Scuba Diving in the Exumas

Diving in the Exumas is a 130-mile chain of roughly 365 mostly empty cays, and the thing that makes it work is a law passed decades ago. The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park covers 176 square miles and has been completely no-take since the mid-1980s. No fishing of any kind, by anyone. It's widely described as the world's first land-and-sea park, established in 1958, and the first no-take marine reserve in the wider Caribbean.

What that means underwater is immediate and obvious. At Amberjack Reef you can be surrounded by ten Caribbean reef sharks on a dive with no bait in the water at all. The site used to be a shark feed, the Park asked operators to stop, and the sharks simply stayed. Nassau grouper here are big, spiny lobster are everywhere, and the patch reefs are among the healthiest in the Bahamas. That's the no-take dividend, and you can see it.

The diving itself is varied. Shallow patch reefs on the bank side, walls that start as shallow as 40 ft and drop into Exuma Sound, tidal cuts between the cays that make for genuinely thrilling drift dives, caverns, blue holes, and the Austin Smith, a Bahamian Defence Force cutter that sank under tow in 1995 and became an accidental memorial reef.

And then there's Thunderball Grotto, the James Bond cave at Staniel Cay, where sunlight punches through holes in the limestone roof. It's the Exumas' most famous underwater place and, honestly, its most overrated dive. It's shallow enough to snorkel and the real cavern diving is better elsewhere in the Park.

Here's the thing you need to understand before booking. The Park's best diving cannot be reached on a day boat from George Town, because George Town sits at the far southern end of a 130-mile chain. If you want the Park, you take a liveaboard from Nassau or you base yourself at Staniel Cay. Day-tripping from George Town gets you good blue holes and decent reefs, not the Park.

Best dive sites in the Exumas

Amberjack Reef

The dive that explains the Exumas. Amberjack was a shark feed site until the Land and Sea Park asked operators to stop baiting, and the sharks stayed anyway. That's the whole story of this place in one dive.

You drop to about 50 ft onto a patch reef and get surrounded. Up to ten Caribbean reef sharks work the water around you, along with nurse sharks, and the grouper here are the kind of size you only see where nobody fishes: black, yellowmouth and yellowfin. On your safety stop you'll hang under a wall of a hundred or more horse-eye jacks. Control your breathing and don't chase anything.

Depth: ~50 ft (15 m) | Level: All Levels

The Washing Machine

The best briefing in the Bahamas: starfish position if you want to slow down, ball up if you want a quick rinse, and keep one hand on your nose because you're going to be equalising the whole way through.

The tide fires you through a cut near Highbourne Cay, tumbling you down a boulder chute into a basin at 40 ft, then lifting you back up to 15 ft. The depth changes constantly and so does your orientation. Then it spits you out onto a calm coral garden and the dive turns into a mellow macro hunt, hunting for octopus and cowfish in the rubble. The published figure for the swirl itself is 2 to 3 knots, and it varies with the moon. Note that boating sources report far higher speeds through some Exuma cuts on the worst of a tide, which is exactly why the operator picks the window rather than you.

Depth: 15–40 ft (4–12 m) | Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Austin Smith Wreck

A Bahamian Defence Force cutter of roughly 80 to 90 ft that was never meant to be a dive site at all. She sank in 1995 while under tow to San Salvador, and the Bahamas turned the accident into a memorial artificial reef named for a Bahamian marine.

She's still structurally intact decades on, sitting in around 60 to 65 ft with her bow facing east. The guide will walk you through the holds, hatches, oil drums and cables, and then warn you about the fire coral on the structure. This is also the site with the best visibility figures anywhere in the Exumas, reliably around 100 ft. Penetration is for wreck-trained divers only.

Depth: 60–65 ft (18–20 m) | Level: Advanced recommended

Angelfish Blue Hole

The Bahamas' blue holes are tidal, which makes them almost unique, and Angelfish is the one you can reach from George Town. You drop through a small entrance into a vertical shaft cut when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower, now flooded and breathing with the tide.

The tide is also what makes it a fish magnet. Eagle rays hunt at the lip, and yellow jacks circle the entrance, silhouetted black against the light above you. At the base, side chambers hold angelfish and lobster. The whole briefing is about timing: this is a rising-tide dive only, because on the wrong tide the current can trap you at the bottom. The George Town operator narrows the window further, to roughly an hour to an hour and a half after high tide. Take the briefing seriously.

Depth: 60–92 ft (18–28 m) | Level: Advanced

Thunderball Grotto

The James Bond cave, filmed for Thunderball in 1965, and the most famous underwater place in the Exumas. Sunlight comes down through holes in the limestone roof and lights the interior like a cathedral, and it genuinely is beautiful.

It's also, as a dive, overrated, and it's more honest to tell you that up front. It's 0 to 15 ft deep and best explored with a mask and snorkel. The briefing is 90% tide: the current that rips through here is strong, slack tide is the only safe window, and slack doesn't last long. There's nothing to stand on inside, so don't over-exert on the entry. If you want real cavern diving in the Exumas, Rocky Dundas inside the Park is the better dive.

Depth: 0–15 ft (0–4.5 m) | Level: All Levels (primarily a snorkel site)

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Best time to dive the Exumas

The best time to dive the Exumas is November through May, weighted toward December to April, when the dry season delivers stable weather and the shark action is at its best.

There's a real trade-off here worth naming. Summer gives you the warmest water, the calmest seas and the lowest prices, and the diving itself doesn't degrade. What degrades is the reliability, because August and September carry genuine cancellation risk and Exumas liveaboard itineraries are highly weather-dependent. The major boats still publish weekly departures right through the season, so this is about disruption rather than a thinner schedule. Boats reroute toward Eleuthera when the wind won't cooperate. Book summer only with flexible fares and insurance.

Diving conditions in the Exumas

Diving conditions in the Exumas are dominated by tide, because the cays sit like a porous wall between the shallow Exuma Bank and the deep Exuma Sound.

Every tide cycle forces an enormous volume of water through the narrow cuts between the cays. That's the source of the region's signature drift dives and its signature hazards, and it's why operators pick the site each morning off the tide table rather than a fixed schedule. The reef itself is a mosaic rather than a single system: shallow patch reefs on the bank side, walls on the Sound side starting as shallow as 40 ft, caverns, tidal cuts and blue holes, all backed by mangrove and seagrass nurseries inside the Park.

Marine life in the Exumas

Marine life in the Exumas is the clearest demonstration anywhere in the Bahamas of what happens when you simply stop fishing a place. Inside the Land and Sea Park nothing has been taken since the mid-1980s, and the result is a genuine replenishment zone that is documented to be restocking waters outside its own boundaries.

Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi): year-round, especially at Amberjack Reef and Danger Reef

The Exumas' calling card, and the crucial detail is that they appear on unbaited dives. Up to ten at Amberjack. That doesn't happen in fished water.

Great hammerhead (Sphyrna mokarran): November to February, on the deeper Exuma Sound side

A chance encounter, not a target. If a guaranteed hammerhead is what you want, go to Bimini. Here it's a bonus.

• Nassau grouper (Epinephelus striatus): Critically Endangered, and unusually large inside the Park. There's a Bahamas-wide closed season from December 1 to the end of February.
• Nurse shark (Ginglymostoma cirratum): resting under ledges by day, and the same species as the famous wading sharks at Compass Cay.
• Queen conch (Aliger gigas): CITES-listed and NOAA-listed as Threatened since February 2024. Zero take inside the Park.
• Elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata): Critically Endangered, and it still survives around the cavern system at Rocky Dundas, which is a genuinely hopeful thing to see.
• Reef and resident life: spotted eagle ray, southern stingray, green and hawksbill turtle, Caribbean spiny lobster, great barracuda, horse-eye jack, Atlantic spadefish, queen angelfish, garden eels, yellowhead jawfish, schooling silversides in the caverns.

The Park also protects Bahamian rock iguanas and the hutia, the country's only native terrestrial mammal (bats are native too, which is why the wording matters). The rules are simple and absolute: no conch, no lobster, no line fishing, no spearfishing, no shelling, no coral. Take nothing.

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Practical information

Dive prices

Prices split sharply depending on where you dive from. Out of George Town, a two-tank runs about $170 including tanks, weights and VAT. Out of Staniel Cay, a boutique six-diver operation deep in the cays, a group dive runs closer to $370 plus VAT and card fees. That spread is real, not an error.

Liveaboards are the main event and range from roughly $170 per day on the budget boats to $290 to $340 per day on the flagship vessels, though actual booked rates for a week run higher. A flagship week at $3,395 plus $360 in port fees and taxes works out closer to $535 per day all in. The Park charges a $14 per person diving fee, collected by your operator, and mooring or anchorage fees apply to vessels. The Bahamas National Trust restructured park entrance fees on 1 July 2026 ($15 adult, $8 child, $10 senior), but the $14 dive fee was not part of that change and is still current. Check bnt.bs before you book. Overall a $$$ destination.

Getting there

Two completely different trips share the same name. For the southern Exumas, fly into Exuma International Airport (GGT) at George Town, with direct service from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, Charlotte, Toronto and Nassau, and dive the local reefs, Angelfish Blue Hole and Crab Cay with a day operator.

For the Park and the northern cays, which is the diving people actually come for, take a liveaboard from Nassau. You board the evening before and the boat leaves early the next morning, then works roughly 100 miles south through the Park to Staniel Cay over a week. Alternatively, fly or charter into the Staniel Cay airstrip and dive with the operator based there.

There is no recompression chamber in the Exumas. Any hit means air evacuation, usually to the chamber in Nassau, though your insurer may route you to Florida instead. Carry DAN or DiveAssure and verify your coverage before you travel.