What are the top dives sites to explore in Roatan? Here are some favorites!
Roatan is part of the Mesoamerican Reef, the second-largest barrier reef in the world. As the largest of the Bay Islands, Roatan is famous for its amazing and diverse dive sites.
The warm ocean temperature is around 80 f on average, great visibility (60 -90) gives you the chance to enjoy diving all year long. It is one of the best places in the world also to learn how to dive, in part for the great water temperature, also the calmness of the ocean, short boat ride to the reef – truly it is an ideal place!
We have around 200 dive sites all around the island of Roatan. The multitude of excellent dive sites has put Roatan as a rich and diverse dive location known worldwide with barrier reef walls, wreck dives, lagoon, swim-throughs, deep channels, overhangs, and diverse topography.
All our ocean is protected by the Roatan Marine Park, which is a non-profit organization operating since 2005, dedicated to protecting the marine life and coastal ecosystem on our island.
Best Dive Sites: Here are some of the most popular dive sites in Roatan
Hole in the Wall
It is a deep dive located in front of Mangrove Bight. The name is after a hole at the wall, which is a tunnel that brings you out in the blue arriving at a depth of 100 ft. Following by a labyrinth of swim throughs, it is a great dive site for advanced divers, with a beautiful cave often visited by moray eels, and schools of glass sweeper fishes. In the summertime the cave is often full of silver sides, which makes it even more unreal.
Overheat Reef
Only a few minutes boat ride from Octopus Dive School is a perfect site for beginners and advanced divers alike. This site offers variety – big barrel sponges, black corals, and amazing sponges. It is one of the best dive sites to spot green sea turtles and hawksbill turtles.
Spooky Channel
It is a unique dive site, due to its impressive topography, where it takes the name after a big channel where the visibility can be spooky some days. The depth in the channel arrives at 90 feet, has deep walls with many crevices, overhangs, and varieties of fishes, sponges, grouper, barracudas.
Canyon Reef
One of our favorites, it is a great dive site with many tunnels and swim-throughs where the wall has created overhangs that are sometimes close to the top.
El Aguila Wreck
It is a sunken cargo ship that sits on a sandy bottom at 100 ft. It was sunken by Anthony’s Key to offer a wreck dive site to the island. A few years later, Hurricane Mitch split the boat into three pieces. As the ship has been there for many years, it has a lot of sponges and soft corals growing on it.
Half Moon Bay Wall
It is located in West End, a perfect dive for all diving levels. The reef starts at 15 ft, the wall drops down to 150 ft and deeper. Gorgonias, black corals, school of groupers, blue chromis, creole wrasse are often what you see. From the wall at 70 ft there is a tunnel that brings you to a shallower depth, where you will see white sand, coral´s head, with the great opportunity to spot eagle rays.
Peter´s Place
It is an amazing wall dive where the wall offers plenty of crevices and mini canyons. More crevices are on top of the reef where there is plenty of marine life with normally great visibility. School of horse-eye jack to be seen in the blue on top of a huge sandy area at around 100 ft and deeper.
The Odyssey Wreck
It is located east from our dive shop. It is the biggest wreck on the island, the ship is massive sits on 110 ft of water, 300 ft from the bow to the stern. Exploring the cargo ship, divers feel tiny in comparison! In the shallower part around 70 ft, it is easy to find schools of fish, creole wrasse, and blue chromis. In few minutes from the ship, you’ll end the dive at a beautiful wall.
Pablo’s Place
Located in the west point of the island where the north and south currents combine, giving this site huge varieties of fishes, big schools of snapper, horse-eye jacks, barracudas, black durgeon, triggerfishes, and more. Drift dives are common at Pablo´s, and we often finish the dive at the tip of the island at a site called Texas, famous for the biggest Giant Barrel sponges, varieties of corals, giant anemones.
Staff Picks: The Best Dive Sites in Roatan
It is difficult for us to choose a fave dive site, we love them all! Every day it is something new to discover when we go diving but we do have some that we really love, each one of us for different reasons.
Nurias´s favorite dive site is Pirata´s dream.
She actually bought this dive site after her lifetime partner, her beloved Pirata (beautiful black lab) that passed away in 2018 after 13 years of joining divers in our boat and jumping in the water after every dive.
Roatan Marine Park has a name a dive site program and the donation goes directly towards their conservation efforts and is a wonderful way to honor your loved ones and protect our beautiful reef.
This site is in Sandy Bay and is awesome for advanced and beginners, The wall starts around 30 ft with a unique swim through that leads you to around 60 feet out on the wall. It features many crevices, canyons, and awesome topography. It is a great place to spot crabs, lobsters, moray eels, little shrimps, amazing coral fans, and sponges with residents turtles, groupers. There are sand patches at different depths with the possibility to see jaw fishes, conches, and stingrays.
Virna´s favorite dive site is Pablo’s Place
Drift dives are famous in this area since it is at the west point of the island where different currents meet an abundance of sea life, queen triggerfish, barracudas, giant barrel sponges, groupers, chances to see eagle rays. Good chances to spot hammerhead sharks on our sunrise dives – the best way to wake up under the sea!
Bruno´s favorite dive site is Bear´s Den.
Not far from Octopus going east, another 5 min boat ride. It has a long swim throughs from 15 ft to 60 feet, arriving at an opening on the wall, where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel to the blue. On the top of the wall, there is an epic big cavern with amazing light coming through from the top, schools of glass sweepers, lobsters, plenty of different shrimps, if you are lucky, you may even see an Octopus.
We can’t wait for you to explore all the amazing dive sites that Roatan has to offer! Soon, you will have your own list of best dive sites in Roatan! Contact us to book your Roatan dive package!
