Best cruises for snorkeling and diving

City, Island or Group: Cayman Islands

Best Sites or Areas: Anything along the Cayman Wall, Stingray City and Sandbar, Oro Verde Wreck, Balboa Wreck and Cemetery Reef

What's There: For snorkelers, there's Stingray City (Sandbar) and a number of organized boat dives on shallow reefs or wrecks. However, many good snorkel spots can be reached on one's own right from shore, including Cemetery Reef, a colorful, shallow little reef right off the Georgetown waterfront just a stone's throw from the tender dock. For that matter, many of the snorkel trips offered onboard, especially those to Stingray City and Sandbar, can be booked far more affordably through the ubiquitous throng of operators hanging around the tender terminal.

For scuba divers, the main draw is the Cayman Wall, which drops precipitously into the abyss. A decent percentage of cruise ship dive excursions make their first of two dives a wall dive, though generally, for reasons explained further on, not to the better, more dramatic of the wall's sites.

Typically, for the second dive, nearly every operator serving the cruise industry takes their flock to the wreck of the Oro Verde, a 181-foot freighter sunk in 1980. With a maximum depth of 50 feet it makes an excellent novice-friendly dive. The original Stingray City, which sits in 12 feet of water is a suitable, but hardly challenging destination for scuba divers and is offered as an excursion by most cruise ships. (Sandbar, which has waist-deep water, is now lumped together conceptually with Stingray City, but gets a hugely greater number of visitors, including most of the traffic from cruise ships.)

For the highly skilled scuba diver, I recommend booking dives independently from the cruise ship shore excursion department. Many of the better dives on the Cayman Wall are considered too challenging by cruise line management and so are seldom offered as shore excursions. An example is one of my favorite Cayman dives, Trinity Caves, which has an official maximum depth of 90 feet. But the maximum depth a diver reaches on sites like Trinity Caves depends on his ability to control his depth and buoyancy to maintain that level: the actual bottom is literally thousands of feet down! The cruise lines prefer dives that have an absolute bottom at that depth or less.

Closest Ports of Call: Georgetown, Grand Cayman

Our Pick: Royal Caribbean

Why: While offering the same series of snorkel and scuba trips as the competition, RCI schedules the final open water checkout dives of their Sea Trek onboard PADI certification course at Grand Cayman -- not a bad choice. This Cayman dive experience culminates onboard classroom and pool practice sessions conducted on cruise days prior to the Cayman port call.

City, Island or Group: Bay Islands, Honduras

Best Sites or Areas: Walls and reefs along the north shore of the three main Bay Islands: Roatan, Utila and Guanaja. There are still some terrific less-visited sites on the south shore of Roatan and in the tiny Cayos Cochinos farther south, but these sites are unreachable on a typical cruise ship port call.

What's There: The barrier reef that starts in Northern Yucatan continues offshore along Honduras' Bay Islands. There are many wall dives that are, like Cozumel's, drift dives, but there are also areas along the reef where the current is far milder, and conventional boat dives are possible.

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There are many areas -- some close to shore -- of shallow reefs suitable for snorkeling, and Anthony's Key Resort, which provides the lion's share of beach, snorkel and dive excursions for the cruise industry, conducts dolphin encounters, including in waist-deep water, snorkeling and a wall dive with accompanying dolphins. In addition, the Bay Islands are known for frequent sightings of whale sharks, though most of these occur off Utila, 18 miles from the west end of Roatan, and, at the time I filed this story, no cruise lines were offering snorkel or dive trips with these gentle leviathans. For those who want to explore this option further, contact Salt & Pepper Utila Whale Shark Tours (504-445-1306).

Closest Ports of Call: Roatan

Our Pick: A tie -- Carnival and NCL

Why: Carnival gets our nod because they offer the "Certified Dolphin Dive" experience; NCL offers the full panoply of snorkel, scuba and snuba trips, but they also offer a certified scuba shark feed dive at a depth of 70 feet.

South Florida-based Faber is a longtime contributor to Cruise Critic and also columnist for Cruise Critic's Cruise News & Reviews. Beyond our publications, Faber's work has appeared in a myriad of outlets, including Cruise Travel Magazine, "The Miami Herald" and "The Total Traveler Guide to Worldwide Cruising."

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