The Most Amazing Caribbean Diving and Snorkeling Sites

MV Bianca C shipwreck, Grenada

Best for: Advanced scuba diving

This enormous “Titanic of the Caribbean” is a 600-foot Italian cruise liner that sank in 1961 after an explosion in the boiler room set fire to the ship’s stern. All but one of the 673 passengers and crew were saved. What puts the MV Bianca C at the top of several best-wreck-dive lists is its sheer size. To swim along the vast deck with spotted eagle rays or rest on the ocean bottom and look up at the behemoth bow are among the rare—and utterly unforgettable—experiences offered here. The depth of the Bianca C (75 to 165 feet) makes it accessible to only advanced divers. Divers looking for a shallower alternative can explore the famous 1867 HMS Rhone mail steamer wreck (30 to 90 feet deep) on BVI’s Virgin Gorda.

Topside Fun: Check out the MV Bianca C exhibit at the Grenada National Museum in St. George’s.

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Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park, Grenada

Best for: Scuba diving

Ten years ago, artist Jason deCaires Taylor directed the cranes that lowered his first cement-carved sculpture to the ocean floor just off Grenada’s west coast. Since then, Grenada Underwater Sculpture Park has grown to 65 life-size pieces. At an easily accessible depth of 15 to 25 feet, divers and snorkelers can see some of the park’s most arresting installations: a ring of 26 children holding hands, a “Lost Correspondent” working at a desk and typewriter, and 16 female forms lying in sand. Curious patterns of algae and coral growth are slowly carpeting the bodies in vibrant reds, pinks and greens. To see Taylor’s work near Cancun, visit the underwater MUSA (Museo Subacuático de Arte).

Topside Fun: Go garden hopping on this “Spice Island” to sample fresh spices and learn about Grenada’s herbal remedies.

Stingray City, Grand Cayman

Best for: Snorkeling

On a shallow sandbar in the North Sound of Grand Cayman Island, a group of southern stingrays began congregating several years ago when local fishermen would clean their catch and offload the scraps here. These opportunistic scavengers still gather at the sound of a boat motor. Though they live in the wild, they’re quick to swarm around snorkelers and scuba divers at Stingray City. Go at dawn before hordes of tourists arrive and you’ll experience beautiful golden light, calm-as-glass waters, and plenty of stingray attention, says Theresa Kaplan, PADI master diver trainer and the association’s global communications director.

Topside Fun: Hold a turtle at Cayman Turtle Farm research and conservation center. See blue iguanas at Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park.

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The Cenotes, Mexico’s Yucatan

Best for: Snorkeling or advanced scuba diving

For a completely different experience, try diving or snorkeling in a sacred Maya cenote. Thousands of these natural sinkholes punch through the Yucatan jungle floor to connect with a system of ancient sub-aquatic tunnels and caverns where fresh water from the surface mixes with saltwater from the sea. At Gran Cenote and Dos Ojos Cenote, between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, you can fin through crystal clear water studded with stunning formations of stalactites and stalagmites. Near Tulum, the Calavera Cenote is best-known for its 21-foot underwater stalactite called "The Fang," while Cenote Jailhouse is the place to go to check out incredible underwater formations and the chance to see prehistoric animal bones.

Topside Fun: Tour the cliffside Tulum Ruins, overlooking the ocean. You’ll also find zip line excursions at several aerial adventure parks in the area.

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Champagne Reef, Dominica

Best for: Snorkeling

Underwater volcanoes shape Dominica’s dramatic seabed landscape of craters, pinnacles, and geothermal vents that spew delightfully warm bubbles. Champagne Reef, along the shoreline near the town of Roseau, gives snorkelers and divers the unusual sensation of swimming through an endless glass of warm bubbly. Sea horses, frogfish, squid, angelfish, and the occasional octopus or hawksbill turtle are also drawn to the warmth of this volcanic area. Expect to see colorful corals and sponges, too. Scuba divers enjoy descending on this site by day, or at night when huge crabs and lobsters patrol the sea floor and the bubbles sparkle in the beam of a flashlight.

Topside Fun: Hike to land-based volcanic wonders. See towering pinnacles and a boiling lake shrouded in clouds. Soak in a hot springs pool or mud bath.

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The Blue Hole, Belize

Best for: Scuba diving

From space, the 300-foot wide and 400-foot deep Great Blue Hole looks like a massive cobalt eye in the turquoise sea. About 60 miles offshore from Belize City, this bucket-list dive made famous by Jacques Cousteau takes an entire day, with a two-hour boat ride each way. But the resounding consensus is that it’s worth it. Divers are rewarded with an otherworldly experience in this underwater sinkhole that was once a dry cave. Walls are studded with bizarre stalactite and stalagmite formations, and several varieties of sharks—bull, reef and hammerhead—roam the eerie dark blue waters. You'll also see midnight parrotfish cruising in the reef near the surface.

Topside Fun: Most dives include a lunch stop at Half Moon Caye, an uninhabited island and sanctuary for red-footed boobie birds.

Salt Pier, Bonaire

Best for: Scuba diving

Along the southern edge of Bonaire is a sprawling industrial salt-harvesting site with evaporating salt ponds; towering salt mountains; and the Cargill Salt Company’s loading pier, which doubles as a beloved local dive site. This easy, accessible shore dive has been compared to a cathedral experience. After a surface swim to the end of Salt Pier, you drop to the bottom at 60 feet to look up at light beams shining between the pier’s pillars, crisscrossed and encrusted with colorful sponges and corals. Massive schools of fish take refuge in the pillars’ shadows. “School after school glided right in front of my mask,” says Kaplan. “Then they began swirling into ever-expanding funnels as they made their way to the surface.”

Topside fun: Watch for pink flamingos around the nearby saltpans, one of the few breeding sites in the Southern Caribbean.

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Whale Sharks at Utila, Honduras

Best for: Snorkeling

The planet’s second largest barrier reef, the Mesoamerican Reef stretches 700 miles into Honduras’ Bay Islands and is a favorite of Scuba Diving magazine Sea Hero of the Year Rick MacPherson. It teems with colorful life and is and one of the few places in the world where you can see whale sharks year-round. Snorkelers and divers come for the thrill of watching these school-bus-sized filter feeders swim by with their huge mouths wide open to scoop up plankton. Utila Island is your best bet for swimming with the ocean’s largest fish on a snorkel tour or during a surface interval between dives.

Topside Fun: Tour the Iguana Station conservation center to see an endangered species that lives in the mangrove forests of this mostly undeveloped island.

Underwater Lava Pinnacles, Saba

Best for: Scuba diving

A 15-minute boat ride from the west coast of Saba takes divers to a cluster of unusual underwater volcanic formations that rise up from the deep. The dive sites—aptly named Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Third Encounter—offer a glimpse of a fantastically surreal world. You drop down and what gradually appears out of the infinite blue are mountains and spindly pinnacles coated in huge, colorful sea fans and sponges. Reef sharks and black tip sharks are often seen swimming circles around the tapered tip of the “Eye of the Needle” seamount just off of Third Encounter.

Topside Fun: After time to decompress, challenge yourself with a hike into the clouds up the 2,877-foot Mt. Scenery.

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Best for: Scuba diving

Near Little Tobago Island at the Keleston Drain dive site you’ll drift on a mild current to arrive at the largest known brain coral in the world. The massive 10-foot high, 16-foot wide dome is startling. Not only does it dwarf nearly everything else on this reef, but the greyish appearance and deep labyrinth of grooves really do look like the human brain. Made up of millions of tiny polyps, this fragile brain coral structure at 65 feet deep has been alive and well for several hundred years. Look for nurse sharks resting beneath it. Sea fans, sea whips, soft corals and sponges, barracuda, and large green morays also live in the dense reef habitat here.

Topside Fun: Experience island nightlife at Sunday School, Tobago’s weekly steel band street party in Buccoo village.

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Jamie Moore is a regular contributor to Smarter Travel. Her articles have appeared in USA Today, Yahoo Travel, Huffington Post, WestJet magazine, BBC Travel, and others. Follow her on Twitter @jmemoore.