Times of the Islands Summer 2023

SHUTTERSTOCK
©AQUA TCI—WWW.AQUATCI.COM
Whether you are staying in a small hotel on Grand Turk or visiting for the day via cruise ship, the diving and snorkeling are superb. This shot
was taken on Horseshoe Reef off Gibb’s Cay.
Divers with Aqua TCI (www.aquatci.com) are enjoying an encounter
with a Hawksbill sea turtle. Aqua TCI was formed to encompass all
the great dive practices that founders Stephanie and Bill Wallwork
have seen and experienced from diving around the world.
Now, if you are a dive addict (meaning you must dive
as much as possible every day of your vacation, within
the safety limits of your dive computer), choosing a liveaboard
is the best way to feed your habit. Liveaboards are
floating hotels for divers, where you eat, sleep, and dive
without stepping foot on land once the vessel leaves the
marina for the week. This is a dive addict’s utopia!
The liveaboards here usually get in four to five dives a
day (including night dives), they have a chef onboard who
provides three meals a day plus snacks between dives.
The cabins have on-suite bathrooms and are comfortable.
The truth is, most people who choose the liveaboard
option don’t spend any time in their rooms except to
sleep. When not underwater, you are usually on the sundeck
talking to other divers about diving, in the salon
looking at photos and videos of your dives, or having
meals and, yes, you guessed it, talking about diving.
Liveaboard diving provides the opportunity to explore
each dive site more thoroughly since you usually do two
dives on each site. Night dives are something that most
land-based operators don’t offer as much due to the distance
of the reefs and the hazards of maneuvering the
channels in the dark, but since liveaboards are already
moored up at one of the prime locations, you can explore
the same dive sites at night that you have dived during
48 www.timespub.tc