Cockburn Town, San Salvador, Bahamas

Telephone Pole

Telephone Pole is a wall dive off the western coast of San Salvador, named for a vertical pole of coral that rises from the depths along the wall edge as a navigational feature. The wall begins at around 18 meters and drops vertically into the deep blue. The pole itself is encrusted with sponges, gorgonians, and small hard-coral colonies, and serves as a hangout for schools of creole wrasse, blackbar soldierfish, and yellowtail snapper. Larger residents include grouper and barracuda; eagle rays and Caribbean reef sharks are frequent visitors along the wall. The site benefits from the same exceptional visibility as the rest of the San Salvador western shore thanks to deep-ocean exposure. Currents are typically mild. The depth profile and the open blue of the wall demand advanced training and solid buoyancy control. A favorite stop on multi-day San Salvador wall trips. Photographers love framing the pole against the deep blue with divers in scale, and the surrounding wall offers numerous swim-by features for video work. Operators based at the small Riding Rock Resort and at liveaboards transiting from Long Island visit the site as part of a wall-focused itinerary that highlights the most dramatic vertical drops in the southern Bahamas.