I just spent a glorious week in St Maarten. The diving was awesome! Did 12 dives all together over 6 days. The dive shop and boats were right there at the resort! How convient is that! I dove with Dive Adventures at the Pelican Resort. Great people! They really made the diving fun. They gave us the most out of our air and didn’t cut any dives short based on time. Most dives were between 50-60 ft. The shortest dive was 41 mins and the longest was 56 mins. Almost all dives were in the 50 min range. Never had more than 8 people on the boat. Always 2 divemasters with 4 in a group. One day we had all newbies except for my sister and I so they let us go in first and snarf around the bottom of the boat while everyone else got ready. Dove some great sites! One of my favorites was The Gregory. We went there twice. It’s an upsidedown 100ft freighter that sunk in hurricane Hugo in 1998. Lots of growth and fish. I saw the cutest thing there. I was swimming past the portholes when I noticed a bunch of squirrelfish bunched in the porthole looking at me. I swam over and they backed into the ship. When I backed off a bit, they all came back to the porthole. All these little faces looking at me! I tried to get a shot with all of them, but the best I could get is posted in my photos. Another cool wreck was the HMS Proselyte. It sunk off Ft Amsterdam in 1801. Not much left but 3 big anchors, 2 cannons, and some misc metal stuff. I posted a couple pics of the anchor and cannons. Lucy’s barge was another great site. Got a good pic of a scorpion fish. If the divemaster hadn’t pointed it out I would have missed it! Next to the barge is a big area of sea grass. Saw 5 turtles. Big ones! On the way back to the boat we came across 2 black tip reef sharks. One was about 5 ft, the other about 3 ft. They hung around long enough to get a couple pics. There were two sites we went to twice....on different days. Charlie’s Schoal and Mike’s Maze. Both sites were pretty cool! One was a reef next to a large sandy area. We saw at least 8 big rays in this one spot at one time. Saw quite a few REALLY big lobsters and eels. I was very surprised to see them out and about in the daylight! One eel was being chased by a fish across the sand! Another way cool site was called Teigland. Had lots of swim throughs. Thankfully all the divers on this trip were experienced and didn’t kick up sand going through. The last site we dove was Split Rock. They say the rock looks like it was hit by lightning. Personally, I didn’t see it. Looked like any other rock to me! LOL All in all, it was great! The reefs were healthy and the vis was 100+. Also.....no wetsuit required!!!! Water temp was 83 degrees! Did all my dives in my swimsuit! Got my first taste of fire coral! Brushed up against some with my wrist! Ya just gotta love the Caribbean!