St. Thomas scuba diving

The East End reef and its record

Yes, on the East End, with a record to read first. The Department of Planning and Natural Resources counts about 45 species of hard coral in the St. Thomas East End Reserves, and in its 2011 management plan calls elkhorn and staghorn coral, listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2006, plentiful in shallow stands there. The same plan names the reserves' beaches and coast as favored sites for snorkeling and scuba diving, for residents and visitors alike.

The tradeoff is the reef's history. In 2005, unprecedented warm water caused bleaching and a disease outbreak that cut shallow coral cover across the US Virgin Islands by 40 percent, per the department. Inside the reserves, losses ran from 15 percent on mixed hard bottom to over 50 percent on the dense star coral reefs.

Where the dive sites are on the East End

The sites the territory itself names sit inside the St. Thomas East End Reserves, the water and cays between the Mangrove Lagoon at Bovoni and Cabrita Point, out to Little St. James. Three reserves established in 1994 make it up: Cas Cay and Mangrove Lagoon, St. James, and Compass Point Pond. Every site below is reached by boat; there is no road to any of them.

From the Department of Planning and Natural Resources' St. Thomas East End Reserves Management Plan, May 2011, read October 9, 2026. The department held a public meeting on updates to it on December 12, 2022, per its own events page; we found no revised plan.

Which site you dive on a given morning is the shop's call, made on the wind and the swell. Ask which of these the boat is going to before you book, if one of them is the reason you came.

What the reserve rules forbid a diver

Take nothing and disturb nothing. In the Cas Cay and Mangrove Lagoon reserve it is unlawful, without a permit, to take or possess any fish or other living thing, or to disturb or remove any plant, animal or mineral. In the St. James reserve, which holds Cow and Calf Rocks and Christmas Cove, it is unlawful to remove any marine wildlife without a permit. Those are Virgin Islands rules, Title 12, Subchapter 96, as the Department of Planning and Natural Resources reprints them.

The boat carries the rest. In the Cas Cay and Mangrove Lagoon reserve, anchoring is limited to seven days, a boat without a working holding tank may not anchor, and powered boats keep to 5 miles per hour; and the department's plan names anchors on coral and seagrass as a threat it set out to cut with mooring buoys. A shop that ties up instead of anchoring is following the plan. Buck Island, off the south coast, is a national wildlife refuge closed to the public, and the refuge stops at sea level, per the US Fish and Wildlife Service: a dive there never lands on the island.

Dive shops in St. Thomas, and where they are

Two of the island's shops, whose own pages we read on October 9, 2026, not as a ranking: Aqua Action Dive Center is at the Secret Harbour Beach Resort, says its boats leave at 9 am, lists more than 40 sites on the Caribbean and Atlantic sides, and takes children from age 8 for an introduction to scuba. Secret Harbour Beach is 6 minutes by car from the Red Hook ferry terminal, measured. St. Thomas Dive Center is at the Bolongo Bay Beach Resort, keeps business hours of 8 am to 5 pm, and schedules every course and dive by advance reservation. Bolongo Bay beach is 14 minutes by car from Charlotte Amalie, measured.

Neither page names the dock its boat leaves from, so ask when you book. Charter and dive operators beyond these two are a directory topic of their own, and snorkeling from the beach and by boat is a separate page.

Certification, and flying home after diving

Diving is a skill that needs training and certification, and a well-trained companion in the water, per the CDC's Yellow Book, last reviewed in April 2025. A certified diver brings the card; anyone else starts with a shop's introductory lesson or a full course.

Plan the last dive around the flight from Cyril E. King Airport. The CDC recommends a surface interval of at least 12 hours after a single dive with no decompression stops, at least 18 hours after several dives or several days of diving, and 24 to 48 hours after a dive that needed decompression stops.

If anything feels wrong after a dive, the CDC's advice is to get checked for decompression illness, whose treatment is oxygen and recompression in a hyperbaric chamber. It lists the Divers Alert Network's 24-hour emergency line, +1-919-684-9111. We could not confirm on a hospital or government page, as of October 2026, which chamber in the islands is working, so ask the shop where the nearest one is before the first dive.