I’ve done a lot of diving these past few years but you’d be surprised to hear that I’ve never done any diving in the Caribbean. With a couple days in Punta Cana, it was high time that I rectify that.
Unique diving experiences in the Dominican
Wanting to spend an afternoon doing a 2-tank dive, Emile, the manager behind Sea Pro Divers, suggested that we do some of the epic dives within a 30 minute boat ride reach from the dive shop. My only request that one of them be a wreck dive and Emile was happy to make that happen.
Communication with Sea Pro Divers was pretty smooth via e-mail and as discussed, our Sea Pro Divers boat came to pick us up by the resort’s beach and whisked us away over to the dive shop at the Dreams Palm Beach resort to gear up.
Arriving at the dive shop, we were greeted by Rodolfo, dive master of 9 years. He was extremely friendly and helped us gear up with our wet suit our fins and mask.
Rodolfo then gave us a quick briefing on different hand signals he uses and off we went to our boat.
Astron wreck dive site
After 30 minutes on the boat we arrived at our dive site and even from the boat, I knew we were in for a treat. The sunk merchant ship was so big that you could see the front and back of the ship sticking out from the water, causing waves to crash over it.
We spent 45 minutes in the water for this one with the highlights being the wreck itself, weaving in and out of various ruins, diving through openings that took us through the hull of the ship. One neat fish I saw was this flat fish with two biggest eyes I’ve ever seen.
For my first wreck dive, this was quite the experience. Surrounded by towering hull walls, massive propellers and old ladders that used to take sailors to the deck, there were so many things to look at that it didn’t matter that there weren’t that many fish.
Channel dive site
For our second dive, we got to explore a totally different terrain. Where the Astron wreck was all about looking at huge objects in the water, in this dive, we had to traverse through narrow corridor channels and to find schools of tiny fish hiding in dark corners. It was challenging at times to squeeze through the narrow canyons in the water but the challenge was a fun one.
In one of the photos below, all you see if blurry streaks of red-ish light. We were in a cave at this point of the dive and with my flashlight, I could see thousands of baby snapper fish. It was quite the sight to see but sadly too dark to capture on my small camera.
Other notable sightings were these huge sea urchins in their little nooks. I also spotted something that looked like a cross between a spider and crab but honestly don’t know what it was. Scattered around everywhere were these lovely fan-like coral that majestically waved back and forth with the surges in current.
Overall experience
I quite enjoyed our diving experience with Rodolfo and our captain, Rafael (a.k.a. La Loca). Both were very attentive to our needs. When ready to start our dive, Rafael helped strap on our BCD and tank and also made sure we got to our jump point okay. Coming back from the dive, he helped us with our fins and guided helped take off our BCD and tank.
Our two tank dive was no frills, exactly what we wanted and a smooth operation.
About Sea Pro Divers
Sea Pro Divers operates out of 16 different locations across the Dominican Republic. For us staying at the Catalonia Royal Bavaro, the closest resort to us was the Dreams Palm Beach resort which is why we geared up there.
They offer a number of diving options including the wreck and coral dives we did but they also have bigger excursions out to Catalina Island and Saona Island which I’ve heard a lot of good things about. If we had more time, I would have totally done one of those trips.
Find out more about them on their Website, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
Book a dive with Sea Pro Divers online and save 10%.
I was a guest of Sea Pro Divers. As always, all opinions expressed are entirely my own and does not reflect the compensation received.
Looks like a blast! I will have to check out the dive sites!
Yeah there are a lot of great dive operators in the Dominican like Sea Pro Divers. Might not be as good as in the Pacific but we still had a ton of fun.