Stuart's Cove Dive Bahamas is a large operation offering diving, snorkelling and "subs" (which are one-person submersibles). The snorkel tour we experienced was a pleasant afternoon outing on a well-equipped boat with a knowledgable crew. The experience will vary according to the mix of people snorkelling with you. If you are a more experienced snorkeller, you will probably want to swim off to be a bit removed from the crowd excitedly splashing and watching the fish swarm in to get the fish food thrown in by the crew. There were three stops on the tour we were on. The first stop was by far the better location for seeing reef fish. Water clarity was good and the assemblage of species was very good. The second stop, unfortunately, was an example of the pollution now occurring in all too many reef locations - the most common species was "Garbageum plasticus" - i.e., floating pieces of plastic. There were large numbers of small jellyfish at the second location - no problem from a stinger point of view, but the numbers were so great that visibility was an issue at times. The main attraction at the second stop was a submersed airplane wreck. We didn't spend much time at the wreck - again because of the crowd. The final stop was a reef shark viewing arranged via the placement of bait boxes about 20-30 feet down. We were able to float above the sharks and watch them circle about. The sharks knew the drill - all they had to do was put on a a bit of a show for the tourists and then once all of the humans were back on board the boat, lunch was served as the crew threw fish bits into the water. Much screaming and shouting and oohs and aahs as the feeding frenzy of sharks ensued. It was entertaining.

On the whole, the afternoon was good value. There are better quality snorkelling sites at other islands, but if you are based in Nassau, this is a good bet for a family outing.

Did the shark feeding dive, which was awesome. Divemasters made me feel very comfortable. The pick up from the hotel was nice. Would recommend diving with Stuart Cove's.

My husband and I dove with Stuart Cove's on Feb 16, 2008. We were only there for the afternoon while our cruise ship was in port, and we booked the dive through the ship. We expected that the cruise line would be dealing with reliable and safe tour operators, which has been our experience in the past.

This was quite a different experience and did not inspire confidence right from the start. Some of our concerns are just "nuisance" complaints - the dive shop didn't make a good impression - but we also had concerns about the safety and maintenance of equipment. To begin with, the staff seemed disorganized. The woman who met our group at the ship's pier left us standing there for about 20 minutes while she dealt with another group, then when she returned she asked us what time we had to be back at our ship and seemed flustered by the answer as though she had not known before that we had only 6 hours in Nassau. All of a sudden she was in a hurry, and we were hurried all afternoon after that. We were taken by bus to the dive shop, where they seemed to be short-staffed and had difficulty locating appropriate gear in the proper sizes for all the divers. My husband went into the shop to ask for a nitrox tank and the clerk was curt with him, asking why he had left it to the last minute and not pre-ordered it. (He couldn't have, from a cruise ship). We were left to load our own equipment onto the boat, which took off in a hurry. I connected my regulator (air hose) to my air tank and immediately it started hissing and leaking air at the connection. When I expressed concern to the dive leader (Rupert, who incidentally seemed nice enough but a little stressed and frazzled, maybe overwhelmed?), he initially shrugged it off as minor, before suggesting to try another tank. The second tank worked better but when I tried the mouthpiece it froze open, leaking air. Rupert then gave me another regulator. The second regulator worked better but then when I connected the hose to the dive jacket it hissed again. Rupert claimed it was only a minor leak and not to worry about it. By this time we here headed out to sea and I was feeling thoroughly scared and wondering if I wanted to dare dive at all. In the end I decided to go ahead and watch my air gauge closely; it was a calm day and the boat was moored , so I figured if there was a problem I could just cut the dive short and surface. During the dive I found that the air leak really was minor - I did not run low on air - but that the air that was leaking was going into my jacket. A few minutes into the dive I began to rise and had difficulty keeping down near the bottom. I had to keep letting air out of my jacket every few minutes during both dives to constantly adjust my buoyancy. It was just aggravating.
On our first dive we were down for 34 minutes to a max 80 feet but the majority of the dive was at about 60-65 feet. It was a great dive, by the way - along the edge of a sea wall that plunges down, Rupert said, to around 6000 ft. But when we came up to the boat there was again talk of a rush to get to the second dive so they could get us back to our ship on time. We were taken down for our second dive after a surface interval of only 22 minutes, and even though the second dive was shallow (39 feet) that seemed too short of a surface interval to safely decompress between dives. All of us on the boat were concerned. The second dive was not so good - we were supposed to see a wreck but Rupert couldn't locate it - perhaps he is new? I felt kind of sorry for him - he kept swimming way ahead of the group, presumably looking for the wreck, and we surfaced without seeing it. Fortunately we did see one memorable creature on this dive to make it worthwhile - reef sharks. After the second dive we were hustled back to the dock and onto the bus for our ship, and ended up arriving back at the ship early - 45 minutes before the deadline, so they needn't have rushed us quite so much.

If and when we ever get back to the Bahamas (and it would be worth going to dive with the reef sharks) we will definitely look for another dive centre.

My wife and I took a Stuarts Cove snorkel trip on 3/10/08.

The boat stopped at three locations. The first (the best spot) had a good variety of fish but not great coral variety. We only stayed at that spot 30 minutes.

The second stop was terrible, only yellow tails, and a small sunken plane....again 30 minutes.

The last stop was to swim with reef sharks. This was a new experience. Only about 10 minutes total.

So for $55 each we got a max of 1 hour and 10 minutes of time in the water. Recently in the Florida Keys we spent $40 each for 3 hours of water time (and three boat stops).

Needless to say, the trip was back to the dock well before the time we (or anyone) expected and so we had to wait about 30 to 45 minutes for the bus to take us back to our hotel.

PS: We find just a good varitey of fish snorkeling off our beach at Sandy Port,