Over the past few months the island has been inundated with the return of the cruise ships and visitors finally being able to travel. With this in mind, we have been busy renovating, fixing, and installing new dives sites. Since June, 11 new sites were installed around the island, with an additional 16 chains needing to be reinstalled, and a further 55 lines replaced, requiring 6 rolls of rope (3,800ft) and over 100ft of chain. The large white floats used for the majority of the dive moorings need to be imported from the US and are expensive to ship here, therefore we have been having to find cheaper alternatives for when the buoys go missing.
While the majority of new dive moorings earlier this year were to commemorate lost loved ones, this quarter’s new sites have been for a mix of reasons.
- “Quarantine Buddies” which is next to the coral nursery in West End was purchased by Pubudu Wariyapola and Jessica as a way of continuing their support of the RMP.
- “Dara’s Dream”, which is in the shallows near Turtle Crossing was a gift from Kevin Schonken to his daughter Dara who loves diving.
- Kristi and John Voves chose the name “Green Pearl” to commemorate their 30th wedding anniversary, with their mooring located on the edge of the wall near Peter’s Place in Sandy Bay.
- Paul Ripko was fortunate enough to win the top prize in this year’s raffle and named his site “RIP’s Reef” which can be found to the east of the El Aguila wreck.
Joshua Gately sadly lost his father earlier in the year and as both had dove Roatan for years, he wanted to have a site near West Bay, calling it “Pop N Bubbles”.
Danielle Baskin was commemorated by her husband Gary by the site “Danielle's Happy Place” which can be found in the shallows to the west of the El Aguila.
Other newly named sites around Camp Bay and Port Royal include Astra’s, Vani’s Ocean Oasis, Julie’s Dive-in, Reagan’s Reef, Eden and Avery’s Playground and Edelson’s Envy. We would like to thank all our donors who support our “Name a Dive Site” program, which helps increase the number of moorings around the island and helps finance the maintenance of the current infrastructure.
To be able to view all the moorings around the island and find out information regarding depth, GPS coordinates, grounding etc, check the following link RMP Dive Sites
Written by: Nicholas Bach, RMP Patrols and Marine Infrastructure Coordinator
📸 Credits: Antonio Busiello