The Bahamas are a group of thousands of tropical islands off the coast of Florida. These islands are usually associated with beautiful beaches full of palm trees and crystal clear water. Simply a Caribbean paradise.

I only visited the island of New Providence, where the capital of Nassau is situated. The island itself is in my opinion not at all worth visiting. The beaches are simply not that nice and everything is brutally overpriced due to the mass tourism.

What makes the island worth a short visit is the diving.

Caribbean Reef Sharks

Before getting to the diving one small note on life on the island: the island has a great network of private buses. Private buses can always be stopped anywhere on the road unless there’s a police car nearby. Officially they should only use the official bus stops. The prices are regulated and are very cheap (it was something between 1 to 3 dollars for just about any distance). It is worth mentioning that these buses stop running at six o’clock the evening.
Not so clear are the prices for the hotel rooms. A lot of taxes are added to the published prices. We could not find an affordable hotel and ended up renting a little cottage from air BnB which was much better than a hotel anyway. And we were there in february – so nothing close to high season.

Caribbean Reef Sharks

Generally speaking

Diving is the reason we came to the island. The first thing that needs to be said is that it is not necessary to go on a huge shark-feeding dive to see plenty of sharks – they are everywhere in the Bahamas and I doubt you can even dive without seeing them.

You will not see colorful corals like in the Red Sea or in Indonesia – but there are many beautiful wrecks in recreational diving depth and an abundance of big fish on sandy slopes.

Martina at the dive site “Twin Sisters”

Is the Shark diving dangerous?

When diving around New Providence you can mostly see Caribbean Reef Sharks and Nurse Sharks. Due to the extensive protection they grow to amazing sizes in the Bahamas – especially the Nurse Sharks. But they are absolutely harmless to people. Tiger Sharks are a totally different story, but more on that later.

Nurse Sharks (and not the biggest ones here)

Is it ok to feed Sharks?

NO, it’s never really ok to feed predators. But they do feed them on the dives sold as “Shark Dives”. And yet there is an upside to the whole thing. They only go out twice a day with a just a bucket full of fish for about 100 sharks to share. So it’s not that they are getting fat or forgetting how to hunt from this. And here comes the big point. The Bahamas make tons of money with these dives, which is why protecting the sharks is so important to them. So it certainly helps the sharks – no doubt.

Plus it gets thousands of tourists aware of the sharks as peaceful marine animals.

And if you have a problem with it – like I still do in the back of my head – just go out for a normal dive and you will see sharks behaving naturally.

Caribbean Reef Shark

Meet the Tiger Shark

While I was in the Bahamas the renowned company “Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas” was trying to attract Tiger Sharks to New Providence for diving. They were going out to feed one every day in order to get her used to humans. We were invited along and could not resist. Sadly, she did not show up on the two days we joined the team. Tiger Sharks are in no means harmless to people. The only reason we came along on this trip was because the guides have logged thousands of hours with these creatures and lived to tell the tale.

Note that this is Tiger Shark diving without a cage – the real deal.

To sum up

As you might have noticed I am no fan of the island New Providence. I had the feeling the culture of the Bahamas would be much richer on the other smaller islands. But the diving is so good, that I can easily imagine going back. Especially to see the Tiger Shark.