How this database is built
This site is a structured database first and a website second. Each dive site is a record; each fact about it — a depth, an access mode, a position, a protected-area status — is stored as a separate claim linked to the source it came from. Currently: 64 sites, 234 sources, and 707 open research questions.
Source tiers
| Tier 1 | Primary / authoritative. Government agencies (NOAA, DRNA, USFWS), official GIS datasets, peer-reviewed science, official protected-area information. |
|---|---|
| Tier 2 | Specialist. Established local dive operators, recognized dive organizations, reputable dive publications, marine research organizations. |
| Tier 3 | Corroborating. Independent corroboration: other dive websites, mapping resources, credible travel resources. Historical guides are tier 3 and always labelled historical. |
| Tier 4 | Lead only. Forums, blogs, social media, user-generated map pins. Used to discover sites — never enough on their own to publish a fact. |
Confidence levels
Confidence is assigned by explicit rules, not a made-up score. Sources count as independent only if they come from different organisations.
- Verified: Official or primary data plus independent specialist sources agree, with strong location evidence.
- High confidence: Multiple independent authoritative or specialist sources document this site.
- Moderate confidence: Some reliable evidence exists, but parts remain uncorroborated or under review.
- Low confidence: Mostly weak or single secondary evidence. Treat with caution.
- Historical only: Documented only in historical or dated sources (e.g. a 1998 guide or a closed operator); current existence, access and condition are unconfirmed.
An unresolved conflict (for example, two credible sources placing a site more than 250 m apart) caps a site at Moderate until it is reviewed.
Coordinates
We store every position a source reports, what it represents (a mooring buoy, a wreck, a monitoring station, an approximate area) and how precise it is. We never add precision a source did not have: a position published to two decimal places is shown to two decimal places. Reef-monitoring stations and reserve boundaries help locate reefs, but they are not treated as dive-site positions.
- Official GIS: From an official dataset that represents this site or its mooring.
- Official dataset (nearby feature): From an official dataset point at or near the site (e.g., a monitoring station), not the dive site itself.
- Field-verified: Confirmed by a named professional with GPS.
- Sources agree: Two or more independent published positions agree within 250 m.
- Single published source: One reputable source publishes this position; not yet corroborated.
- Historical: Position appears only in historical material.
- Approximate area: Inferred from a written description or feature; could be off by hundreds of metres or more.
- Conflicting: Credible sources disagree about the position; under review.
- Unverified: Only weak or user-generated evidence for the position.
Public maps show general areas only. By policy, dive-site positions on this website are generalised to about 1 km and no exact coordinates are published; exact positions are kept for research and verification. For the precise spot and the day’s conditions, dive with or ask a local operator.
Coordinates are withheld entirely for sensitive sites — for example wrecks that are war graves or protected archaeological sites under Puerto Rico law.
Historical versus current information
We use The Complete Diving Guide: The Caribbean, Volume 3 (Ryan & Savage, 1998) as historical research material. It helped us identify over a hundred site names, but access, moorings, reef condition, businesses and even names change over nearly three decades. Facts from it are shown only in a clearly marked “Historical record” panel, and a site known only from that guide is labelled Historical only. We do not reproduce its text, maps or photographs.
Depths
Dive sites are areas, not points, so we record each source’s reported range and display the span of current specialist sources, falling back to weaker or historical sources only when nothing better exists. Depths are reported ranges, not dive-plan limits.
Difficulty and conditions
We don’t rate difficulty ourselves. Where operators or publications describe a site’s experience level, we quote that as their description. Visibility, currents and marine life vary daily; we don’t publish “typical conditions” from anecdotes.
Which sites are listed
We keep every site we research, but only list sites with enough sourced information to be useful: a current source and at least four kinds of facts (such as depth, access, terrain, marine life, hazards or protected-area status), or our own photos. Sites known only from old guides, or with very little published detail, stay off the lists, map and search until research fills them in. Their pages remain available by direct link.
Each listed site has a short overview written only from the facts cited on that page, with numbered links to the sources. Details that come only from old sources are marked as dated.
Writing and copyright
Facts are summarised in our own words. We don’t copy operators’ or publishers’ descriptions, and we only use photographs we own or that are clearly licensed.
Corrections
Anyone can suggest a correction or a missing site. Submissions are reviewed as evidence; if accepted they become claims attributed to “contributor report” and are corroborated before they change a site’s confidence. Every change is kept in an audit log.
Independence
Sites are not associated with any operator because that operator dives them. The separate dive-shop directory lists operating shops alphabetically, with no ranking or paid placement, and no shop is cited as a source for site facts. See About.