I'll start at the beginning.
After a rough crossing (8 foot seas, yikes!) and clearing customs we started diving.
Day 1
Dive 1: Theo - Wreck Dive
The Theo is on her side in about 102 feet. Big ship, a tanker with the hold opened for divers. Lots of life. Some really beautiful coral on her belly. Bright yellow and orange.
Nice and easy penetrations of the hold and wheel hose. Lots and lots of jacks and yellowtail.
I started with a light fill and had 700 PSI in the boat after 38 minutes. Dive ended at 1:30
Dive 2: Some Reef -
Some reef. Not much to see. The sky was very overcast from the night's storms. We got to the site at 4:30.
I was down to 80 feet for an hour and had 850psi back in the boat.
Dive 3: Shark dive on Some Reef -
Same reef as before. This time with sharks. Much nicer!
The crew put some fish parts in a food box and what do you know. Sharks appeared. One of them had a big trolling lure trailing about 6 feet below its mouth. Poor shark. There were about 6 of them, all between 5 and 6 feet long.
My canister light would pull me over on my side. So in the video it looked like I was reclining on a lounger. One of the girls had really bad bouyancy. She was neg and kicking to stay up.
I was at 63 feet for 39 minutes and used 200 psi. Had 2900 on the boat. You don't use much air when you are just lounging in the water.
Lots of fish and meatloaf for dinner. The clouds finally cleared up and we had a great sunset.
Day 2
Dive 1:
Some reef. A different some reef from yesterday. Dive started at 10:32. Not much to see here. Maybe this is a good hunting spot? The hunter did get tons of fish. Not much to actually see...
My buddy is a great navigator and is really good at seeing stuff underwater. He did a really good job.
I was at 81 feet for 49 minutes. No psi info as my tank was drained before I could record the data.
Dive 2:
Same reef as before. Dive started at 2:19pm. Not much to see. One shark, some lobsters. Lots of shrimp. I found a cool coral swim thru on the way back to the boat and silted the hell out of it in my 2nd pass thru. Fun!
Dive 3:
This was supposedly a really cool cavern / cave. It was right off of an island, so we were ferried to the hole via dinghy. As the first 2 divers on the main cavern, we had to check vis and current for the rest of the group. Vis was horrid. My Pro6 couldn't dent the gloom. There was a strong current pulling into the hole. Yikes!
I called the dive. Yuck.
Dive 4:
Mt. Olympus. This may be the best reef that I have ever done. The sand was at 129 feet. The coral heads stopped at around 30 feet. So there was about 100 ft of frickin coral to explore! Lots of swim thrus and caverns. Sea life everywhere. It was like swimming through a coral forest. Awesome!
I was down for 29 minutes at 129'. Had to really manage my depth to get any kind of down time. N2 really accumulates fast at 120'. I was on the boat with 950psi. N2 limited. Need to take a deco class.
Day 3
Dive 5: Mt. Olympus, the Wall.
There is a huge wall off of the side of Mt. Olympus. Really abyssal. I went in way negative and started inflating at 190'. I stabilized at 193'. I was tempted to go for 200', but with the incredible N2 absorbtion, I decided to chill for the 2 minutes that I had. Started ascending with 2 minutes NDL. I watched the NDL closely and never went into deco. Took a lot of concentration. I was way narced.
The scenery was incredible on the way up and the way down. Really nice. Gourgeous coral and sponges everywhere.
Dive 6: Anchor retrieval
One of the crew went in for the anchor and I followed him. This reef is incredible. We spent around 20 minutes sight seeing and then recovered the anchor.
I could have stayed at the reef for another day. Lots to see. No reason to leave. Some people like to maximise the number of locations. I like 1 or 2 locations that I can completely explore. Shrug. Different strokes.
Dive 7: Anna's reef
This is another awesome reef. Holy cow. Lots and lots to see. Found a huge swim thru. V. long. I kept this dive short because of the N2 from the previous dives.
A small finch landed on the boat and nested in one of the diver's hair. Hilarious. We gave the poor thing water and food and it flew off. Not much hope for the poor thing. It must have been blown off of an island in the storms.
Dive 8: Drop Off - Shark dive
This was a great site. Dive started at 2:30pm. Lots of sharks, swim thrus, grouper, fry, rockfish. The reef formed hills, valleys, and mountains. Incredible!
I would swim over, find a cave, check out the residents, turn around, and there would be something else to explore. Really great!
The sharks were blacktips. About 4 of them. Maybe 6' long.
Dive 9: Fishing Reef (?)
This was an excuse for the hunters to get fish. So I just hung out shallow and checked out the sea life. It was getting darkish and my light really picked out the colors. Great!
I found a huge lobster hidden deep in a cave. He was as big around as my LP120. Huge! He just stood there looking at me. That is the biggest lobster that I have every seen. Good lord.
Dive 10: Sugar Wreck - Night/Wreck/Solo dive
Everyone else was tired, so I went by myself. The Sugar Wreck is ancient. She lies in about 20 feet of water. She has been down a very long time and not much is left other than her bones. She is filled, absolutely filled with conch. I had never seen so many before.
There were lots of eels, angels, and puffers in the wreck. The coral in the wreck was feeding. Beautiful! Very colorful.
I saw a brilliant blue ray and very large schools of jacks and barracuda. 1 shark. I was nervous being in the water alone with that many cuda. About 50 of them hung out in the light cone of the Shearwater. There jack school was massive maybe 200 fish.
Everyonce and a while about 20 jacks would break off and make a pass by me. Neat.
A shark swam by and about 20 jacks pealed off of the school and chased the shark off. I had never seen that behavior before.
Out of time, I'll post the rest later.
Peter
