Grand Turk SCUBA cancelled

Hello fellow cruisers and divers,

My family and I are cruising on Carnival Pride later this month, going to Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay and Freeport. My stepson and I were planning to do some diving at Grand Turk (I hear the diving there is excellent). However, I just got an email from Carnival tour operations, saying the certified SCUBA excursion has been cancelled -- Carnival has apparently severed ties with the local dive operator due to concerns with the boat and/or dive equipment. I did a little research and found that up until now, Carnival (and I'm assuming, all the other cruise lines) were using Oasis Divers. A little more research showed that Oasis is, or at least has been a well-regarded PADI dive shop on Grand Turk. So I'm wondering what led to the cancellation and severing the business relationship. Is it possible that it had something to do with the lost diver off Cozumel? Whatever the cause, does anyone have any info about Oasis Divers on Grand Turk? Any reason we should avoid booking with them on our own? Thanks in advance for whatever help you can offer!

Oasis Divers just had a death on a discover scuba Carnival excursion. We had our own problems with them on a HAL excursion. I would never recommend anyone use them.

There have been possibly 2 deaths while on water tours in the last 10 days on Grand Turk. I am not sure if you can book directly with Oasis Divers. I don't know all the details either. My condolences to the families.

There are other dive shops on Grand Turk.

Grand Turk Diving ( info@gtdiving.com)

Blue Water Divers (info@grandturkscuba.com )

I have dove with both and they are both excellent operations.

Laurie and Bubbles, thanks for the quick responses. It's sad to hear that someone died on a discover scuba outing. Laurie, what were the problems you had with Oasis? I'm wondering, since they had the contract with Carnival (and were thus rolling in money), maybe they got a bit lax in their standards? Too bad for them; I'm sure one of the other shops will soon get that contract. Bubbles, thanks for the info on those other shops -- I'll check them out.

I don't want to get into the details, but we had a very bad vibe from them from the moment we first met them. They were rude, argumentative, and uncooperative. My boyfriend and I were the only really experienced divers in the group from the ship (he has almost 5,000 dives and has been an instructor for 33 years) and it was clear that they didn't want us on the boat.