Exuma Cays

Diving the Exumas is usually something done from a boat you are already living on. There is very little dive infrastructure along the chain itself, with the shops concentrated at the ends in George Town and over in Nassau, so trips come from liveaboards working the cays, from charter and private boats around Staniel Cay, or as long runs from either end. Days follow the anchorage rather than a timetable: a reef in the morning, a short move along the chain, then a cavern or a shaft once the tide is right.

The cays are a thin limestone spine with completely different water on each side. West lies the Great Bahama Bank, shallow and pale, sand and patch reef, warm and easily stirred. East lies Exuma Sound, where the bottom falls away and the water turns blue. Every gap between the islands is a cut, and the tide empties and refills the bank through those cuts twice a day, so boats plan around the clock and take the cuts near slack rather than fight the run. The limestone itself was dissolved and hollowed when sea level stood far lower, then flooded, which is why the openings tend to be vertical shafts rather than caves in a wall.

What the park adds is behaviour. Designated in 1958 and closed to all taking since the mid-1980s, it is among the older marine reserves in the region, and the fish act like it: grouper and snapper hold their ground instead of bolting, so a shallow dive feels busier than the same reef would elsewhere. That makes it a sensible place to learn, to dive alongside snorkelling family or to fit around a sailing itinerary, and a poor one for anyone chasing walls, wrecks or big-animal encounters.

Weather is the main thing that reshuffles a week. A passing winter cold front puts north to north-west wind onto the sound side and sends boats back onto the sheltered bank for a day or two, which costs the blue side of the chain rather than the whole itinerary. The shafts are the other constraint, since they breathe with the tide and are best dived near slack, so the day is pegged to the tide table more firmly than to anything on the dive plan.