Anyone who has ever had an aquarium knows that fish live in a kind of mystical, slow motion, watery world. That pales in comparison to the magic of seeing fish on a healthy coral reef, like the ones we experienced in the waters off Roatán. Many such reefs are threatened now, but the reefs to which we dove were healthy and teeming with life. They are a fascinating parallel world, inherently quiet but loudly teeming with life. It is our hope that our photos and videos will help you understand our fascination with diving.

Every dive site is different. Each reef is built of millennia of animal life (corals and sponges) offering a symbiotic existence for multitudes of fish and other sea creatures. Some offer walls of organisms to visit; others have formed canyons of life to be explored. At every depth there is something different to see. It is all absolutely enchanting.

As divers, we don’t see this like the camera does since water diffuses the colors we see, especially the reds. Blues and greens dominate, but with dive lights and filters, the camera has caught some of the colors as they exist.

The slideshow photos here pertain to our daily dives (about ²/₃ of our dives at Roatán). There are separate pages detailing the specialty dives: diving at night, deep diving in shipwrecks and diving with sharks.

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Dive boat departing AKR. Jani, 3rd from right.

Jani checks over her gear pre-dive

We enjoyed wonderful company at AKR

Heading out for a dive

A map of some of the possible dive sites on Roatan

Artist’s rendition of one reef that we visited

An abundance of coral, sponge and fish life

Beauty under the sea

Another beautiful look at coral and sponge life

Sometimes a reef requires tight navigation

Gary emerging from a reef canyon

Jani cruising underwater

Intrepid duo?

Small Parrotfish

Waiting to hear “The pool’s open!”

A reef teeming with life

A Queen Angelfish

Jani emerges from crack in the reef

Gary and Jani

The look of a healthy reef

More evidence of a healthy reef

Foureye Butterflyfish cruising the reef

Enjoying the view

A distinctive Triggerfish

A Sea turtle navigating an effortless path

Gary, on board The Isantamaa

Kevin, head of the dive shop, explaining how dive procedures will work.

Each boat has aboard indicating dives and divers

Boat and dive assignments for some of the AKR fleet

Every diver get a gear locker

Another dive boat ready for divers

Unlike many dive resorts, most of the dive sites we ventured to were within a 5-10 minute boat ride from our base at AKR. Most of our dive time was spent underwater, not in a boat motoring to a distant reef. We were also fortunate that the Roatan dive sites fall under the authority of the Roatan Marine Park, which has spent a lot of energy and dollars in efforts to protect and rebuild the underwater environment. For example, they do not allowed dive contractors to drop anchor at any of the dive sites. Instead they have installed permanent moorings at each dive site, available to any dive boat that wishes to explore there. This greatly reduces damage causes by anchor drops.

The Roatan Marine Park also sponsors “The Roatan Dive Guide“, a great book of 100+ maps of all the reefs, one of which is in the slideshow photos above.

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