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My visit to Abaco was to Marsh Harbour on the island of Great Abaco. The local magazine, Abaco Life, describes Marsh Harbour as "Abaco's largest city, a commercial hub with banks, supermarkets, dozens of shops, stores, travel agents, bakeries, restaurants, marinas and every service you'll ever need. But there are few street signs, no house numbers and only one traffic light!"

I was met at the airport by Keith Rogers, owner of Dive Abaco. Keith drove me a few minutes into town, and immediately I could see what he meant in the Dive Abaco brochure copy that reads "Marsh Harbour, although the third largest city in the Bahamas, is a small quiet community with only one traffic light! (It seems this one traffic light is a significant source of pride for Great Abaconians).  Virtually everything is within walking distance! Leave your fancy duds at home — dress is casual — even in the finest restaurants". Indeed, dress was casual and the atmosphere friendly as we stopped in for a beer at the Conch Inn, just a few steps away from the Dive Abaco shop and dive boat dock. Obviously everyone in the business community knows everyone else, so with Keith making the introductions we downed a few Kaliks with a local banker and hotelier. Then, located just a few more steps across the street, I checked into a very pleasant inn called The Lofty Fig.  Keith offers a few different dive/lodging packages, but this quaint villa offered the convenience of proximity, as well as the comfort of air-conditioning, television and a kitchenette perfect for wake-me-up coffee and breakfast in the morning.

Dive Abaco specializes in referral certifications, open water certifications, and specialty instruction, but clearly the prime emphasis is on dive tours. Diving is what Keith Rogers is all about, and he obviously enjoys escorting his guests to his very favorite dive sites. He is a totally hands-on operator who offers his guests an ongoing buoyancy control workshop in a very soft, unobtrusive manner. Underwater, he is either showing off the best of the dive sites or recording the scene on high high-tech digital camcorder.
Most of the diving is relatively shallow and quite hassle-free along the world's third largest barrier reef. Much of the reef formation is massive colonies of mountainous star coral, often riddled with very impressive caverns and swim-throughs, but there are also pristine elkhorn forests and isolated hard corals of all description. The extraordinary water clarity and the fact that so much of the reef rises to within a few feet of the surface makes this an ideal destination for both scuba divers and snorkelers. Our diving was done within the protected waters of the Fowl Cay Undersea Preserve, and the first site we visited was known as the Edge. A giant stride off the swim-platform dropped us in just 20 feet of water, but a short swim to seaward and we were descending a mini-wall that dropped us to 70 feet.  Here is a prime cruising ground for pelagics such as Caribbean reef sharks, eagle rays, and turtles. We saw a couple of sharks and several southern stingrays, but our best shark sighting came later this day on a site simply called  Shark Dive.  

Here, along a sand bottom in 50 feet of water, Keith has begun an impressive shark feed. Typically 6 to 12 Caribbean reef sharks show up, attracted to a small chumsicle (a frozen aggregate of fish heads and miscellaneous detritus from local anglers) tethered to the bottom. The divers usually kneel in a semi-circle along the bottom, but are free to swim around if they prefer. The underwater photographers and videographers especially seem to enjoy the low-key approach of this shark feed and the close access they are permitted.