St. Vincent & the Grenadines

The elusive red-banded lobster at Critter Corner.

Pilot Andrew Ward's SVG Air Commando 500 yaws on shifting air currents as it cruises above deep blue waters so clear that trenches, sand channels and reef cuts can be seen from 1,500 feet. We cross a string of disconnected islands with lush volcanic peaks, each like a transplant stolen from the South Pacific and dropped here at the bottom of the Eastern Caribbean.

Like many islands, the Grenadines -- Bequia, Canouan, Mayreau, Mustique, the Tobago Cays, Union Island, Palm Island -- and their head maiden, St. Vincent, rose from the molten gurglings of the earth. From the air, La Soufri?, the island's still-active 4,000-foot volcano (she last erupted in 1979), towers over the north coast, her rainforest flanks washed by daily tropical showers. The warm sands of St. Vincent, known to contain medicinal properties, are pepper-black as a result.

An aerial view of catamarans moored on the turquoise shallows inside the Tobago Cays' inner lagoon is a confirmation: yachties and bareboaters (sailors eloping for weeks at a time without a paid crew) have long known these islands. They have been a secret, word-of-mouth destination, however, among the scuba world, a place talked of usually among underwater photographers with a penchant for small critter portraits.

St. Vincent has long been pigeonholed as the "muck-diving capital of the Caribbean," but that is something of a misnomer, bringing to mind sites off Mabul or Sulawesi, Pacific islands with small reef creatures but silty waters. Along sloping walls on St. Vincent's leeward shore, the visibility can top 100 feet, thanks to the density of volcanic, granite-based sand that falls quickly when stirred.

But rest assured that no divemaster leaves the boat without a pointer tucked in or strapped to his BC to indicate the fingernail-size crabs, blennies and shrimp that a less observant diver would casually miss. Diving in St. Vincent requires a vigilant eye for spotting the uncommon and the minute. {mospagebreak}

Jewels of the Grenadines: The Tobago Cays are secluded, beautiful and protected by law.

Along The Lee Shore

More than just macro: Sloping walls like New Guinea Reef are decorated with sea fans, rope sponges and tube sponges.

The boat ride to Anchor Reef on the lee coast bypasses Kingstown, capital of St. Vincent and home to a quarter of the island's population of 120,000. Floating past several inlets marked by clustered wooden shanties and palm-lined hillsides, the striated rocks of the jagged coast are coal-colored and seem to invite cliff diving.

Nestled in a jungly bay, Anchor Reef is one of only a few dive sites that are more than the usual 15-minute jaunt up the coast from Kingstown. Once below water, it is immediately obvious why dive instructor Sarah Bourne has elected to make our first dive in this lush alcove so far from town. Dappled refractions of light dance on the dark seafloor as the clouds shift.

No matter how many you've seen before, longlure frogfish and longsnout seahorses are prized sightings on any dive, typically camouflaged and visible only to the keen-eyed. When our first 45-minute dive at Anchor Reef yields three frogfish in various shades, two longsnout seahorses, a porcelain two-spot octopus and two goldentail morays, I'm a bit overwhelmed, baffled that St. Vincent and the Grenadines lie so far off the dive travel radar. Prior to this trip, I had only a vague notion of their location, somewhere on the ragged end of the Caribbean's windward edge.

"People who come to dive here for the first time are blown away by it," says Bourne, a lithe, blond-haired British transplant who came to St. Vincent three years ago. "The boat rides are not long and all the best sites are located in the lee of island." {mospagebreak}

Three of a kind: Southern teardrop crabs nestled in a sponge at Orca Point.

Disguised Among The Bedrock

Now you see me: The invisible shrimp can challenge even 20/20 eyesight.

New Guinea Reef's cliffside walls, a continuation of the vertical slant of the lush slopes above, are long, columnar overhangs encrusted in sponges and draped in bottle brush and scraggly black corals. The terraced slope dropping from the inner bay starts at 30 feet and falls in measured degrees to 150 feet, the bottom thick with branching vase sponges.

"It reminded me of Papua New Guinea where I had just come from," says Bill Tewes, a bespectacled Texan with the demeanor of a college professor; he has run a dive shop on St. Vincent since 1982.

A favorite spot for night diving, Orca Point gets its name from the company that manufactured the first dive computer. In March of '85, Tewes took the chairman of Orca and his dive crew out to this then- unnamed reef. He promised to name the site in the company's honor, provided that the diving was first-rate.

At the point, a rock-strewn pinnacle juts from the water's surface inside a grotto-like black sand bay. Under water, the spire reveals scattered boulders, like Druid stones overgrown with vibrant encrusting sponge.

There is no shortage of macro subjects disguised among the bedrock: invisible shrimp, squat anemone shrimp and sunspot anemone shrimp, neck crabs, blackhead blennies, decorator crabs, three-spotted scorpionfish and sharptail eels. On our afternoon dive, we discovered a trio of penny-sized southern teardrop crabs tucked inside a branching vase sponge.

In the shadow of Fort Durvernette, a promontory off the western edge of Young Island, a private tropical cay 600 feet off Villa Beach, is St. Vincent's token muck dive, Critter Corner. Until recently when rocks began falling from its heights, Duvernette was a sunset cocktail spot for Young Island's resort guests. A stray wineglass may be buried in the green reedy shallows, which are crowded with brightly hued magnificent sea urchins, recognizable by the grape-size crowning bead at their star-like center. There is also an abundance of long-spined sea urchins, tell-tale indicators of a healthy reef system. The seagrass bed at 35 feet is a favored hangout of flying gurnards, yellowhead jawfish, nimble spray crabs, snake eels, fanworms, razorfish and the rare red-banded lobster.

"Farther north it is likely there are places to dive that are undiscovered," says Bourne as our boat leaves Anchor Reef, hastening to shore up amongst a scattered pod of migrating Atlantic dolphins, a daily occurrence in the deep waters between the island and Bequia. {mospagebreak}

Disguised Among The Bedrock (cont.)

Nine miles south of St. Vincent, Bequia, with its rich nautical heritage, is a popular anchorage and resupply point for sailboats. Most of the dives are drifts along the leeward shoulder of the north coast and south along the volcanic walls of West Cay and Pigeon Island. Currents moving through Bequia Channel in the north provide the best conditions for sighting pelagics like jacks, sharks and rays, all drawn to the nutrient-rich waters.

Bequia's main town Port Elizabeth rises up into the hills along the beach of Admiralty Bay. Dive sites along the outer edges of this bight like Boulders, Moon Hole and Devil's Table are done as mini-drifts. Hollow boulders and fissured rocks, covered in azure vase sponges, encrusting star sponges and finger sponges serve as ideal reef fish habitat. Varieties of moray eels, schools of snapper and filefish are common in these calmer, shallower waters.

Slogans

Captain Earl Halbich fires up his 38-foot sport yacht and offers me a glass of his famous rum punch, which I politely decline at nine in the morning. The boat rocks, braving the choppy Atlantic cross swells as it carries us south to the Tobago Cays and Mayreau Island.

Rimmed by a horseshoe barrier reef, the five deserted cays are the crown jewels of the Grenadines, protected as a marine park by the government and possibly soon as a world heritage site by UNESCO. This cluster of oases with sugar sand and shallow mirror-blue waters is a tropical nursery for juvenile fish and considered to be among the best snorkeling locales in the Caribbean.

Incoming workboats with sails that seem borrowed from the Orient tack on trade winds into the calm lagoon. Spending a day moored here off Jamesby Island among the bareboats, snorkeling lazily among patches of hard corals as the incoming tide pounds the outer reef, is restorative and intoxicating, even without the rum punch. With good reason, Vincentians speak of the curative effects of spending a day soaking up the hypnotic beauty of the Tobago Cays.

A bar and sandwich shop in nearby Salt Whistle Bay, a protected anchorage on Mayreau's north shoulder, is our final stop before the long haul threading up the Cays. There is a T-shirt they sell on the beach here that embodies the spirit of St. Vincent and the Grenadines for the sailors who pass through these waters: "Sail fast, live slow." To that slogan, I offer a qualifier better suited to the traveling diver eager for the reef's microscopic rewards: "Dive slow, look hard." {mospagebreak}

Dive In: St. Vincent & the Grenadines

GETTING THERE/LOCATION: St. Vincent and the Grenadines are located between St. Lucia and Grenada on the southern end of the Eastern Caribbean. Barbados is 100 miles to the east and is a major gateway for incoming flights from the U.S.; the others are Grenada, Martinique, St. Lucia, Puerto Rico and Trinidad. American Eagle (www.american.com) has service between San Jose and Canouan. BWIA Express (www.bwee.com), Caribbean Star Airlines (www.flycaribbeanstar.com) and LIAT (www.liat.com) all provide service from the gateways. SVG Air (www.svgair.com), Trans Island Air (www.tia2000.com) and Mustique Airways (www.mustique.com) offer inter-island charter services. A departure tax of $13 is charged to all visitors.

DOCUMENTS: Citizens of the U.S., U.K. and Canada may enter the country with a valid passport or proof of citizenship (either a birth certificate or voter registration card will do).

WEATHER: Eighteen miles wide by 11 miles long, St. Vincent is warm and balmy with temperatures ranging from 75F to 88F; yearly average is 81F. January to April are the dry months with the greatest rainfall from July to October.

WATER CONDITIONS: Visibility varies depending on the dive site, but days with water clarity exceeding 100 feet are not uncommon. Water temperatures range from 79F to 82F.

ELECTRICITY: 220 volts, 50 cycles. Many hotels provide dual voltage shaver units with 110 volts, but bringing an adapter is advised.

LANGUAGE: English is the official language.

TIME: Atlantic Standard Time, one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

MONEY MATTERS: The Eastern Caribbean dollar or EC$ is the Vincentian currency. The exchange rate is one U.S. dollar to EC$2.70.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Visit the web site of SVG Tourism at www.svgtourism.com and www.scubasvg.com.