Michael McFadyen's Scuba Diving - Grand Central Station
When people talk of diving Gizo in the Solomon Islands, the dive sites they speak of are the wreck of the Toa Maru No 2 and the reef dive, Grand Central Station. Grand Central Station is located to the west-north-west of the Toa Maru, about 20 minutes run from Gizo.
Grand Central Station gets its name from the main railway station in New York and the large number of people that move through it. To see it at its best you need current. I have had a lot of people tell me what a great dive site it is and also just as many tell me that they had a poor dive here. These comments seem to correspond with current or no current.
After tieing up to a mooring and descending to the bottom, you head north along the reef. The bottom is over 35 metres but you do not need to go this deep, 30 metres is deep enough. Once you get to the point, stop and hold onto a piece of dead coral if needed.
As I indicated above, you need a strong current for this site to be seen at its best. I did not have much current. However, even when the current is not very strong you will see a few sharks, mostly whitetip and grey reef sharks. There are also barracudas in large numbers. We also saw some clown triggerfish and titan triggerfish. There were quite a few giant sweetlips.
Overall, the dive was a bit of a disappointment to me.
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