depth at these sites as you'd probably be dead if you reached it. For those of with submersibles, please let me know what's down there! From what I've seen, there's very little difference between the dive balls as far as the structure of the coral and wall is concerned. Visibility was always spectacular at 100-200'.
One thing that is consistently missing is what I would call large fish. In my very unscientific language, a small fish is less than 6", medium fish are 6" to 24" and big fish are over 24". You see lots of small and medium fish. I can only guess that the larger fish have been fished out. You definately see a lot of sports fishing boats working the edge of the reef.
I'm sure that all of these balls have names, but not knowing what they are, I'll simply number them from 1 to 5, starting at the north and working south. Here are the GPS locations of the balls and a description of them:
- 1: 23-49.284N 75-07.734W
This was the first ball that we dove. It was about 1.8 miles as the crow flies from West Bay. The ball is at the edge of the wall which is at about 75'. If you swim to the S you'll quickly find a large, deep sand spur that you have to swim across before the coral starts again. As a result I'd recommend swimming N if the current permits. We had virtually no current the day that we dove it. We swam N along the reef at about 75-85' until we hit about 1700 lbs of air and were treated to beautiful coral and sponges. There are huge elephant ear sponges and small to medium barrel sponges. We encountered a lot of reef sharks who made several passes at a good distance to check us out. We returned along the top of the reef which varied from 65 to 75'. - 2: 23-49.972N 75-07.480W
This was our 3rd dive and so far the prettiest one that we've done as of yet. The ball is anchored on top of a huge coral mound at the edge of the reef in about 55'. The top of the coral mound is covered with small coral heads, sponges and has lots of small fish. Half way down the mound on the SW side you'll find an overhang which leads into large cave which has a tunnel leading downward to the base of the mound at about 87'. It narrows to about 5' wide x 3' high, but there's plenty of room to swim through. I surprised several large grouper hiding in there. Heading S from this head you'll find other other spectacular overhangs, some of which are probably 40' deep. We saw lots of small and medium fish and even some large grouper. We also had some large reef sharks keeping tabs on us. All in all this was a fantastic dive site. - 3: 23-49.737N 75-07.301W
This was our 4th dive and we were finally blessed with some sun. Most of our other dives were done in heavy clouds, so the colors were lacking. This ball is anchored right on the edge of the reef in about 55' of water with the dinghy hanging over the edge of the wall. You definately didn't want to drop anything! We dropped to 75-80' and swam S into a light current. Unlike ball 2, the overhangs were much less pronounced, but were covered with wonderful sponges and coral. Narrow sand channels intersected the coral at some points providing interesting areas to swim through. About half way to ball 4 you'll find a huge anchor chain covered in sponges that descends over the edge of the wall and disappears into the abyss. I wonder if the anchor or the ship is attached to the deep end! At this point we headed to the top of the reef and worked our way back.
The nice thing is that the top of the reef is fairly high, so we were typically at 55-65'. The sand leading to the reef is very steep at some points and reminded me of ski moguls complete with tracks running down them courtesy of snails. As usual, the sand was covered garden eels. The light on the top of the reef was wonderful and lit up all of the corals and sponges. We saw quite a few medium-large grouper (yellow mouth, tiger and Nassau) and found a nurse shark hiding under an overhang. - 4: 23-49.626N 75-07.173W
This is the second ball that we dove and it was about 2.5 miles as the crow flies from West Bay. The ball is located slightly off of the wall and is anchored on top of a coral mound. The top of the mound was at 33' and the bottom of the mound was at 47'. The coral is in OK shape and there are a lot of different sponges. We were surprised at the number and variety of small-medium fish. The depth of this makes it great for those who don't want to dive 75+ feet at the wall and it makes a nice decompression stop.
The wall is about 100' to the west and the sandy bottom slopes quickly downward to the edge of the reef which is at about 75'. I swam to the N as there's a wide sand spur to the S which I didn't want to transverse. The coral and sponges were beautiful. When I decided to return I swam through an undercut and discovered my first Lionfish. It was very docile and didn't mind me approaching it. The Lionfish is not indigenous to this area and I know that there is a large amount of concern over its appearance as it is very aggressive. After leaving the Lionfish I headed to the top of the reef which varied from 55' to 80' on the way back. - 5: 23-49.464N 75-07.096W
We opted to go back to ball 2 for our final dive, so I'll have to report on this the next time that I come back.
Log ID: 963
Photos/Video:
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