divesergeant 3 years, 10 months ago.Another beautiful day of north wall diving.
As of yesterday, plans were for diving the west, but there was some killer swells last evening near the north end of SMB and Casey tasked Stuart to run the boat around to the harbor that evening. A task which he accomplished with much enthusiasm, in the dark, with poor navigational aids, and killer seas! But he’s a game old chap and pulled through it fine. He did boast that the British people have many more swear words than we do in the USA. I suspect he exercised his vocabulary whilst driving the boat around!
So, crewed by Stuart and Niall, off we went to the north, and it was an absolutely gorgeous day with nice seas. We started where we left off yesterday; Lemon Drop Off. This time we did it as a deep wall dive rather than a shallow reef dive. No eagle ray passes today, but as always there were lots of the small stuff that I like to spot.
After the requisite surface interval we plunged into Durgon’s Domain where, oddly enough, we saw lots of Durgons. Also lots more of the critters in and around coral. Mrs DS and I tend to hang back, scoping out small stuff behind the group and then falling in back behind them again as they make their way past on us on the return.
Upon return to the marina, we headed over to Tiki Beach for burgers (damn good, too) with a fellow diver and his wife. Refueled now, we zipped back to the boat for an afternoon at Stingray City. Neptune’s showed us the best trip there we’ve ever had; only five divers and a snorkeler and no other boats in the area. I left the camera on the boat; figuring it would be silty and hectic.
Here are some pics from the first two dives.
This is a shot of two small (less than an inch) crabs…
This is another anemone, look close and you can see at least four small squat anemone shrimp in it…
I know, they’re damn hard to see in a re-sized forum picture. Here I enlarged, cropped and then re-sized so they’re easier to spot…
Speaking of shrimp, here’s an example of the ubiquitous banded coral shrimp…
And another overall landscape scene…
Mrs DS loves sharp-nosed puffers, they’re so cute…
And finally another flamingo tongue. Notice the dark streak under it. They feed on sea fans and such and what you see is the skeletal portion of the sea fan with all of its outer layers eaten. By the flamingo tongue! What a brute! Who’d have thought the flamingo tongue capable of sea fan-icide, but there you have it, photographic evidence…
More, the flamingo tongue eats toxic parts of the sea fan and becomes toxic itself to fishes. Some fish can still eat them, but many know to keep away.
Speaking of eating, dinner will again be in the condo so no restaurant reviews, sorry! If you care to know, I am preparing a replay of the earlier penne pasta with pesto sauce topped with baked fresh local snapper (for me) and baked chicken breast (for her). Don’t know how its gonna come out, but it smells damn good right now so hopes are high.
Cheers!
