[dropcap]A[/dropcap]pril is one of the best months, if not the best month of the year to visit Bimini for all your underwater activities. With a serious warming trend of the water, it’s likely the water temperature could rise four to five degrees, getting up to 79°F to 80°F by the end of the month! These warming waters also bring along a huge increase in many of the “larger” fish around our islands. Migrations of mutton snappers start towards the end of the month, and seeing hundreds of these beautiful, and curious snappers patrolling some of our deeper wrecks is an awe inspiring sight. With the raising temperatures, some of the larger black, Nassau, goliath, and tiger groupers begin to frequent some shallower waters. We start seeing some monster and friendly groupers on sites like “The Bimini Trader”, “Tuna Alley”, and “the Kinks”.
The greater hammerheads that call Bimini home in the winter months, start to trickle away from the Islands of Bimini looking for cooler water, but it is still fairly common to see plenty of these sharks in April. We have seen lots of amazing animals at the Great Hammerhead Safari site this year, including wild dolphins, smalltooth sawfish, and even tiger sharks. Blacktips, blackness, reef, lemons, bulls, and nurse sharks are all readily available for viewing pleasure all month long.
With the mild southerly winds usually returning in April, it’s a wonderful month to explore some of the epic reefs off South Cat Cay, like Victory Reef, the Nodules, or Bull Run. April 1st also marks the closure of lobster season in the Bahamas, so remember to retire your lobster bags until August.