Sixty eight named dive sites, ordered the way the boats actually go. Most guides skip straight to the Grand Turk wall, which is one island of eight and the last one you reach. This atlas starts at Providenciales and works outward: the shore reefs, Grace Bay, Pine Cay and the twelve wall sites of Northwest Point, then west to Sandbore and West Caicos, south to French Cay, and only then east across the passage. With diving, the address is the boat ride: two sites of identical depth can sit forty minutes apart and belong to different holidays. Tap any site for its depths, its topography and, where there is one, the story behind its name.
Every site here is named and described by the operators who dive it or by divers who have. Depths are as those sources publish them; where no depth has been published, none is shown, and where a site is named but never properly described, it is listed as named rather than filled in with guesswork. Name origins are given only where a source records one. Depths convert between feet and metres throughout, and the index filters by certification level as well as by what is there, so you can see at a glance which sites an Open Water card already covers and which ones need Advanced. The field guide works the other way round: pick a species and it filters the index to the sites where it is recorded. The seasonal and wind guidance is a rule of thumb drawn from what the operators say about each area's exposure, not a forecast, and every good divemaster in this country will overrule a webpage. Filter by area using the bar below to isolate a single stretch of coast. A word before any of that. The moorings these dive sites are tied to were installed by volunteers from the Turks & Caicos Reef Fund, and there is a section on their work further down. This page exists for two reasons and is honest about both. It was built with Dive Provo, whose schedules and rates are set out in full further down, so you can get in the water. And it is published by a broker who has lived here since 1989, because a good number of people who dive here end up wanting to own something here, and the section on where divers buy sets out how the dive geography maps onto the property geography.
Coastlines are traced from a Turks and Caicos survey outline; the bank edges behind them are indicative rather than surveyed. Tap an area to jump to it. The thing worth noticing is how much of this country's diving sits within an hour of one airport, and how far the Turks Islands really are.
Provo is where almost every diver in the country starts, and where most of them stay. It has the airport, the dive shops, the liveaboards, and four distinct dive areas of its own before you leave the island's own waters. You can snorkel a reef off the beach in the morning and be hanging over a 6,000 foot drop at Northwest Point by ten the next.
The four areas are genuinely different and they are not interchangeable. The shore reefs are wading depth. Grace Bay is spur and groove with the reef top at 25 feet. Pine Cay is slope rather than wall. Northwest Point is the sheer stuff, twelve or more sites along a three mile stretch of the island's west end, and it is what people mean when they say Provo diving is world class.
The only diving and snorkelling in the country you can reach by walking into the sea. Two reefs on the north coast, one on the wild west shore, and all three worth a morning. The Bight and Smith's both carry underwater placards identifying what you are looking at, which makes them the best place in the country to teach someone to love this.
The barrier reef in front of the beach that made the country famous, and the shortest boat ride of any Provo dive: 15 to 20 minutes from Turtle Cove. The reef starts at about 25 feet under the boat and slopes to around 120, with spur and groove formations that give the shallows more varied topography than most other areas here. It sits inside Princess Alexandra National Park, where commercial and sport fishing have been banned for years, and the fish population shows it.
Northeast of Provo, and the area that behaves least like the rest of the country. These are steeply sloping walls rather than sheer drops, moorings at about 50 feet, and big sand flats behind the reef holding lobster. It is the quiet corner, and several of the site names came out of exploratory dives rather than any older tradition.
More than a dozen wall sites packed into a three mile stretch of Provo's west end, all inside Northwest Point Marine National Park. The wall tops sit at 35 to 40 feet in most places and drop to a ledge around 100 to 120 before falling away past 6,000. What sets it apart is the architecture: the limestone has produced chimneys, cracks, undercuts, canyons and monoliths hanging off the face, so almost every site has a hole to go through rather than just a face to swim along. Massive barrel sponges and tube sponges lean out into the blue. Caribbean reef sharks and eagle rays cruise the wall and regularly come up into the shallows.
The northernmost sites catch some current, which is exactly why their spur and groove formations between 40 and 70 feet are so heavily dressed in soft coral. Permanent moorings sit a short distance back from the wall in 30 to 40 feet, over sand that holds yellowhead jawfish colonies, southern stingrays with bar jacks shadowing them, and the queen triggerfish and angelfish you spend your safety stop with.
In 1993 and 1994 a French television game show called Le Trésor de Pago Pago filmed in the Turks and Caicos. Contestants freedived into a large metal mesh dome to gather pearls cast into the water by a device resembling a stove pipe sponge, and could trade pearls back for a breath from a scuba tank. The show was cancelled after several contestants suffered air embolisms and other air expansion injuries. There were no recorded deaths.
The dome was left behind on a flat sand bottom off Malcolm's Road, sitting in 35 feet with its top at 15. Hurricane Frances collapsed it in 2004 and scattered the structure across the bottom. The debris field now holds schooling grunts and schoolmasters, big groupers, nurse sharks, morays and the occasional turtle, and it is one of the best night dives on the point. It failed as television and succeeded as a reef.
When divers say the Wall in this country they almost always mean the Grand Turk Wall, the near vertical drop running the whole leeward side of Grand Turk, nicknamed the Grand Canyon of the Caribbean. That is the famous one, and it is in Part Three. Provo and West Caicos have their own drop-offs, properly called by their area names, and locally the edge of the Caicos plateau gets called the wall too. The gauge below is the Provo and West Caicos profile; the Grand Turk numbers are noted alongside.
The boat is moored over sand or reef top, a short distance back from the edge. Visibility here regularly exceeds 100 feet because there are no rivers and no runoff anywhere in the country.
Depths from Aqua TCI, Dive Provo, Divers Alert Network, Visit TCI and Grand Turk operators. Northwest Point: wall top 35 to 40 ft, ledge at 100 to 120, then past 6,000. West Caicos: wall begins between 35 and 55. Grand Turk: top at 25 to 30 ft dropping to over 7,000, and the standard profile there is out over the edge to 60 or 100 ft, then back along the top at 20 to 30 ft.
Three of these four areas are uninhabited, and one of them is barely land at all. They are all still Provo diving in practical terms, reached on a day boat from the south side of the island or on a liveaboard out of Turtle Cove, but the character changes completely once you cross the bank. West Caicos is a wall that runs the length of an island a hundred yards offshore. French Cay is sharks. Sandbore is a channel that only opens when the tide agrees. West Sand Spit is a bar of sand in open ocean 27 miles out.
West Caicos has the most layered history of anywhere you will dive here. In the late nineteenth century it was planted with sisal and worked from a settlement called Yankee Town, named after its inhabitants; the railway tracks, steam engines and stone buildings are still there in the bush. Rafael Trujillo tried to buy the island as a hideaway before he was assassinated. An oil company tried in 1972 and built an airstrip that is still there. A Ritz-Carlton was begun and abandoned. The island has defeated everyone who has tried to own it, which is roughly why the diving is what it is.
The deep navigable channel between Providenciales and West Caicos. Leaving from the south shore you cross the pale turquoise shallows of the bank and join the channel at the point where the water turns deep iridescent blue, which is one of the more startling things you will see from a boat anywhere. The diving is deep water sponges, soft coral and large pelagics, all fed by water that never stops moving through the cut.
Twelve dive sites spaced along the top of a single wall that runs the entire length of the island, only 100 to 150 yards off its western side. The wall begins between 35 and 55 feet and drops past 6,000. Huge barrel sponges, deepwater sea fans, elephant ear sponges and black coral cover the face; the barrel sponges here are among the largest in the Caribbean, and the north end sites are among the few places in the country holding big pink and purple azure vase sponges. Caribbean reef sharks cruise the wall on almost every dive and often follow you up into the shallows. Conditions are almost always calm.
The Driveway dive site sits off the old settlement. In the 1890s West Caicos was planted with sisal for rope fibre and worked from a town named for the Americans who ran it. The plantation failed, the island emptied, and the railway tracks, steam engines and stone walls were left in the bush where they still are. Lake Catherine, 500 acres of it, connects to the sea through underground passages and holds flamingos, iguanas and turtles.
These appear on dive maps and in logs for the island but we have found no published description we trust enough to paraphrase. Listed so the record is complete rather than filled in with guesswork. Ask your divemaster; several are locals' favourites.
A sandy uninhabited atoll a few hundred feet long on the southwest side of the Caicos Bank, 18 miles south of Provo and 18 miles southeast of West Caicos. It is a bird sanctuary, it is exposed to weather from every direction, and it is the best shark diving in the country by a distance. Caribbean reef sharks are close to guaranteed; lemon, bull, tiger and hammerhead have all been recorded passing through. In June and July nurse sharks gather in the shallows in the lee of the cay. Fast water feeds dense soft corals which in turn hold huge aggregations of snapper, grunt, jack and grouper, with barracuda and reef sharks working the edges and eagle rays gliding past above the lot.
Surface intervals are spent in the lee of the cay watching birds and nurse sharks, which is a better way to spend forty minutes than anywhere else in the country.
The resident nurse shark at G-Spot is known to divemasters as Fin, for a recognisably damaged dorsal. On night dives he turns up with what the photographers describe as friends and family. Reef sharks appear out of the dark on the same dive and occasionally bump into people.
Twenty seven miles southeast of Provo, a bar of sand in open ocean with about fifty feet of it dry at low tide and nothing else in any direction. Frequent current and sheer remoteness have kept the reef vibrant. A REEF survey completed in 1996 identified more than 120 species of fish here, including three jewfish. This is the one you go to when you have already done everything else.
Now we go east. South Caicos sits on the eastern edge of the Caicos Bank and is the least dived corner of the country; Big Blue Collective began running full day trips there from Provo in 2023, only half an hour longer than the West Caicos run. Beyond it the bank ends and the Turks Island Passage opens up, also called the Columbus Passage, about 22 miles of water 7,000 feet deep, and on the far side sit Grand Turk and Salt Cay on their own smaller bank.
These are different trips, not extensions of a Provo holiday. Grand Turk's wall is minutes from the beach and packs more fish and coral per site than anywhere else in the country. Salt Cay is quieter still, with limited dive services, and holds the only wreck in the country worth crossing water for. Both sit on the humpback road.
On the eastern edge of the bank, with sites running along the east and southeast coasts of Long Cay and South Caicos, ten to fifteen minutes out of Cockburn Harbour. Arches, grottoes, deep crevasses in the barrier reef, small coral caves, and a wall fed by deep water upwelling that produces some of the best coral in the country. Eagle rays, sharks and mantas are more common here than in most other areas. A dive resort has mapped further sites that are not yet in general circulation, so this list will grow.
This is the Wall. It runs the entire sheltered western side of the island inside Columbus Landfall National Park, and every site sits less than half a mile offshore. The top starts at only 25 to 30 feet and drops away to over 7,000, which is the whole trick of the place: you can dive a genuinely enormous wall on a conservative profile, going over the edge to 60 or 100 feet for the first half and coming back along the top at 20 to 30 for a long, slow off-gas. Canyons, arches, sand chutes, overhangs and swim throughs the length of it. Operators count about forty named sites; the park itself is credited with more than two dozen.
What distinguishes Grand Turk is density rather than drama: more fish and coral per site than anywhere else in the country. Friendly Nassau groupers, schools of blue tangs, queen triggerfish, filefish in pairs, inquisitive angelfish, garden eels, stingrays and eagle rays. Reef sharks are less common here than at French Cay or West Caicos, which locals will tell you straight rather than sell you otherwise. Before the cruise centre opened, this island's entire tourism industry was divers.
A very small island with limited dive services and walls starting at 40 to 50 feet along the west coast. It is known for two things: whale watching and diving, and between January and April those are the same activity. Humpbacks migrate through the passage immediately west of the island; snorkelling with them from a boat is routine, and diving with them occasionally works out when the whales cooperate. Salt Cay also holds the country's only wreck diving worth the name.
All sixty eight, searchable by name, area, feature or depth. Type a name you half remember, or filter for the thing you actually want to see. Tick off the ones you have dived and the page keeps count between visits, then send the list straight to Dive Provo and let them build the week around what you have not done yet.
Every site with a published depth, plotted on one scale and ordered west to east. Bars run from the top of the dive to its maximum; a marker alone means only one figure has been published. Colour is the certification the depth implies. Hover any bar for the detail.
Plotted only where an operator or guide has published a figure. Sites with no published depth are left out rather than estimated, which is why the count below the key is lower than sixty eight. Recreational limits shown for reference: 60 ft is the Open Water limit, 130 ft the recreational limit.
Not a wish list. Each of these is recorded at named sites in this atlas by the people who dive them. Tap any one to filter the index down to the sites where it turns up.
Species records from Divers Alert Network (Steve Rosenberg, Alert Diver Q3 2023), Dive Provo, Aqua TCI, Scuba Diving magazine, Divernet and Visit TCI. Barrel sponge lifespan and size from published research on Xestospongia muta.
Nearly every site in this atlas is dived from a permanent mooring, and those moorings are looked after by volunteers from the Turks & Caicos Reef Fund, funded by donations. Alongside that they run coral nurseries, treat coral disease, survey reefs and teach. If you dive here, you are already benefiting from their work.
The Turks & Caicos Reef Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Since 2012 it has led the installation and maintenance of dive boat, snorkel boat and yacht moorings across the islands, working with the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources under a memorandum of understanding. Almost all of the dive sites sit inside the marine national parks, and the Reef Fund looks after the mooring network within them.
The moorings are installed by volunteers and funded by donations and merchandise sales, which is worth knowing every time you tie up to one. As of January 2023 they had put in over 125 sea floor anchors, so boats can moor without dropping anchor or tying onto coral. Around Providenciales they maintain five geographical areas, and with a volunteer captain now running their boat twice a week, each area gets inspected roughly every five weeks.
Every time a boat ties to a mooring rather than dropping an anchor, the reef underneath is left intact. It is quiet, steady work, and it protects these sites every day of the year.
The in-water coral nursery sits at Thunderdome, at Northwest Point, which is Part One of this atlas. There are over 5,000 staghorn fragments growing there, cared for until they are strong enough to be planted back onto natural reef. You can dive it.
Source: the Turks & Caicos Reef Fund's own project, donation and volunteer pages, their Spring 2025 newsletter, Visit TCI and their GuideStar profile. This atlas has no affiliation with the Reef Fund and receives nothing from them; they are listed here because the moorings on these dive sites are theirs.
Winter is for wildlife and whales. Summer is for calm seas and warm water. Wind direction decides which coast you dive on any given morning, and in Provo that is the difference between Grace Bay and a 45 minute crossing.
Fetching the current forecast.
Weather Atlas monthly averages for Providenciales: 26°C January to April, 29°C August to October. Divers Alert Network puts the range at 74 to 78°F in winter and 82 to 84°F in summer. A 3 mm suit works most of the year; add a hood or move to 5 mm in winter if you feel the cold.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|
Humpbacks: DAN, Divernet, Grand Turk Diving Co. Nurse shark gathering at French Cay: WIMCO. Mantas on the Grand Turk wall in summer: Grand Turk Diving Co. Grace Bay availability: Dive Provo. Hurricane season is the official Atlantic window; most seasons pass without a storm reaching the islands.
Pick a direction. This is a rule of thumb built from what the operators publish about each area's exposure, not a forecast. The captain decides on the day, and in this country they are usually right.
By area, this is historically one of the most dangerous stretches of reef in the world. More than a thousand ships are estimated to have wrecked here over the last few centuries, and enough of them that salvage, known as wrecking, became a real part of the economy of the poorer Caicos Islands. Northwest Point was treacherous enough that one of the better known wrecking bases, Birch's Lookout, operated there in the 1800s, and the settlement of Blue Hills probably owes its existence to the trade. Almost all of those wrecks broke up in the shallows or slid off the wall into water no diver will ever see. These are the ones that are left.
A 44 gun fifth rate that struck a reef 13 miles south of Salt Cay, foundered for three days and lost not one of her crew. The hull is long gone. What remains is anchors, chain and coral encrusted cannon spread across a shallow debris field in no more than 40 feet, at a spot now called Endymion Rock, along with an arch to swim through and ledges to work. A protected historic site; nothing may be moved or taken.
Visit TCI, Frommer's, diver reports.
A five masted schooner with a very early diesel engine that hit Endymion Rock 131 years after the Endymion did. Her anchor and chain lie nearby, and the chain runs across the sand toward the Endymion's own anchor, which is the detail that makes the dive.
Visit TCI, Maduro Dive.
Between French Cay and West Caicos, the site of a Spanish caravel and the oldest excavated European shipwreck in the western hemisphere. Treasure hunters in the 1970s believed it was one of Columbus's ships and used explosives on it. Nothing of the vessel remains on the seabed; what was recovered is in the National Museum on Grand Turk. The reef itself snorkels beautifully.
Visit TCI.
A twin piston airliner. The fuselage section sits at about 55 feet and is one of very few wrecks in the country at recreational depth. Hurricane Irma swept the wings over the edge of the wall in 2017.
Visit TCI, WIMCO.
Not a ship at all. The abandoned dome from a French television game show, left off Malcolm's Road, collapsed by Hurricane Frances in 2004 and colonised ever since. The full story is above with Northwest Point.
DAN, Aqua TCI, Visit TCI.
A twin engine Cessna that came down in a Salt Cay salina with only minor injuries to everyone aboard, and a fishing boat that sank in Salt Cay Harbour during Hurricane Hanna in 2008. Both placed in shallow water off the west coast in 2010 as artificial reefs.
Visit TCI.
A US Navy brig that began its life hunting Barbary pirates and slavers in the Mediterranean and ended it on the barrier reef off Northwest Point. Located by archaeologists in 2008 during the search for the Trouvadore. Not a scheduled dive, but it is the reason this stretch of reef has the reputation it does.
Visit TCI, Turks and Caicos National Museum research.
A schooner with an unusual racing hull, wrecked on an anti-piracy patrol very close to where the Chippewa went down thirty two years earlier. Two US Navy vessels lost within sight of each other says most of what needs saying about False Cut and the West Reefs.
Visit TCI.
The most important wreck in the country's history and not a dive site. An illegal Spanish slaver that struck the reef while dodging anti-slavery patrols, in a territory where slavery had already been abolished. Almost everyone aboard survived, and the nearly two hundred Africans freed by the wreck settled here. The Middle Caicos settlement of Bambarra carries the name of the language they spoke. Found in under ten feet of water near Black Rock in 2004.
Visit TCI, Where When How, museum expedition reports.
Sunk deliberately as a dive site on the Grace Bay barrier reef, it ended up between 90 and 165 feet and is still sitting there intact. Too deep for recreational diving and no operator visits it. Listed so you know why Provo has no wreck to offer you.
Visit TCI.
Hundreds of five foot concrete reef balls placed off Malcolm's Road Beach, inside Northwest Point Marine National Park. Odd looking and genuinely effective; confident snorkellers can carry on past them to natural reef about half a mile out.
GoMad Nomad, Snorkeling Report.
The single biggest practical difference between the islands, and the thing most trip planning gets wrong. Grand Turk's wall is minutes from the beach. Provo's best sites are up to an hour across the bank, which is why Provo boats are larger, with dry cabin space and heads aboard.
Grand Turk: Grand Turk Diving Co and Visit TCI. Grace Bay from Turtle Cove, West Caicos and French Cay: Dive Provo, Aqua TCI, DAN. South Caicos local: Visit TCI. Provo to South Caicos: Big Blue Collective. Salt Cay to Endymion: diver reports. Provo two tank boats depart 08:30 and return between 13:00 and 14:30 depending on where they went.
Open Water covers the reef tops and the lip of the wall everywhere in this atlas. Advanced Open Water, or at least a deep speciality, unlocks the swim throughs that exit at 95 to 130 feet: Hole in the Wall, Shark Hotel, The Crack. Nitrox is widely offered and worth having on two and three tank days.
The Turks and Caicos Aggressor II and the Turks and Caicos Explorer II both run from Providenciales on seven night itineraries working Northwest Point, West Caicos and French Cay, with up to five dives a day and no daily transit back to shore.
Grace Bay sits in Princess Alexandra National Park, the west end in Northwest Point Marine National Park, West Caicos in its own park, and the Grand Turk Wall in Columbus Landfall National Park, 1,280 acres covering the whole west side of that island. The fishing restrictions are the reason the reef tops are as busy as they are.
Wide angle country. Barrel and tube sponges leaning off the wall, sharks in the blue, and 100 foot visibility as the normal condition. For macro, go to The Library on Grand Turk, Magic Mushroom on West Caicos, Mama Nature on Grand Turk, or Thunderdome at night.
Three questions, and the answer names an area and specific sites from the index above rather than telling you the whole country is wonderful.
A fair number of people dive here for a week, then dive here every year, then start looking at what it would cost to stop leaving. If that is the direction you are heading, the useful thing to understand is that in the Turks and Caicos the property question and the dive question have the same answer: which coast, and which marina.
Almost all the diving in Part One and Part Two leaves from one of two places. Boats for Grace Bay, Pine Cay and Northwest Point leave the north shore at Turtle Cove Marina. Boats for West Caicos, Sandbore Channel and French Cay leave the south side at Caicos Marina and Shipyard at Long Bay. Where you buy decides which of those is a ten minute drive at eight in the morning and which is forty, and after a few seasons that difference matters more than the view does.
The honest version of this is worth saying out loud, because most property marketing here will not say it. Grace Bay is the most liquid, most rentable and most expensive market in the country, and it puts you five minutes from Turtle Cove and the dive shop. Turtle Cove itself is cheaper, quieter, and closer still to the boats. Long Bay and the south shore put you on the West Caicos and French Cay runs, with more land and more space for less money. Chalk Sound and the southwest are beautiful and further from everything. Grand Turk is a different country in practical terms: a seven thousand foot wall five minutes from the beach, and property at a fraction of Provo prices, in exchange for a much thinner rental market and a genuinely small island.
There is no single right answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking how often you actually dive is selling rather than advising.
The market data behind all of this is already published and free. The Condo Atlas covers 389 listings by price per square foot, the Villa Atlas 227 villas, the Land Atlas 433 parcels across twelve islands, and the Off Provo Atlas 58 homes on seven islands.
This atlas was built with Dive Provo, the operator that runs every area in Part One and Part Two. Everything below is from their published rates and schedules, so you can plan a week before you speak to anyone.
Dive Provo has been the preferred operator on Providenciales for over thirty years. PADI 5 Star and SSI Platinum, a TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice winner, with a reservations and retail shop at Salt Mills Plaza in the middle of Grace Bay and boats running from two marinas on opposite sides of the island. That second detail is the one that matters for this page: Turtle Cove Marina for the north shore, Caicos Marina and Shipyard at Long Bay for West Caicos and French Cay. Operating from both sides is why they can dive somewhere good on almost any wind.
Their two tank boats visit every area in this atlas that is reachable in a day: Grace Bay, Pine Cay, Northwest Point, Sandbore Channel, West Caicos and French Cay. On a multi day package they deliberately rotate you around the areas rather than running the same wall twice, which is the single best way to use this page. Pick the areas you want from the map above and tell them.
All the diving here is wall diving, so a dive computer is required. Tanks, weights and belts are on the boat and your kit is set up for you daily; gear rental is extra. Minimum age 10. Rates exclude 12% tax and tipping is customary. Boat packages are for certified Open Water divers or above who have dived in the past two years, and there is an afternoon refresher you can bolt on to the following day's two tank dive if you are rusty.
| 1 day | $179 |
| 2 days | $348 |
| 3 days | $507 |
| 4 days | $656 |
| Extra days after 4 | $159 |
| Nitrox upgrade | $10 per tank |
Rates as published by Dive Provo, plus 12% tax. Days need not be consecutive.
| Discover Scuba Diving | 2 dives, max 2 per instructor |
| Open Water, eLearning | from $745, 3 to 4 days |
| Open Water referral | from $595, 2 to 3 days |
| Enriched Air Nitrox | from $150, 1 day |
Do the theory at home through PADI eLearning or SSI downloads and spend your week in the water rather than a classroom. Both PADI and SSI are offered, up to Rescue Diver and beyond.
See the coursesDrawn from the sites and sources on this page.
This atlas names sixty eight across eleven dive areas, from the shore reefs of Providenciales to Salt Cay. That is not the total: Grand Turk alone has over forty sites along its wall, and a further nine are named on the West Caicos wall without any published description. Thirty eight of the sixty eight are reachable on a day boat out of Provo.
It depends what you want. Northwest Point and West Caicos for sheer wall and swim throughs. French Cay for sharks, by a distance. Grand Turk for fish and coral density with a five minute boat ride. South Caicos for arches and crowds you will not meet. Salt Cay for whales and the only wreck worth crossing water for.
The wall top sits at 35 to 40 feet at Northwest Point, 35 to 55 at West Caicos and 25 to 40 on Grand Turk. Below that it falls past 6,000 feet on the Caicos side, and the Turks Island Passage between the two banks is about 7,000 feet deep.
No. Open Water covers the reef tops and the lip of the wall at every site in this atlas. Advanced, or at least a deep speciality, is what unlocks the deep exits: Hole in the Wall at 95 feet, Shark Hotel's chimney at 130, Two Steps' plateau at 120.
Late January to early April, in the Turks Island Passage west of Grand Turk and Salt Cay. Off Salt Cay they pass close enough that snorkelling with them from a boat is routine. Nothing on the Caicos side comes close.
Around 26°C from January to April and 29°C from August to October, so a 3 mm suit works most of the year. Visibility regularly exceeds 100 feet because there are no rivers and no runoff anywhere in the country.
Yes, and they are a reason to come rather than a reason not to. Caribbean reef sharks cruise the wall on almost every dive at West Caicos and Northwest Point. At French Cay sightings are close to guaranteed, and nurse sharks gather there in June and July.
The Turks & Caicos Reef Fund, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, has led the installation and maintenance of dive, snorkel and yacht moorings since 2012, working with the Department of Environment and Coastal Resources under a memorandum of understanding. The moorings are installed by volunteers and funded by donations and merchandise sales, with over 125 sea floor anchors in place as of January 2023.
Buy a ten dollar Reef Fund dive tag for your BCD, adopt a staghorn coral in the nursery at Thunderdome for fifty dollars, volunteer a day if you dive competently and are here on holiday, or report any lionfish you see through the Reef Fund's form. All of it goes to moorings, coral restoration and disease treatment.
Used on its own, it means the Grand Turk Wall: the near vertical drop running the length of the leeward side of Grand Turk, starting at 25 to 30 feet and falling to over 7,000, nicknamed the Grand Canyon of the Caribbean. Providenciales and West Caicos have their own dramatic drop-offs, but those are named by their areas, and locally the edge of the Caicos plateau is called the wall as well.
Yes. There are no restrictions on foreign ownership, title is British, the currency is the US dollar and there is no annual property tax, no income tax and no capital gains tax. There is a one-off government stamp duty on purchase, which varies by island and price band. Where you buy is worth thinking about in dive terms: Grace Bay and Turtle Cove put you on the north shore boats, Long Bay puts you on the West Caicos and French Cay runs, and Grand Turk puts a 7,000 foot wall five minutes offshore for a fraction of Provo prices.
Dive Provo publishes two tank boat diving at $179 for one day, $348 for two, $507 for three and $656 for four, with extra days at $159 and a Nitrox upgrade at $10 per tank, all plus 12% tax. Open Water certification starts at $745 with the theory done online before you arrive. Tanks and weights are included; gear rental is extra.
This atlas was built with Dive Provo, who are PADI 5 Star and SSI Platinum, have been the preferred operator on the island for over thirty years, and run three boats from marinas on both the north and south sides. Operating from both sides is what lets them reach a good wall in almost any wind, and on a multi day package they rotate you around the areas rather than repeating one.
Very little, and it is better to say so. The Endymion off Salt Cay is the one that matters: a 1790 warship in under 40 feet of water. The Convair airliner off South Caicos sits at 55 feet. Provo's own freighter went down to between 90 and 165 feet and no operator visits it.
One of them gets you in the water next week. The other is the conversation people tend to have on the boat ride back.
PADI 5 Star and SSI Platinum, one of the oldest dive shops in the country, and their two tank boats visit every area in Part One and Part Two of this atlas: Grace Bay, Pine Cay, Northwest Point, Sandbore Channel, West Caicos and French Cay. Three purpose built boats, one, two and three tank days, and a policy of rotating package divers around the areas so you actually see the variety this page is about.
Plenty of people arrive for a week on the wall and leave working out how to come back for good. If diving is the reason you keep returning, the property question is really a geography question. Turtle Cove and Grace Bay put you on the north shore boats. Long Bay and the south side put you on the West Caicos and French Cay runs. Grand Turk puts a 7,000 foot wall five minutes from your door. I have lived here since 1989 and I sell across all of it.