I am at Turquoise Bay Dive Resort and it embraces the meaning of tranquillo like no other. Sitting almost right at the center of the northern edge of Roatán, it’s a pleasure to escape the touristy hustle and bustle of the West End. I slowly sip my coffee and decide I should probably head to breakfast, there’s no hurry though, the dive boat is scheduled to leave around 8:30 or 9:00 a.m., so I have plenty of time to relax and enjoy the view.

We can't say Honduras is unknown to scuba divers. Roatán is known and so is Utila; both are dive locations that attract scuba divers, mostly from the United States, and they provide plenty of dive centers and all the dive logistics that keen divers expect.

The Cayos are part of the Bay Islands (Islas de la Bahía). Some people still like to call them Hog Islands, referring to the time the famous pirate Henry Morgan (ca. 1635–1688)—according to legend—"planted" hogs on these cays so he and his fellow pirates would have meat on their return trips. [1]

And yet the most common reaction I get when I tell people I’m off to dive in Roatan is, “Isn’t that somewhere in South America?” Roatan, it seems, remains something of an undiscovered treasure. So, I’ve decided to change that. For those divers around the world who haven’t discovered my little corner of the Caribbean, consider this a primer, a sort of Roatan 101: Introduction to the Bay Islands.

Getting there proved somewhat easier than anticipated. I discovered a non-stop service to Roatan from my home in Toronto on Sunwing, a charter airline that just started flights this past winter. Better still was the fact I could avoid the long stopovers required by connecting flights travelling through the United States.

Remoras attach and reattach themselves to the sharks. They’re not parasites — the remoras count on the sharks’ sloppy eating habits and dine on scraps of fish the sharks miss.

 

Sergio Tritto, our dive master and a former lawyer from Italy, is the one petting the animals. It’s a case of “Do as I say, not as I do,” as he warned us before the dive not to touch the sharks. He also said, “Don’t wave your hands.” The sharks might mistake a hand for a fish and bite it.

I welcomed the chance to also investigate pelagic animal field research and local conservation efforts. Whalesharks are the largest of all sharks and are the largest fish in the sea. They can grow to more than 50 feet long and feed on plankton, which are some of the smallest organisms in the ocean. These highly migratory animals are capable of sustaining high speeds yet usually display a leisurely grace.