Day 2: Silk Caye
Oldie but a goodie. I did my OW 3/4 dives here with SPLASH right after a discover scuba many years ago on my first trip to Belize.
The weather cooperated and we headed out on the Princess Taia. SPLASHes 46?' Newton. There were 8 divers, 2 DM, 1 instructor and a handful of shark bait (Snorkelers) and guides. It took roughly 1h15 to get out there (~22mi away) from the 8am departure (7:15 pickup)
As my equipment hasn't arrived yet, a quick 'what sizes do ya need?' From the equipment room and I'm set to go diving for the day.
Dive 1 was to North Wall, a wall that starts at roughly 60ft and keeps on going. We did a 80ft/45min dive, in a typical multilevel profile. 10-15 minutes 70-80ft, another 10-15 at 60 and another 10 at 50 before a blue water ascent to safety stop(s) and then the boat.
The big items were a few hawksbill turtles (one of which was massive, almost loggerhead sized), a nurse shark, and Kirk the DM spotted a reef shark which didn't stay long enough for all to see. There was quite a large free swimming Green Moray on top of the wall. I don't know what it is about me, but the bigger the Moray, the more they like me. This one came up several times to within a foot of me, looking for a handout of lion fish.
A nice 1-1/2 to 2hr SI on one of the cayes with some tasty BBQ chicken and fixins, and on to dive #2 at White Hole.
There was quite a bit of surging current at the start and end of this dive. The middle portion was quite relaxed.
A smaller nurse shark (4-5ft) was spotted. My dive buddy Jeff brought his original GoPro down for this dive. There were lots of small critters out, and many cleaning stations for filming. We spent most of our 50 minute dive at 50-60ft.
I spotted a large trumpet fish at a cleaning station, and in typical trumpet fish fashion, he quickly went into 'hide mode', inverting and slowly moving away from us. Along with quite a number of banded shrimps hanging out in the long yellow sponges.
With Silk, there is always a snorkel while visiting the fishermen when they are cleaning the days catch, as southern sting rays, logger heads, and nurse sharks come to clean up the scraps. Today we saw many of those, and even a spotted eagle ray came by for a meal.
One of the loggerheads had quite a number of remoras hanging around its neck. I don't know if that's just because they're picking up everything he's chomping down on, or he buried them in the sand from his belly.
Getting back to town, I forgot my room key, and also found out Tropic Air had brought my bags down from Belize City that United finally delivered. A quick taxi run back to the airport and my dive gear is secured!
I started assembling and charging batteries, only to discover that I have forgotten something fairly important. Something requiring all those batteries for video lights and it's own batteries.
Sadly, my camera is back at home, sitting patiently on the shelf, waiting to go on vacation.
Bummer.
Some tacos, a Belikin or few and a little rum to wash it down ends this evening, as tomorrows adventure starts even earlier.
BRad
---------- Post added January 13th, 2015 at 07:13 PM ----------
Well, I've decided to make a new thread about diving this trip with SPLASH, updated daily (so far) about what we did. I'll do a similar one with BDS for next weeks diving.
http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/belize/499211-splash-my-daily-takes-my-january-excursion.html
