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Christmas Island Dive Resorts

Christmas Island

The best dive trips, resorts, tour and dive operators in Kiribati (Christmas Island) are represented here in the On-line Kiribati Discovery Travel Catalog:

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be a pioneer of diving? Do you have friends who were some of the first to get involved in recreational diving? Have you heard all the stories that start, "when I started diving"? Now it's your turn!

Christmas Island has been a well known fly fishing destination for many years. Due to unstable air service it is virtually undiscovered by the diving community. It is time we all went to this jewel of a coral atoll for the diving adventure of a lifetime.

The north side of the island (twenty minutes from London) near the NASDA tracking station. A fifty foot descent revealed dense coral outcroppings on a gentle sloping bottom. Virgin hard coral formations engulfed by colorful reef fish of endless variety were everywhere. Emperor angels, flame angels, lemon peel angels, goldspotted angels, butterfly pairs (threadfin, saddleback, racoon, four spot, blue stripe, lined, ornate, teardrop, Meyer's, reticulated and more), damsels, groupers in dozens of varieties, countless types of surgeonfish, wrasses, parrotfish and more were abundant. The second dive at North West point revealed similar terrain covered with endless types of hard corals, as well as numerous white-mouth eels. Large spotted puffers were easy to approach, as hawkfish, gobies, and groupers watched us with no interest.

Cook Island, just minutes from London town has dozens of sites with highly varied topography and diverse marine life. Peters Pinnacle was a deep dive beginning at eighty feet, with the top of the pinnacle formation at fifty five feet. Visibility was 75 to 100 feet. Coral and peacock groupers abounded, and an occasional emperor angel could be found. A staggering variety of stony corals, including finger, antler, cauliflower, star, lobed, brain, mushroom, lettuce leaf, and more covered the pinnacle. Wire corals required close inspection since most had resident pairs of gobies and an occasional shrimp resident. Yellow margin eels were a frequent sight and close inspection showed cleaner shrimp. Carpet anemones with green background, blue edging and red veins resembling and exotic Persian carpet. The top of the pinnacle had a family of lion fish posing for their photo's. You will need more than one dive here to see all the wonders.

Grapple Rocks was an expansive pinnacle which peaked at forty-five feet. A dive to sixty feet revealed boulders and rock formations with increasing coral density approaching the summit. Flame angels abounded, as well as rabbit, trigger and filefishes. Large anemones with delicate, lacy, pink-tipped tentacles could be seen, and dozens of juvenile three-spot damsels danced before their anemone hosts. A common encounter is inquisitive green, leather back, or hawksbill turtles.

At South West Point, shallow waters revealed crystal clear visibility and a gently sloping floor with spur and groove coral formations. Christmas garden revealed every hard coral formation covered by millions of feeding fish including numerous juvenile angel and butterfly fishes. Tops of coral mounds showered by fairy basslets. Cleaning stations were everywhere and you could spend countless hours observing the cleaner wrasses at work!

Diving the "Bay of Wrecks" is without wrecks (still looking) but an adrenaline pumping dive. Pelagics, pelagics and more pelagics. This is a shore dive, over hard coral, wild surf and onto a gently sloping wall. As you descend the current picks you up and you watch the world go by. Within five minutes I saw dozens of sharks, schools of barracuda, turtles, and spotted rays. This was the first five minutes of the dive and it just kept getting better.

The surface intervals are almost as much fun as the dives. As you cruise along in your outrigger canoe you will have a chance to snorkel with dolphins.

We often conduct group dive tours to Kiribati, since we love to go there ourselves.

Christmas Island Dive Resorts