philmayer:
Excellent Pics! Thanks for sharing.
Would you mind sharing some info about what sites you dived and where you found good photo opportunities? I'm headed to GC in 12 days.
Sure, hopefully this is helpful!
We stayed on 7 mile beach and did all of our diving with Divetech @ Cobalt Coast and a bunch of shore dives (day and night) from each of their locations along the North Wall.
My favorite sites by boat
Orange Canyon interesting topography. Named for all the orange elephant ear sponges.
Princess Pennys Pinnacle pinnacle formation, with loads of deepwater sea fans
Round Rock / Trinity Caves nice swimthroughs and channels
Hepps Pipeline part of wall system that runs along the coast where the Divetech locations are.
Shore diving
We dove from Cobalt Coast and Turtle Reef location. CC is a longer swim to get to the wall, both times we dove here we didnt quite make it out all the way to the wall since we were distracted by all the macro things on the way. Saw lots of tiny squid among the gorgonians at night.
We much preferred the Turtle Reef location. The wall is closer to the entry. A school of tarpon hangs out by the wall during the day to the left as you go out. For night dives (which I highly recommend here) make sure you arrange for tanks before the shop closes and also ask them how to fill/drain the rinse tank at night so you can rinse your gear upon return. There are tons of urchins in the area around the entry ladder, make sure your feet are protected. There was some current here, but it was easily manageable. On the way out we tie off a strobe on the mooring buoy line to make navigation easy. Saw octopus here several times, loads of macro stuff on the wall. Go slow, esp at night. Critter sightings here included decorator crabs, cowrie, giant basket star, hundreds of lettuce slugs in the sandy area near shore (look closely, once you see one, you see hundreds).
