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St. Croix Dive Map

The Wrecks at Butler Bay

This is an easy beach entry. You have a long surface swim ahead of you so you may want to alternate between finning chest up and chest down. When lying on your back, checking your heading of 315 degrees. You will be looking at a hillside as you swim out. Line up two easily identifiable landmarks while you are on course. If you keep these two in line, you will stay on course and avoid constant compass rechecking. Look for the buoys* that mark the wreck of the Suffolk Maid and the Coakley Bay. Visit the Rosa Maria and the Coakley Bay as air and bottom time permit. Head in a southerly direction to where the bottom is 60 ft. deep. Continue at this 60 ft. depth until you encounter the 110 ft. Suffolk Maid, and after it, the barge. Continuing South-Southeast into 45 ft. of water, you will encounter the Northwind ocean tug. If you now follow a 100 degree heading back toward shore, you can enjoy the shallow reef that parallels the shore as you return to the beach.

*You should call Scuba Shack in Fredricksted (772-3483) to find out the current status of the buoys before attempting to find the wrecks in this manner. If the buoys are missing, either plan on doing a lot of looking or sing up for a boat dive with Scuba Shack.

As of this printing (3/03) there are 2 bouys marking the wrecks. The Northern mast buoy is located on the anchor chain of the Coakley Bay in 52 ft. of water.

The Southern bouy is attached directly to the Suffolk Maid at the amidships cargo bay, starboard side in 48 ft. of water (deck).

Scuba Shack installed and maintains these buoys. They are happy to answer any inquiries concerning them.

Cane Bay - Dive Shop

Swim out on 340 degrees (a soft right out of the boat ramp). I usually spend 5 – 10 minutes at the surface and drop down in about 15 – 20 ft of water. You’ll hit a sand flat after the shallow coral gardens and it will start to turn deeper as you swim past nice patch coral heads. As you reach 40 – 50 ft., you should see large pinnacles looming up in front of you with sand chutes continuing to descend between them. Watch your depth here! I usually plane off at 60 – 70 ft. next to the pinnacles and let the sand chute drop down under me as you turn left, (West) and weave in and out of the pinnacles, the wall rises up and the pinnacles turn into buttress formations (like rolling hills) as you continue West, the top of the wall rises to 40 ft of depth and usually when I get down to 1300 – 1500lbs of air, I’ll come back to the boat ramp on 120 degrees and pass the mooring ball on my way home.

After this dive, you can now do a deeper dive to the right and target the dramatic pinnacle area (littered with old anchors) or a nice shallow dive (40 ft) to left by the mooring.

By the way, for the next half mile heading West from Cane Bay there are nice buttress formations that turn down at 40 – 50 ft, so you can do a nice dive from any shoreline access point.

P.S. About a half a dozen times a year we will get a groundswell wave pattern that breaks perfectly parallel to shore (as opposed to our normal easterly wave break from the right). This swell pattern can set up a modest rip current right in front of the boat ramp. Just move left or right if you find yourself struggling to get on to shore.

The Frederiksted Pier

Just park along Strand Street and do a nice easy shore entry. Submerge near the dinghy dock (10’) and follow rock jetty around to front of loading docl (20’). Go to Cleat #2 (only about 30 feet in a westerly direction) follow trail of debris to Cleat #3 (best stuff on the whole dive here). Take a heading of approximately 320 degrees and swim five minutes across harbor bottom (30ft max) to intersect new pier. Turn right (East) and swim towards shore. (Look carefully for seahorses on this leg, they’ll be near bottom holding onto something small and cylindrical in shape.) Make a right at rock jetty and swim around corner to exit.

1. – Remember you are in a harbor, stay away from the surface (run heavy!)

2. – At night watch out for occasional seawasps (Stinging jellfish like shallow water and lights.)

Lobster Ledges

This is a nice shallow night dive, or even good for exploring on snorkel during the day. Enter the water at your normal entrance to the East of 2dive4. Swim North out past the breakers on the surface. Continuing on the surface, head West until you have just passed the long white house with the blue pyramid shaped roofs (it is the second house to the West of 2dive4). Descend here and determine your depth. If you are deeper than 20 feet, go South. If shallower go North. Once you are at 20 feet, the ledges run along a line from East to West. They are spread over approximately 200 feet (the distance of the 2 houses after the white with blue roofed house) and are all in 20 feet of water +/- 5 feet. Be sure to take your flashlight even during the day. You will want to get a good look at that nurse shark, turtle or other critter that lives under these ledges.

Northstar

As you stand at the entry, you’ll see the mooring ball close in and off to your left. There is about a 60 ft walk through shoaling water over bottom rocks before you get to chest deep water. Now do a surface swim towards the ball. Take a heading on the ball and drop down and swim to the lip of the wall, but stay on top (35 ft).

Turn left (westerly) follow edge of drop for 8 – 10 minutes (top of wall drops down at 45 ft). Now descend to 60 ft and turn back easterly. In a few minutes you will enter a vertical walled canyon that breaks away to your right. Follow it around into a little cavern. There is an anchor embedded into the wall above the cavern entrance (look carefully) and one laying in the open in front of the cavern.

The wall here is pretty close to shore so you can run down to 1200lbs before heading home. The mooring ball is right above the cavern and its 140 degrees back to the entry site. If you choose to continue East, 15 minutes at an average pace will give you a due South (180 degrees) return heading, anything less than that, come on 160 degrees.

Off The Wall

On rougher days, the entry at the beach bar is often acceptable for this dive. Go out on a soft right 340 degrees till you hit 55 ft and break right or easterly, the patch coral heads start developing nicely and you should make it to or past the mooring ball, then at 1500 lbs, come up into shallower water at the top of the wall and navigate by depth (35ft or so) back to where the coral heads start breaking up into sand flats. Come back to shore at 150 degrees to the beach bar.

The Waves (Pavillions)

This dive, traditionally called “The Pavillion” by locals is one of the healthiest and biologically diverse dive sites on St. Croix.

When entering from the hotel, please exercise extreme caution in the “break zone”. You should move expeditiously to get past the wave break area, then stop and put on your fins. A full BC, slightly bent knees and nice high steps will help you negotiate the tricky footing here. If it looks too rough, consider the alternate entry(off the wall).

A compass heading of 340 degrees should put you over the wall a little to the right of the buoy (5 – 8 minutes at the surface will put you in 15 – 20 ft of water and 5 – 8 minutes underwater will have you at the drop off). At this point turn left and navigate by your chosen depth. Eventually as you continue in the general direction of Cane Bay Beach, (West) the bottom contour will start to flatten out, the coral formations will draw you in to 30 – 40 ft and the coral heads will start to break up. When this happens, you are now directly in front of the beach bar next door, a 10 minute swim at 150 degrees will bring you there, a 15 minute swim at 120 degrees will bring you back to The Waves.

Watch for a possible current on this dive, my dive plans take this into account pretty much, but you have no exits East of the hotel, that is the main thing to bear in mind.

Rust Op Twist

As you look out from the shore, you’ll see the mooring buoy well off to your left. On this dive, that is your turn around point (unless you get below 1500 lbs before you reach it) if you don’t see it, you will see the pipeline no matter what depth you are at.

The initial thirty foot walk to chest deep water is pretty treacherous (large coral heads and rocks, irregular bottom, lots of urchins) so I wouldn’t want to have to deal with large waves at the same time. Skip this dive on a rough day.

The bottom here is fairly nondescript in the shallows but at 30 ft it blossoms wonderfully into a splendid biology dive with just enough bottom topography to make it interesting. There is a possibility of current here so do a current assessment before descent.

Jimmy's Surprise

Possibly the surprise which Jimmy got was the currents that sweep this site. Or, perhaps it was the size and number of triggerfish. Maybe he had dived the gently sloping reef a few times before he found the pinnacle at 100 feet. Who knows? (Webmaster's footnote: Local lore has it that Jimmy's surprise was the numerous reef sharks that he discovered during a dive on this site.) True to form, the current is screaming. It is marginal whether the site is diveable, but we all agree to give it a try. We descend, gripping the mooring line, and stay close to the bottom to avoid the worst of the current. At 60 feet the reef top is fairly flat and our slow progress over the slope against the current gives us time to appreciate the sharply defined colors on the mounds of great star coral. Matt encrusting tunicates smear the rocks like peppermint ice cream and sea rods and plumes bow respectfully to the current. Luckily, a 10 foot high ridge spans most of the gap between the buoy line and the pinnacle, so we duck behind this as soon as we can to avoid the worst of the current.

As we approach the pinnacle, a school of horse-eye jacks mocks our awkward progress as they slip effortlessly through the water. The pinnacle starts at 100 feet, just as the main slope turns to sand and begins its slide down to giddy depths. Deepwater sea fans sprawl out from the walls of the pinnacle, giving this impressive eminence a dark majestic quality. The base is undercut so it sits like an obelisk on the slope. Perhaps the squirming lobster underneath the overhang got its tail caught when they set out the dive site this morning. A queen triggerfish seems convinced there is something tasty underneath and directs a squirt of water at the sand to see if she can uncover anything.

The deepwater sea fans dominate the scene but looking through this web we find dainty Christmas tree hydroids and a patch of feather hydroids completely covering a coral head like a corpse on a hilltop. They look so much like feathers that it is hard to believe they are colonies of small animals. Even more surprising to many divers is that these animals have a free-swimming stage in their life cycle. To reproduce, the hydroids produce free-swimming medusae. Medusa have a very similar appearance to jellyfish, complete with trailing tentacles. Hydroids in all stages of their life cycle carry a stinging mechanism, which will cause anything from a slight rash to a painful sting.

Behind the pinnacles, the dive leader takes us up the back slope to what becomes literally one of the high spots of the dive. At the top of the pinnacle we have to cling on, faced with the current that is accentuated by the pinnacle. It is like standing on a cliff top in the full force of a gale. Our trip back to the boat is going to be a quick one, so we spend our bottom time around the base of the pinnacle. Shy stripy hamlets peak out at us from the cover of gorgonians and we are fascinated by the black durgons(part of the triggerfish family). They use the cryptic terrain as a system of tunnels giving them an underground home. The unusual ability of triggerfish to swim backward means they are highly agile. Nevertheless we are surprised to see them disappear into holes that seem barely large enough and reappear with equal dexterity some feet away.

When our time is up we let the current do the work and concentrate on hooking the mooring line as we sweep past. Hanging on the line for our safety stop we get an aerial view of a ceaselessly moving carpet of black durgons. It is hard to imagine what makes them so busy. Perhaps they too are looking for Jimmy's Surprise.

Thanks to Mike of Cane Bay Divers.

The Trench

If you don’t mind a fair surface wind (.3 mile one way) this can be a great shore dive unlike any other you will see on St. Croix. The Trench is a long rock ledged corridor that contains almost unlimited nooks, crannies and small “critter caves”. Taking a flashlight and your camera is a must. At The Trench you will be greeted by an army of blackbar soldier fish that seem to be looking at you from everywhere. This area is also teaming with abundance of tropical fish and other aquatic life. The occasional reef shark, moray eel and lobsters are all on the list of usual suspects on this dive.

Make your entrance from 2Dive4 then surface swim outside the breakers in a westerly direction until you round the bend where you can no longer see 2Dive4. You will then spot the two red roofed structures just above a pool built up from the ground with natural rocks and mortar. The smaller of these structures has a small balcony. Align yourself with the most southerly and northerly railing posts and you will be in line with your objective. As you descend, you will see an unusually sandy area which marks the end of The Trench. Turn north to enter the corridor. I suggest exploring here until 1500 psi, then turn due east and head home in 30 ft to 40ft or less. This route will lead you through beautiful coral gardens. At 1000psi surface, take a final heading and continue until 500 psi.

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