Monkey Shoals Liveaboard Diving

Liveaboard Diving in Monkey Shoals

What To Expect On A Monkey Shoals Liveaboard

Monkey Shoals by liveaboard makes a great start to any dive trip. Set in the channel between the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis the area is only 3km away from the shore. The water here is calm and you will start your sailing adventure with the two volcanic islands as the backdrop to your diving. Leaving St. Kitts port you will shortly arrive at this dive area. Settle in on your luxury liveaboard and prepare yourselves for the beautiful trip ahead.

Monkey Shoals Underwater

Liveaboard diving at Monkey Shoals gives access to an easy calm water coral reef and gardens spread amongst sandy banks, you will usually dive here as one of the first dives for your trip to allow for your guide to best suit the diving on your liveaboard adventure to your experience level and that of your groups. The visibility in this area is good stretching to 50 ft and you will start to get a picture of how the rest of your trip will continue with water temperatures around 30 degrees celsius in the Summer and not dropping below 22 degrees in the colder months. This is an area great for all levels of experience due to the calm waters so relax and enjoy an easy dive in these waters. For the more adventurous, however, there are dive sites here that can be drift or take a look at the drop off heading west of the reefs for the opportunity to see some bigger creatures.

Monkey Shoals dive area will offer many delights and rarities. Enjoy spotting Morays, jackfish, and lobsters alongside many schools of parrotfish and jackfish. You may catch a lucky sighting of a nurse shark or a blacktip reef shark. Enjoy your relaxing dive in this area of limestone shelves and put your juvenile fish identification skills to the test whilst deciphering which species the beauties you spotted were on the nursery reef.

Dive Sites Of Monkey Shoals

The Donut Due to the location in the channel between the two islands, this site is a calm water dive over hard and soft corals. These corals are set upon limestone shelves. You will be very lucky here with at least 80ft visibility and at a depth of 45ft, you can enjoy the sealife here.

The White Hole A shallow dive at 30 ft. This dive site is great for beginners. This site offers a nursery reef. so go slow and search for the small creatures that inhabit these corals. Be sure to keep your fish identification book at hand to know which juvenile you are spotting when you are down there.

The Basin A sandbank leading to sloping reefs to the west of Monkey Shoals offering a more advanced dive. Here you have your chances to spot nurse sharks, reef sharks, snapper, and angelfish. This part of the Monkey Shoals area is a slightly deeper dive and here you can be taken down to 50ft.

The Ledge A deeper dive at The Ledge, this overhang offers the opportunity to see nurse sharks and green moray eels. Get your video or camera equipment ready on this site for macro life and the potential nurse shark sightings. This site can be dived at a depth of 30ft - 60ft and the visibility here can be around 100ft offering you great opportunities to spot the various sea life this site has to offer.

Top Tips For Divers

Remember to take a camera underwater to get some snaps of nurse sharks, black tips, and lobsters that will make your buddies back home jealous. During your dive you will need to keep a close watch of your depth as the variety of shallow and deep corals in this site could have you changing depth whilst observing the exciting sea life. Also, be careful to keep yourself and your fins away from the corals: thousands of years went into their growth. Very importantly you will probably need your suncream for the time you spend out of the water in the Caribbean sun between dives.

Getting To Monkey Shoals

The best way to access Monkey Shoals is as part of a Caribbean Explorer II Saba-St. Kitts liveaboard diving experience. These depart from St. Kitts or St. Maarten every Saturday. These islands can be reached both direct internationally and from the USA with WINair or Liat airlines. When you reach St. Kitts take a taxi to downtown Basseterre.