February/March, 2026
I chose Bimini somewhat randomly, mostly because a hammerhead shark dive was offered. Hammerheads migrate, and are near the island November through April each year. We stayed at the Big Game Club in Alice Town, which is connected with Neil Watson’s Bimini Scuba Center. It was named for Princess Alice, the daughter of Queen Victoria, and became popular as a rum-smuggling island during prohibition. Travel was fairly easy, fly to Fort Lauderdale and catch the 2-hour Balearia ferry to Bimini.
The sunrise view from the docks at the resort is amazing. The view from the back side of the resort is a crumbling bar, long since overgrown with weeds and trees on the inside, and a parking lot full of garbage and rusting cars. The streets are a bit sketchy, since they are not quite wide enough for passing traffic, mostly golf carts, and pedestrians.
The resort itself is not kept up to the standard that the word “resort” calls to mind – kind of dirty, some mold, lots of rust, basically many years of use in a hard environment. That said, it has a charming feel to it. Nurse and bull sharks, along with other marine life, can be seen from the docks at any time of the day. Not a recommended snorkel spot.
The food is good, the drinks and the wifi are strong, and the people are amazingly friendly. The above photo of the fish fry was taken by Clare. My fish had eyeballs, and it was delicious (No, I did not eat the eyes).
My first dive was the hammerhead safari. One divemaster fed the hammerheads (and fended off the nurse sharks), two divemasters kept watch for tiger sharks, scuba diver issues, or other potential problems, and a semicircle of divers knelt on the bottom to watch or take photos.
Each diver had a length of PVC pipe used to lean against in the current, and as a shark-poker if one swam too close. I only witnessed a couple of nurse shark pokes, very gentle, so don’t get the idea that everyone had to continually fend off danger. I didn’t felt like I was in danger at any point. The only downside to this tour was the amount of people in the water. It was nearly impossible to get a photo of a hammerhead without parts of other people in the frame.
As you can see in the photo, multiple nurse sharks hung out on the bottom. Every so often they’d get bold and swarm the bait container, causing great havoc. One shark had learned to open the latch keeping the bait box closed, and that was when shark pokes were administered.
The following day we did a dolphin snorkel, and luckily happened upon a group of 14 or so Bottlenose dolphins feeding in the sand. They allowed us to swim with them for an hour while they played, dug food from the bottom, and harassed passing nurse sharks.
Each time a nurse shark swam near, the dolphins pursued, taking turns biting its tail fin. Quite funny.
I have roughly a million photos of dolphins, so it’ll take a while to go through them all.
The next day we took a boat to see the Sapona, a concrete-hulled ship that is partially sunk inside the Bermuda Triangle. It was originally commissioned by Woodrow Wilson and designed by Henry Ford for troop transport during WWI, but was not finished in time. I’ll never understand why anyone thought a concrete boat was a good idea. It was used as a casino, then oil storage, then a hub for rum smuggling. In 1926, a hurricane ran it aground and it became a target for U.S. bomber practice, then an artificial reef.
While I was diving the Sapona (in the Bermuda Triangle), my dive watch malfunctioned and lost two hours, and I can’t find any of the photos I took. Kind of odd.
We then boated a short distance away and visited a large population of Caribbean reef sharks, all of whom behaved nicely toward the divers and snorkelers.
I did reef dives, with one night dive, for the next two days, and found every imaginable type of fish you’d find in the Bahamas. I also dove three additional wrecks, one of which had only been intentionally sunk 9 months previously and was just beginning to grow its marine life.
A coral nursery was located at my last dive, and it had been recently battered by a storm. Still, it had some nice growth of Staghorn coral, which is very sensitive to climate change and is no longer abundant.
The final ocean day was a Stingray snorkel, which was fun but not great. The wind had been howling for a couple days and the shallow water was being pounded by waves. The visibility was terrible, but the rays absolutely stormed us when we got out of the boat. It was impossible to count how many there might have been, but they were all adorably cute and tried to suck our fingers into their mouths.
I do not have great photos of the rays because they tended to swim up and cover my camera lens looking for food.
It was a pretty fun trip, but very exhausting since I have not been diving much recently. I tried conch, which was good but could live without, and a few of the local beers. Kalik was the favorite.
Hope you enjoyed this, and thanks for reading!
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