A Bahamas Favorite Continues To Deliver
When I began working as a dive photojournalist for Skin Diver magazine in the mid-1980s I was like other photojournalists of that era, Rick Frehsee and Michael Lawrence. We all lived near enough to Miami International Airport so we could easily fly to Caribbean destinations to do articles. Our small posse was frequently sent on assignment to “the islands.”
The beat we covered included dive operators and resorts in the Florida Keys, Cayman Islands, the Bay Islands of Honduras, St. Lucia, Bonaire, Belize, and the Bahamas that supported the magazine with advertising. Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas (SCDB) on southwestern New Providence Island was one of the largest advertisers of that era.
I visited that resort nearly once a year for more than a decade, enjoying their hospitality and seeing the dive product evolve as I wrote articles for the magazine. In later years, because of the quality and reliability of the photo opportunities, I staged personal events and assignments there, such as six unique Shark Shootouts and underwater seminars for shark photography enthusiasts. We also booked several catalog shoots for major dive equipment manufacturers. I had discovered what Hollywood already knew when they chose to shoot numerous major films there.
The best diving is in a consistent lee so that when the winter winds blow through the Bahamas, the land mass of New Providence typically leaves these dive sites calm. The visibility is generally excellent because of the proximity to the Tongue of the Ocean (TOTO), a deep ocean trench that plunges to 6,600 feet (2,012 meters) and separates Andros and New Providence islands. As a bonus, a healthy population of Caribbean reef sharks is at several dive sites near the TOTO, and now there are as many as 40 shipwrecks. For decades this part of the Bahamas was a happening place for underwater productions, including Shark Week episodes.
While New Providence has a long history of marine calamities and piracy, Stuart Cove has acquired, cleaned, and sunk most of the modern shipwrecks on this side of the island as a private-sector initiative to create dive attractions. Having been involved in a few shipwreck projects, I know how expensive and time-consuming they are. To have done 40 of them boggles my mind. Artificial reefs are the gifts that keep on giving and an investment in dive infrastructure available to any dive operation or private yacht that chooses to dive them.
For all that legacy, I hadn’t visited Southwest New Providence since 2018, when I was on a photo shoot to illustrate DAN’s dive safety products for their online store. It was time for a return, especially considering the stony coral tissue loss disease and coral bleaching of 2023 that swept through the Caribbean.
Those events changed the complexion of many of my favorite dive destinations. I had to find out if Southwest New Providence would still deliver.
This is Now
Having spent so much time in the Coral Triangle recently, good diving close to home was a privilege I was eager to experience again. My first dive on this trip was to the wreck of the Willaurie. This one had a bit of nostalgia attached to it. It was a 130-foot (40-m) freighter used to carry mail around the Bahamas. The ship was incapacitated, sank while under tow, and came to rest at Clifton Pier.
I saw the ship there in 1988, while standing on the cliff above and looking down at the relentless waves beating it against the rocks. I was with Stuart Cove, and he said, “That will make a good wreck, but I had better move fast!” It had to float again to not get smashed to smithereens on the shoreline. Cove’s team soon arrived with welders and pumps to patch and refloat the derelict. The next challenge was to move it offshore.
The ship prematurely took on water while being towed and sank again in about 50 feet (15 m) of water not far from Gouding Cay which turned out to be a perfect location for a shipwreck. There’s generally no current, and the ship sits perfectly upright. The plywood walls that once sheltered cargo and crew amidships are now gone, leaving only the bow, wheelhouse, and metal ribbed cage that supported the superstructure.
Purple tube sponges as well as other barrel and encrusting sponges of fantastic color now cloak the wreck. Angelfish commonly flit about, nibbling on sponges, and a resident school of horse-eye jacks is often in the midwater background.
The propeller is another great photo setup, although it is quite different now than before the 2023 warmwater event. I didn’t think of sponges as being susceptible to the same conditions as bleached Acropora corals, but the crimson sponges that used to cover the propeller blades are mostly gone. The yellow tube sponges along the ship’s hull still flourish. Comparing images from different times illustrates the shifting baseline and how some species are better suited to resist the ravages of climate change.
Even though the wreck is engaging, at 130 feet (40 m) in length it’s hard to spend a whole hour exploring the Willaurie. Most underwater tours include a swim around the area, which includes the Anthony Bell, a 90-foot tugboat intentionally sunk on November 17, 2009. A YouTube video shows what the wreck looked like that day and the protocols used to make the ship land upright. The Anthony Bell doesn’t have the encrustation of the Willaurie, despite being in the same area and spending plenty of time underwater. Between the two wrecks, I would spend more time on the Willaurie for its color, texture, and the fish it hosts.
El Ray of Hope, featured on the cover of this issue of Alert Diver, is my all-time favorite shipwreck on New Providence. Situated just off the TOTO, it provides the opportunity to dive the crest of the wall and cruise a little inshore to enjoy a beautifully decorated shipwreck and the marine life in residence.
Resting at about 50 feet (15 m), the ship is a 200-foot (61-m) Haitian freighter sunk in July 2003. It sits on the sand adjacent to the old and mostly scattered Bahama Mama and a newer tugboat, the Big Crab, intentionally sunk in 2015. Both the intact wrecks are perfectly upright on the seafloor.
El Ray of Hope has a good amount of marine life, with several large resident black groupers, and nurse sharks and Caribbean reef sharks consistently swim past. They don’t go out of their way to come extraordinarily close, but they are not skittish. Other usual suspects include bar jacks at cleaning stations, butterflyfish amid the sponge-cloaked davits and the windlass, and green sea turtles occasionally passing by.
For wide-angle enthusiasts, there are always the colorful strobe-lit foregrounds with shark silhouettes in the distance. The sponges are quite mature on this wreck, so color abounds everywhere. The companionway ceilings hold exhalation bubbles from thousands of passing divers, and a clever camera angle can reveal reflections of your dive buddy in the mirrorlike surface. While the holds amidship tend not to be very interesting, both the bow and stern are excellent. This is another relatively shallow wreck, so you will have ample time and light.
Adding a bin of bait and a shark feeder changes the dive’s complexion. Of the two commercial dive operations on Southwest New Providence — Sandals and SCDB — only SCDB conducts shark-interaction dives. They don’t regularly stage them on the Ray of Hope,but they can be done by special request with very small groups. There generally isn’t enough room around the wreck’s perimeter to keep the divers separated far enough from the shark action. It is difficult to control what happens behind the spectating divers staged along the deck railings — the sharks can come from below or overhead. A flat, sandy bottom provides considerably greater safety because it eliminates the approach from below.
The shark feeders prefer a sand bottom at a nearby site called The Arena. The action happens at around40 feet (12 m) with divers arranged in a circular array around the feeder. The feeder wears a helmet and full chain-mail suit and carefully controls the pace of the encounter by choosing when and where to introduce bait. They use a short pole spear to retrieve bait from a secure box and deliver it to the sharks rather than hand-feeding.
While shark feeding dives aren’t for everyone, they are productive here for those who enjoy them, since this locale delivers on sheer shark quantity and reliability. You can count on scores of Caribbean reef sharks to attend the feed, with a few nurse sharks and black groupers joining the fray. More sand means more detritus in suspension during an active shark feed, which is the main trade-off when deciding whether to shoot at Ray of Hope, Big Crab, or The Arena. Each is just a few fin-kicks from the others.
While DAN doesn’t necessarily endorse shark feeding, they recognize that it is common in various parts of the world and a popular aspect of diving Southwest New Providence.
We saw the Ray of Hope a third time as a waypoint on our swim along Heineken Wall. For all the times I have dived the shipwrecks here, I had never taken the time to putz along the wall. It was easy to reach, adjacent to the wrecks, and almost a straight line from where we had moored, making navigation a breeze.
Some nice sponges were jutting from the wall, and there was always a shark or two casually cruising in the background to add to the composition. I was surprised to discover how many groupers there were and how mellow both the tiger and Nassau variants were. Larger sponges were deeper down the wall, but for this dive I was happy with the groupers, sharks, and butterflyfish that occupied the upper slope.
Perhaps the most unusual wreck is one of the largest: the Sea Trader, which was also the one closest to being lost. The ship is 250 feet (76 m) long and was in perfect working order as a fuel transport vessel in the Bahamas and southern Caribbean when the owner decided he didn’t want it anymore. He didn’t want one of his competitors to have it, so he donated it to SCDB. The ship needed a thorough cleaning and decontamination. For the baffled hulls for the fuel compartments, the crew had to cut openings in the bulkheads to allow egress out of the hull through the compartments.
El Sea Trader was sunk in 2016 and safely settled upright, but a passing hurricane moved it to the wall’s edge. The bow hangs over the precipice at about 80 feet (24 m), so about a quarter of the ship dangles into the blue, while the stern is at about 45 feet (14 m). Another hurricane might knock it over the edge, but for now it’s an awesome wreck. The site is especially popular for the wreck-diving certifications offered on the island because it is safely penetrable, and the depths are manageable.
Deeper drop-offs such as Razorback Wall (El mundo submarino de Jacques Cousteau) y los documentales Shark Wall are where you will likely find huge orange elephant ear sponges. It is also where the indigo water from the TOGO is startling in contrast to the vibrant red rope and azure vase sponges that punctuate the edge of the precipice. Large angelfish and schools of horse-eye jacks are common, and an impressive school of Atlantic spadefish occasionally appears in the midwater depths.
While there’s not much reason to go below 80 feet (24 m) on most of the Southwest New Providence dive sites, other than an exploratory wall plunge, a few very shallow-water attractions are off that coast. I doubt it would occupy a scuba diver for an hour, but the underwater sculpture garden, including Ocean Atlas, is popular for snorkelers and those on SNUBA.
The artwork by Jason deCaires Taylor was installed in 2014, and he said it depicts “a local Bahamian girl carrying the weight of the ocean above her in reference to the Ancient Greek myth of Atlas, the Titan who held up the heavens.” The statue is the largest singular sculpture ever placed underwater. It sits at 17 feet (5 m) and reaches barely below the surface at low tide.
Southwest Reef is a lovely spur-and groove coral reef at just 10 to 25 feet (3 to 8 m). While the reef is not as pristine as it was the last time I visited — the antler corals are largely dead after the 2023 warmwater episode — some of the more temperature-resistant boulder corals, particularly star corals, survived. Others seem to be making a comeback, with new coral growth evident.
With its abundant marine life, variety of shipwrecks, thrilling shark encounters, and stunning walls, Southwest New Providence Island still delivers.
Cómo bucear en este lugar
Cómo llegar: Many major North American and international airlines fly to Nassau (NAS), including American, Delta, United, JetBlue, Spirit, Southwest, Air Canada, and British Airways. Regional carriers such as Bahamasair, Silver Airways, and Tropic Ocean Airways likewise offer direct and connecting flights from various cities in North America.
The Bahamas is a foreign country, and normal passport protocols apply for entry. The return is easier because you can clear U.S. customs at the Nassau airport, including Global Entry, and land at the domestic concourse of your home airport.
Operadores de buceo: Two commercial dive operations serve this part of New Providence. Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas is a dive operation (stuartcove.com), and dive lodging packages are available via . Sandals has an in-house dive operation for the Sandals Royal Bahamian, their all-inclusive resort on Cable Beach (sandals.com).
Condiciones: Water temperatures for this part of the Bahamas range from 80°F to 87°F (27°C to 31°C) in the summer to about 72°F to 80°F (22°C to 27°C) in the winter. A 3 mm wetsuit is usually sufficient for most dive days. While it is possible to lose dives to winter winds from the wrong direction or a tropical storm or hurricane, most dives off Southwest New Providence are close enough to the shoreline to have leeside protection. The more distant dives (Southwest Reef, Razorback, and Shark Wall) are more exposed to weather. Most wrecks are shallow and don’t allow penetration, but a few can be penetrated — those have compartments with intentionally cut swim-throughs in the bulkheads for diver safety.
Explore Más
See more of this special Bahamas destination in a bonus photo gallery, and watch these videos to learn more about two of the ships purposefully sunk as artificial reefs.
© Alert Diver – Q1 2026