My Summer Vacation in the Cayos Cochinos

[tedtim]

So, it all started with a thought sometime around April. I did not have any work lined up for the summer and thought that it may be time for me to experience the life of a divemaster in the Caribbean for a month or so. I found an opportunity with Operation Wallacea at their Cayos Cochinos expedition site – one month. Mind you there was no pay involved, but they did provide accommodations, food, and diving. This was not to be resort diving by any means. I expected to have to sleep in a tent for the month and was willing to give it a go.

Travel to Honduras was no problem. I used points to get to Florida, then on to Spirit airlines from Ft. Lauderdale into San Pedro Sula. Spirit is a very low budget airline; you have to pay for a drink of water on the flight. Enough said; the price was right. The short flight to Honduras was easy enough. Arrival time was around midnight. I spent the night in a nice hotel in San Pedro Sula and was picked up the following morning to meet the rest of the arriving folks for the week.

We were transported back to the airport as a central gathering spot for everyone returning and heading out to the different parts of the expedition. There is a land based as well as marine based part of the expedition in Honduras. We loaded our gear onto a school bus and boarded for the five hour plus trip to Rio Esteban where we would spend the night. The bus was ill suited to some of the roads less traveled. We were about twenty-five minutes out of Rio Esteban when the radiator sprung a leak. We had to wait for the bus ahead of us to drop their passengers and return to pick us up.

Accommodations for the night were provided by the locals in their houses. This was pre-arranged. They also fed us a nice meal, put on some local entertainment, and generally hosted a big welcome party. The night carried on for a bit too long. The next morning we were expected on the beach at 5:15 to load the boat for the trip to Isla Cayo Cochino Menor. The luggage transport was ……….. interesting.

Arrival on the island was a bit hectic. The new dive staff arrived about an hour after the students and volunteers. Breakfast, a briefing or two later on sanitation, health concerns, and the local critters and it was time to get to work. I was initially assigned a tent, but with a bit of a shuffle of folks managed to get one of the bunk bed spaces in the cabins. The conditions on Cayo Menor are comfortable, but rustic. There are a number of cabins with toilets and showers, but a limited water supply. Because of the number of people on the island the water was limited and the running water was shut off to conserve. We had to use buckets to flush the toilet and for showers. The kitchen staff was nice enough. Meals were taken in a large eating area. The typical choice was either rice and beans, or beans and rice, with some sort of meat. The quality was variable. The fried chicken was excellent (once a week), but then usually followed by something that was just edible. I would not want to be a vegetarian at this place because there was truly a limited supply of vegetables. Oh yeah, it was a 102 step climb to get to the eating area. I lost twenty pounds of weight over the course of the month.

The expedition has two parts on Cayo Menor. There are PhD candidates conducting research both on land and under water. The land based researchers were investigating the Cayos Cochinos Boa Constrictor and the Ctenosaura melanosterna lizards. The marine researchers were looking at the reef habitat, urchins, and different fish species. They are supported by “volunteers” who pay to spend time on the island. Many of these volunteers use the data from the work they do to support their studies, typically at the undergraduate level. There are also high school groups that take part, but mostly they are on the island to complete an open water course. Anyone who is participating in the data collection must take a week long reef ecology course first, comprised of studies of coral, algae, invertebrates, and fish. This course sounds easy enough, but it is actually quite a good learning experience with both classroom and underwater parts.

My whole part in this was principally working as a DM for open water courses, but I did get a few dives in helping on the science side of things. The diving, oh yeah, the diving operation is run by the expedition, but the accommodation, meals, and equipment (rental gear, cylinders, air, boats) are run by the Honduran Coral Reef Foundation (HCRF). This is where it really gets interesting. The maintenance and quality of the equipment is sketchy.

I arrived on the island about half way through the expedition season. There were a few people who stayed for the whole time, but also a number that were there for a month or a just a couple of weeks. It was kind of an eclectic group on the dive staff, mostly Brits, but with a sprinkle of Yanks, Canucks, a Honduran, a Spaniard and a Columbian. It looked like some fun was going to be had by all.

 

[tedtim]

Just a week or so after my group arrived we started to notice bad air in some cylinders. The HCRF did not have anyone on staff who could properly maintain the compressors. A couple of the guys on the dive staff worked on HVAC or similar compressor equipment as part of their normal life and took a look. They were not impressed with what they found and put in a couple of long days trying to rectify problems. Three different compressors became two, and then one as there was not enough supplies in the way of filters or test kits to keep them going.

One would expect that rental gear would not be in pristine condition give all of the use and abuse that it would go through. Still, one would also expect that basic maintenance would be done to the gear. We asked about maintenance records, but there were none, and it was clear that the maintenance was done by default only when a problem was encountered. The HCRF did not have anyone on their staff qualified to maintain the gear. We had one certified technician and a number of people who could do field repairs, general cleaning and IP adjustments.

It all came to a head one day when one of the scientists had to surface from a dive using his buddy’s alternate air source. He was breathing from a contaminated cylinder and that caused him problems underwater. Good thing that it was a shallow dive. The staff meeting that followed was not a pleasant experience. We had been assured that the cylinders had been inspected prior to the start of the season. Again, no records were kept. I ended up conducting visual inspections on forty of the approximately eighty cylinders, looking for visible contamination. Thirty eight had fairly big chunks of oxidation, moisture, or a combination of both. Well, the expedition dive operation stopped so that they could sort this out.

It looked like it was going to take a few days to sort out the situation, so one of the instructors and I departed for a couple of days at Plantation Beach Resort on Isla Cayo Cochino Mayor. The resort is isolated as one would expect on these islands. It is a quite comfortable place. The cost was $110 a night for a room, three meals, and three boat dives a day. They prepare only enough food for the number of guests and it is quite good. The boat can hold twenty plus divers. During our two days there we were only three divers, plus a few snorkelers and the DM in the water. The DM is a requirement of the marine park. The two and a half days were quite pleasant. There are a limited number of dive sites on the Cayos Cochinos because it is a marine park. We did seven dives, mostly on the same sites we were using for training. There was one exception and this was definitely a highlight of the trip. At the end of the dive during our safety stop we were visited by five bottlenose dolphins for about two minutes.

When we returned to Isla Cayo Cochinos Menor most of the dive staff and remaining volunteers were boarding a boat for Utila. The cylinders had been sent to the mainland for cleaning, but when they were returned a quick inspection showed that the cleaning was poorly done with a number of them containing moisture and still signs of oxidation. The compressors were all shut down. So, the expedition management arranged to move most of the dive staff and the volunteers to their Utila site. I stayed on Isla Cayo Menor with about another ten people including researchers plus some dive staff.

We were provided with four smaller cylinders from another dive operation to support the two researchers that remained. The problem was that the expedition doctor went to Utila and it took a day or so to transfer the doctor from Utila to our site. There is another long story behind the swap of doctors. It took a couple of days, but one compressor was finally repaired and the air test was satisfactory. We managed to get four groups of four each out for diving each day for the rest of our time there.

I cannot say that the diving was spectacular at most of the sites. The sea life is typical of the Caribbean, but the abundance is not comparable to that on Roatan. The exception is on the sites that are restricted to research staff only. My final two dives were on research only sites and the contrast between them and the other sites is remarkable.

For the first two weeks the only means of outside contact was through cell phone. We were offered the option of leaving early once the problems with the compressors arose. It was about this time that an internet connection was installed on the island. I sent off a few e-mails to my travel agent, but the cost for a last minute one way ticket out of Honduras was more than what I paid for the full return trip. There was no option to change my existing reservation because there were no seats available. I decided that two weeks on a nice island, even if I was not diving, was worth more than the significant cost to change flights. The weather throughout was very nice.

During the latter part of the last week TS Fay was bearing down on Cuba and Florida. We were watching the track forecasts with much interest. For awhile the forecast was putting the storm over the Ft. Lauderdale area within hours of the time I would be arriving from Honduras. This time I really had no option but to get a booking for an alternate flight set up. The storm track went up the gulf side of Florida a day before I left Honduras so I managed to stick to my original itinerary.

I would not go back to the Cayo Menor site unless I was certain that they have addressed the situation with the compressors and gear. If I can convince my wife that she would not be too isolated, I would go back to Plantation Beach Resort.

 

[ScubaTim]

Hmmmm, Doc? Any Thoughts?