St. Croix Scuba Diving

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St. Croix has the largest coral reef of any Caribbean island, making it one of the best scuba diving and snorkeling islands in the Caribbean.

Our YouTube Scuba Video
Scuba Dive Map of St. Croix.
Dive Centers and Specific Dives

St. Croix has several diverse types of diving rarely found in one location - choose between wall diving, shore diving, reef diving, wreck diving or pier and night dives. Check out the new "Dive the island passport" which allows you to experience all the different types of St. Croix scuba diving (wall, reef, pier, wreck) all in one day or over the course of several days!

"I thought the highlight of our St. Croix trip was seeing my 75 year old father get his open-water scuba certification.  However, the next day, diving in 25 feet of water, right in front of Villa Soleil, we swam for 35 minutes with wild dolphins.  In all my years of scuba diving I haven't experienced this before!"
-KG

St. Croix Dive Centers

Anchor Dive 800-532-Dive (3483)
Cane Bay Dive Shop 340-773-9913
Cap'n Dick's Scubawest 800-352-0107
Dive Experience 800-235-9047
St. Croix Ultimate Bluewater Adventure 877-567-1367
N2theBlue 1-866-772-BLUE (3483)
Caribbean Sea Adventures 340-773-2628

Are you physically challenged or handicapped but interested in diving?
Want to see what the St. Croix reef looks like?
Then sit back, push play and enjoy our St. Croix Scuba Diving video featuring "The Scooter"!
(If you don't see the video click "allow blocked content".)

Areas to dive on St. Croix
The largest of the three U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Croix is shamefully overlooked by too many scuba divers. Of the three islands, it alone offers diving's gold standard--wall dives that start in 30 feet of water and plunge thousands of feet beyond safe diving depths. It's also one of the best places in the Caribbean for new divers, so it's anybody's guess why the place isn't crawling with divers.

Dive shops in Christiansted specialize in diving the North Shore wall sites. Topography ranges from sloping walls at sites like Rust-Op-Twist to sheer vertical plunges at Salt River Canyon West and pinnacle-topped slopes like Jimmy's Surprise.

For afternoon dives, Christiansted operators frequent mid-depth spur-and-groove sites outside the harbor at sites like Eagle Ray, which has a maximum depth of 50 to 60 feet, and fish-feeding dives on the Chez Barge.

You can also shore dive from Cane Bay and Davis Bay, where the wall dips in to within 75 to 150 yards of shore. Don't have a shore diving buddy? Don't worry. On-site shops can help you find one or lead you on a guided shore dive over the wall.

From Frederiksted on the west shore of the island, reef dives are offered on the dense sloping patch reef that erupts from the sandy bottom. The west end is almost always in the lee, so conditions are usually dead calm. Sheltered from the elements, the coral growth is dense and healthy and packed with reef fish. A popular example is the misnamed Swirling Reef of Death--a calm, shallow site with plenty of diverse reef life.

Divers of all skill levels also enjoy the armada of wreck dives found off Frederiksted. The flagship is the encrusted freighter Rosaomaira. Four other wrecks, ranging from a trawler to a discarded underwater habitat, are grouped together near the Rosa and can be explored on a single dive.

If there is one must-see dive on the West shore, it has to be the Frederiksted Pier. The old pier was damaged by Hurricane Hugo and torn down to make way for a new pier to accommodate the cruise ships that occasionally call on the island. The heavily encrusted rubble from the old pier remains beneath the new one, preserving a fantastic night dive where you're virtually guaranteed to see seahorses and moray eels. If you dive the pier after the large cruise ships have pulled out, keep an eye on the sand flats for old bottles  uncovered by the prop wash--some date back to the 1600s.

Scubadiving.com has more information on diving in the US Virgin Islands.

St. Croix Dive Resources

Looking for diving equipment at a great price?  Try Scuba Equipment USA.
HSA International has great resources for disabled divers
SCUBA Accessories: SCUBA Necessities

Specific St. Croix Dives

Salt River Canyon West Wall Dive
Depth: 40 to 130 feet.
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced Diver.
What You'll See: Nothing but vertical wall and deep blue water at this intersection of a submerged canyon and the north shore wall. Purple tube sponges, deep water gorgonians and black coral saplings all cling to the wall that swarms with schools of yellowtail snapper, black durgon and creole wrasse. This is also a great spot to see turtles and spotted eagle rays.

Cane Bay Drop-off Dive
Depth: 130-plus feet.
Skill Level: Novice to advanced Diver.
What You'll See: A sloping wall headed down at 40 feet from a shallow coral garden of sea whips and brain corals dominated by big gray angels, schools of creole wrasse, black durgon, honeycomb trunkfish and blue chromis.

Jimmy's Surprise Dive
Depth: 55 to 130 feet.
Skill Level: Advanced Diver.
What You'll See: A dome-shaped pinnacle rising from the edge of the drop-off and covered with deepwater sea fans, barrel and vase sponges. Look for nurse sharks in the undercut ledge at the base of the dome and sea turtles up top.

Davis Bay Dive
Depth: 30 to 130-plus feet.
Skill Level: Intermediate to advanced Diver.
What You'll See: Descend at the buoy and head east to a picket-fence line of pinnacles; head west past a series of canyons and sand channels that spills down the sloping wall.

Rosaomaira Dive
Depth: 60 to 110 feet.
Skill Level: Novice to advanced Diver.
What You'll See: Pretty in pink and red sponges, the 177-foot-long freighter sits upright flaunting her 12 years worth of marine growth. Rosa is the largest of the Frederiksted wrecks and home to schools of horse-eye jacks, snapper and grouper.

Sprat Hole Dive
Depth: 25 to 100 feet.
Skill Level: Novice Diver.
What You'll See: A horseshoe-shaped sand bowl in the sloping West Shore patch reef that's surrounded by a rim of healthy hard and soft corals. The usual Caribbean reef fish suspects--from neon gobies to parrotfish--hang out here, along with a wide selection of moray eels.