My first morning I was up at 7AM. After a quick shower, I went down to a hot breakfast. The food was always good. Eggs, in the morning, bacon, ham, rice, juice. You also had your choice of coffee, tea, hot chocolate if you liked. Fresh fruit in the morning, mangoes, watermelon, the food was one of the things I would really miss about Club Ocellaris.
This was the usual pattern for the week. Up early for breakfast and then we would try to be on our way to the dive site by 8-8:30 AM depending on what site we were going too.
We had decided the night before to take a lunch and head down to Caban Island and do three dives before coming back in the afternoon. We would dive Bethlehem, Kirbys Rock and Dari Laut which were all fairly close together and then come back to the resort for a long break before the night dive.
I ended up doing 2 morning dives at Bethlehem during my time in Anilao. One on the 2nd and another on the 3rd. Bethelehem was only about a 30 minute boat ride from the resort and is on the southern end of Caban Island across the Maricaban Strait. There was a small cove there where we could anchor in shallow water, about 15 feet deep. It was a fairly steep slope with plenty of hard and soft corals, crinoids, sponges, etc... down to around 50 feet where it became more of a sand and coral rubble bottom. Lots of color here
Here and there you could there were outcropping of coral including one with a huge barrel on it. Visibility was 60-70 feet both days.
The first dive we were in the water and the dive started at 8:32 AM. I was out at 9:31 for a 59 minute dive. My maximum depth was 56 feet. Some nice nudibranchs, an interesting flatworm of a species I had never seen, clouds of fish, anthias, basslets, cardinalfish, some nice anemones and clownfish, puffers, juvenile striped catfish, and a white-eyed moray. A very nice dive
When Roger came on he said he had seen a nice ornate ghost pipefish and we made plans to come back the next day to see if we could find it again.
My second dive the following day was more of the same, but this time there was a fairly strong current. Was in the water at 8:27AM, but with the current, burned through my air pretty quick and was done at 9:08 for only 41 minutes. Still it was a nice dive. Another white-eyed moray (may have been the same one, although it was a totally different location) more reef fish, and more nudi's, basically a repeat of the previous day, with the exception of the ornate ghost pipefish, which we did end up finding
On my first full dive day there on the 2nd we dived at Kirbys Rock after Bethlehem. We went over and anchored and waited for the slack as the current was running strong when we got there. It's important for this entire area to have someone who is experienced in the local diving conditions who understands the currents and the tides.
Kirbys Rock is off the northeast side of Caban Island. On the shore side it's about 15 feet deep. On the other side it drops down as a wall to a depth around 70 feet and then more gradually bottoms out over a 100 feet down. Lots of corals here, sea stars, crinoids, sea cucumbers, and nudibranchs. I saw a few lionfish, and Peri found a nice ghost pipefish. There were reef fish everywhere... all and all a very nice dive. We were in the water at 11:41AM just in time for the slack. My maximum depth was 92 feet and my dive time was 49 minutes. Visibility was easily 75 feet plus.
To be continued.....
