Click for a larger view, and they still can't all fit on one map!
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The Dive Sites of Western Roatan: Almost Endless Options!With over 40 dive sites to choose from within a 15 minute boat ride of West End, photographers on Roatan are never short of subjects. Some sites are excellent for shallow, natural light photography while others are deeper and get the most from using flash and wide-angle techniques. All sites offer great macro subjects if you just slow it down and look closer! It would takes weeks of diving to explore them all, but we'll find you the best sites for any given conditions, finding you the photo subjects you are after.
Listed below are a few favourite dive sites and why they are great for photography: |
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SEAQUEST:
This dive site has it all, wide open sandy flats, busy walls and super healthy corals in the shallows. Great to get started on and dialed in to your camera. Rays, turtles, flounders, pipefish, spadefish, cleaning stations and more... |
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Overheat Reef:
It's your camera that might overheat, there are photo subjects anywhere. One of the healthiest stretches of wall on Roatan, it has tons of schooling fish, cleaning stations as well as canyons up in the shallows... |
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EL AGUILA:
Lying on a bed of garden eels at 110ft, this old Peruvian freighter has had almost 20 years underwater to attract a host of residents. The shallows after the wreck are full of canyons and corals. Resident groupers, snappers and morays. |
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Texas:
This drift dive probably has more fish per cubic meter than anywhere else on the island. The currents sweep across the walls teeming with schooling fish, and deposit you in a garden of massive barrel sponges. Everything is bigger in Texas! |
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Hole in the Wall:
Canyons will take you from the shallows all the way down to 130ft through a fissure in the reef. Add a massive cave, swim-throughs filled with nudibranchs and eels and you get one of the best advanced dives on Roatan. |
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Spooky Channel:
A cut through the reef, from the inner lagoon to the outer wall, this one is for silhouettes and contrasts of light, as it peeks through caverns and canyons along the channel. Toadfish, barracuda, massive snappers and groupers to finish! |
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Temptation Reef:
Located right outside West Bay, a shallow reeftop full of healthy coral and plentiful macro subjects. Down deeper, sandy slopes with thousands of swaying garden eels makes this a photographer's playground. |
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Lighthouse Reef:
West End's house reef, don't be fooled by the two minute boat ride, this wall catches any available current and you can almost stare down into the Cayman Trench itself! The sandy shallows let you then slow down and take your time! |
“To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.”: Edward Weston