DEEP SHIPWRECKS, MASK-RIPPING CURRENTS, ENORMOUS PREDATORY ANIMALS that come up and bump you; that sort of experience had become almost normal for me during my most recent 12 months of diving. I was becoming an adrenalin-junkie, so badly hooked on underwater excitement that the Editor was considering sending me to the Priory to dry out. Instead, he sent me to the Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI) for a thorough wetting.
     I went first to Grand Turk. Where is Grand Turk? Well it's not in Turkey and it's hardly grand. It sits in deep water and became TCI's capital island because the larger Caicos islands, with which the Turks are grouped, are on the shallow plateau of the Caicos Bank, impeding access by large vessels in the days when such things mattered.
     The most eastern outpost of the Bahamas archipelago, and due north of Haiti, TCI won political separation from the Bahamas in 1847 and formed a British protectorate.
     Some say Grand Turk is named after the Turk's head flower, others that it was principally a home for pirates, or "turks" as they were often called. It was settled by people from Bermuda, who found that its salt ponds would provide a lucrative business.
     Today, little has changed apart from a few buildings that fell down having been replaced by an ugly concrete bank. I stay at the Turk's Head Hotel, a typical colonial timber-framed house built by a shipwright for his own use.
     My room is full of antique furniture, including a four-poster bed. The en suite facilities look incongruous, added in one corner to replace the original chamberpot. There are only a few dozen hotel rooms on the island, so I soon meet the other visitors. The indigenous population is numbered in hundreds and the inland landscape dominated by redundant salt-pans.

arriving from space
In 1962 Grand Turk enjoyed two moments of fame. Colonel John Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth, splashed down nearby and was transferred to the USAAF air-base (now gone) for debriefing. Months later Scott Carpenter enjoyed the same hospitality, and Grand Turk was the first land he touched after his space mission. After that it was back to patient obscurity.
     The three or four dive centres are strung along a little lane following the water's edge. The building occupied by Sea Eye Diving is, like its neighbours, in an advanced state of decay.
     The sand is fine and white and reflects through the water in the shallows to give that turquoise effect beloved of travel brochures. After a short swim out, the water changes to a deep ultramarine. This is where the coral wall drops off to thousands of metres.
     Everything is so relaxed in Grand Turk, it's almost horizontal. Smitty, our ex-policeman dive guide, moves economically and treats conversation in the same way. He is a Dixon-of-Dock-Green-style copper, calm and collected. In one out-of-character moment of eloquence, he confides that an article by a visiting US diving journalist was very rude about him. It described him as "taciturn". Then he falls silent again.
     Smitty is very experienced, not only in diving but in life, as the flecks of white in his beard attest. He doesn't over-sell the diving at Grand Turk and he doesn't teach his grandmother to suck eggs either. The other divers under his care, both British and American, have several hundred years of experience between them. They have come back to Grand Turk a dozen times. They know what they're doing, and Smitty knows it too.
     "Why do you like it here so much?" I ask, feeling very much the novice of the group.
     "We prefer diving with Smitty," comes the unanimous reply.
     There is no degree of difficulty with the diving. Visibility is gin-clear and conditions aquarium-like. There are no currents with which to battle. No decompression-stops are needed. There is nothing to generate adrenalin. It's simply a beautiful, relaxing experience and you are required to take it easy. Scuba-diving epitomised as the art of relaxation.
     Once my elderly co-conspirators hit the water, they are transformed into youthful reflections of their younger days. In a few years I foresee that there might be problems with Zimmer-frames getting stuck in the powdery white sand but I am sure that Smitty will come up with an appropriate solution.
     The reef wall is covered with sponges, hard and soft corals, and vibrant with other, less sedentary, life. Everything seems totally co-operative for my camera.
     Big striped Nassau groupers pose precociously. Tiger groupers softly stalk their prey in the forests of soft corals. Barracuda stare toothily. Spanish hogfish parley with passing French angels. Queen angels make stately progress around the reef. Parrotfish peck. Eagle rays are spotted cruising in the blue. Shoaling striped grunts grunt in appreciation while solitary trumpetfish stay mute and cautious. A little hawksbill turtle takes on the role of guide and escorts me along the way.

verging on bad taste
When I see my film processed, back in England, the images captured so easily are too good to be true. They are too sharp, too clear, too colourful. They verge on bad taste. Thank goodness I have no coiffured model, heavily made-up, in a colour-extraordinary Lycra suit, staring blankly back in my pictures. Now I know where all those American diving magazine covers are shot.
     A solitary sting ray lies in a sandy gully. It looks back knowingly. It winks a mischievous eye. I think we've met before - at Gibb's Cay.
     Gibb's Cay is a little sandy island on the windward side of Grand Turk. It's a good place for picnics and the local sting rays know that it's a good place to pick up bits of fish lobbed into the shallows by those enjoying the barbecue on the beach.
     I take a tank with me and do a 2m dive, lying among the eel-grass watching the rays scrimmaging over scraps. The rays are escorted by bar jacks, and the largest buffalo trunkfish I have ever seen competes in the confusion, as the sandy seabed puffs up to spoil the view.
     I return to Grand Turk full of myself and pleased with my photo-opportunity, only to find that the other divers have been snorkelling with an equally accommodating pod of bottlenose dolphins opposite the beach.
     As for night dives, things could not be easier. The only hazards seem to be the marauding groupers that hover in the shadows taking advantage of my light, on the look-out for unsuspecting animals mesmerised by my beam.
     I cannot fathom what is happening at first. Looking through my camera eyepiece at a possible subject, it suddenly disappears. A grouper has lunged in and hoovered up its prey - literally sucking it out of the picture.
     A Spanish hogfish poses in its zebra-striped nightclothes, but every time I bring it into my lamp beam to frame up its portrait, it instantly changes back to its drab daylight guise. A spotted moray slithers snake-like among the "roots" of the soft corals. A spiny burrfish is over-optimistic about staying hidden in the dark.
     Grand Turk's airport is rather modest, and the wobbly little plane in which I fly across Columbus' Passage to the Caicos seems lost on the enormous expanse of Providenciales' runway, laid down for international jumbo-jets.
     If Grand Turk is stuck in the 19th century, Provo aspires to being a thoroughly modern island. Like Grand Cayman, it has a majority immigrant population brought in to serve the tourists - Bahamians, Jamaicans and a large English contingent.
     This is the TCI most people know. While Grand Turk dozes, Provo tries to be frenetic, though it still needs practice. There are lots of hotels but even more space is cleared for developments. A lot of heavy plant lies around rusting, evidence of someone's unfulfilled dreams.
     Dive Provo is almost entirely staffed by Brits. It has dive guides formerly from Cydive and from the European Diving Centre. Essex accents mingle with Geordie and Yorkshire. While I am there, most of the visiting divers are Brits too.
     A solitary East-Coast American tells me: "I admire the way Brits can identify the different regions that other Brits come from, simply by listening to them. I normally can't do that, but I did notice that the dive-boat's lady captain sounds like royalty." He got it in one!

my buddy nikon
The water around Provo is very shallow on the south side. To get to the dives sites at North-west Point, or those at French Cay, takes more than an hour in the fast Newton dive-boat. We leave just after 8am. It's a long ride, so two-tank dives with a rather short surface interval are the order of the day.
     French Cay is a remote spot of sand revealed above the waves south of Provo. To get a third dive in, I have to rush back afterwards to a jetty on the other side of the island for a second boat to the Grace Bay sites. This gives no chance for lunch, so most people dive either in the morning or the afternoon, not both.
     The boat skims across the turquoise water with its depth-sounder showing at times as little as an alarming 4ft below the keel. North-west Point and French Cay provide wall dives and this is where the water becomes deeper. You can follow the guide or dive in independent buddy pairs. I dive with my buddy Nikon as usual, and they let me get on with it.
     Time for our first dive, and I don't hang around. I'm into the water and have a fleeting encounter with a sizeable Caribbean reef shark under the boat. Later some of the others have a similarly quick sighting and the shark helpfully passes close to the man with the video camera and back past me.
     The wall is much like that of Grand Turk, only there are now 20 divers in the water from our boat, plus those from any others that might be there. The marine life seems more skittish.
     There are all the usual sponges and soft corals. Among the hard corals are occasional examples of pillar coral, a rare site on many reefs elsewhere. There are pink tube sponges and trees of black coral. A pair of Atlantic spadefish are dogged by a solitary bar jack. Assorted porgies cluster in decorative groups. Gangs of horse-eye jacks cruise mid-water.
     All the usual suspects are there. Again, it's all very easy.
     The topography at the Grace Bay site called the Aquarium is well named. It's an ideal place to make those tentative first dives in the ocean. The reef top has plenty of life and spurs extend down into the depths with sand gullies between.
     I get back to the boat and find that the usual yellow-tail snappers have been displaced from the shadow under the boat by a local character called Elvis, a very large great barracuda.
     Providenciales is for those who want to mix diving with other holiday pastimes. There is lots to do and many restaurants to try, from the simple local cooking of Calico Jack's to the haute-cuisine of the Anacaona at the Grace Bay Club. Equally there is a range of accommodation to suit all tastes and budgets.
getting there: BA from Heathrow via Nassau (Bahamas) to Providenciales. Sky King from Providenciales to Grand Turk.
diving & accommodation: John Bantin stayed at the Turk's Head in Grand Turk (001 649 946 2466) and dived with Sea Eye Diving (www.seaeyediving.com). In Providenciales he stayed at Comfort Suites (001 649 946 8888) and Ocean Club Resort (0800 917 0690) and dived with Dive Provo (www.diveprovo.com).
when to go: TCI is sub-tropical with trade winds. It is sunny year-round, with air and water temperatures from 24-31¡. It is warmest July-September, though this is also hurricane season.
money: US dollars and all major credit cards.
costs: Barefoot Traveller (020 8741 4319) offers 14-night, two-centre diving packages from £1800. Seven nights in Providenciales, with B&B and five two-tank dives, costs £1125. Seven nights on Grand Turk, with B&B, six two-tank dives and unlimited shore diving, costs £1293.
further information: Turks & Caicos Tourist Office, www.turksandcaicostourism.com

Tiger grouper


Sting ray at the Gibb's Cay picnic site


barracuda


JoJo the resident dolphin has proved a valuable resource for scientists


queen angelfish


Tube sponges


Atlantic spadefish


A Caribbean reef shark arrives under the dive boat


remains from the Molasses Reef wreck


dive guide Smitty gets close to a turtle


horse-eye jack


A shoal of porgies


Grey angelfish


Pillar corals, an increasingly rare sight of reefs

JOJO AND DEAN JoJo is the solitary dolphin that lives in the waters around Providenciales. TCI has made JoJo into an icon. At Provo airport, I notice an allocated parking space marked "JoJo's Warden". Dean Bernal has become JoJo's champion and promoter, and the guardian of his safety. He tells me hair-raising stories of what various stupid people have tried to do to this animal in past years - and what the animal has done in retaliation. Dean believes JoJo to be originally one of four young dolphins left stranded after a hurricane in the late 1970s and rescued by locals. This dolphin later turned up in Grace Bay, Provo, in 1980 and demonstrated a natural affinity with people. Dean later befriended and has swum with the dolphin over 17 years. As an animal that has never been in captivity, JoJo has given Dean an important insight into dolphin natural history. The information is being used worldwide to further the study of toothed whales. For example, dolphins in captivity are commonly fed on small fish. Rehabilitated into the sea, they often starve. Dean discovered that JoJo often killed and ate fish as large as grouper, regurgitating their bigger bones. Dolphins in captivity do not regurgitate the bones of the small fish they are fed. Dean concluded that rehabilitated dolphins must be taught to hunt larger fish if they are to catch enough to stay healthy, and that it is natural for them to regurgitate food. Amazingly, there have been campaigns to have JoJo destroyed, mainly by those with interests in other activities in Grace Bay, such as wet-biking and water skiing. Dean campaigned successfully for JoJo to be declared a "national treasure" by the TCI government, and has shared the formula of his campaign in other areas of the world where dolphins have formed friendships with man, notably Japan and Egypt. Dean is keen to ensure that JoJo is used for serious behavioural studies, not simply as a tourist attraction. It is not possible to pay to dive or snorkel with JoJo. He swims with man by invitation only! (see www.jojodolphin.org)

THE MOLASSES REEF WRECK In 1492 Christopher Columbus arrived in the West Indies. This led to many further expeditions in the area in search of precious metals and gems. The boats favoured for the hazardous journey across the Atlantic by these brave navigators were of a design known as the "caravel". It was the first type of vessel seaworthy enough to make the trip. Many caravels were built, but because the secret of the design was passed down from shipwright father to son, no formal record exists, only whimsical contemporary artists' impressions. At Molasses Reef, 15 miles south of Providenciales, the wreckage and remains of an ancient ship have been discovered. It could be the only example of a caravel yet uncovered. During excavations by the Nautical Archaeology department of Texas A&M University between 1982 and 1986, more than 4000 artefacts were recovered. Finds included an anchor, breech-loading cannons and swivel guns, crossbows, parts of swords, metal swords, pottery and leg-irons. There were also the remains of ship's timbers, nails and other metalwork. Clues from these finds suggest that the ship must have sunk around 1515, making it the oldest European shipwreck discovered in the Americas. The fact that no personal items nor navigational instruments were discovered suggests that the crew had time to abandon ship in an orderly manner before it sank. You can view an interesting display of some of these artefacts, among other local subjects, in the TCI National Museum on Grand Turk.