auchmeddan

Today was my last day off before going back to work tomorrow, and we went out for another dive this afternoon. We headed out to Southwest Breaker, which is one of my favourite dive sites in Bermuda.

On our dive we saw a lot of very cool stuff - A big Black Grouper who let us get pretty close, a Flamingo Tongue, An Octopus hiding under a rock, and a Balloon Fish (one of my faves).

Photos of the octopus, Balloon Fish, and a little blenny (we think it’s a Molly Miller) sticking it’s head out are below - Click on them for a larger pic. I’d swear the balloon Fish is smiling at me…but I guess I’m just imagining it.

The Hermes is not exactly one of Daves favourite dives. I’ve done it a few times recently and really enjoyed the dives but Dave just didn’t believe me until today. It being flat calm must have been a good omen for this dive. We avoided the wreck altogether and headed west across a cut of the reef and back again. On the way back I came upon a lizard fish which I sent Dave off to photograph. While he was busy with that I headed over to two anenomes and found 3 shrimps inside them. I Got Dave over for some photographs and even although they are very small (the body is only an inch long) he got some really good photos, the best of which is below.

On the way back to the wreck for our ascent up the mooring line I spotted a couple of Coneys chasing some fish away from a patch of coral, so I went in for a closer look. I found a reasonable sized octopus hiding under a rock, which is not an ideal place for photos but luckily it moved to get away from us right out onto the reef. While it was out Dave got a couple of really great shots, again the best one is below. Pretty good dive and even Dave really enjoyed it.

We went to Hangover Hole next - nothing much to photograph here but Dave did get a good silhouette shot from underneath where I was swimming. Found my first brittle star on this dive which I sent Dave off to photograph for me. As you can probably see from my blog I pretty much spot a whole bunch of stuff I want photographed and send Dave off to get the shot.

A good days diving all in all. 

The seas were between 1 and 4 feet today, and the boat was bouncing all over the place as we headed out this morning. By the end of the trip about half the boat was feeling seasick, but amazingly I felt fine all day. We hit 3 dive sites today, and found cool stuff on all of them, Which supports the theory I have that most of the fish in Bermuda only work Monday to Friday! Jules usually sees a ton of cool stuff diving during the week and then when we get out at the weekend we never see half of it. The exception to this was Saturday when we saw a huge Spotted Eagle Ray gliding over the sand flats in Blue Hole.

Today we saw a ton of Grouper and Jacks (Horse-eyed, Almaco, Bar), a lot of Blue Angelfish, a pair of Peacock Flounder, and an Octopus. Jules gets the credit for spotting the Octopus and for spotting a beautiful little Nudibranch (sea Slug) on the Pollockshields, a photo of which is below. Jules really deserves a ton of credit for finding the nudibranch as it was only a couple of inches long.

FYI: It feels/senses with it’s horns, and breathes out of the flowery bump on it’s back.

We went down to Somerset Bridge today to feed the fish some crackers and tape some video. After we ran out of crackers we stopped on the bridge to watch a Scrawled CowFish that was feeding on a dead fish. While I was staring at that little guy, Jules spotted a Porcupine Fish in the shallows and I grabbed the camera back out the bag.

There is a little bit of video of this cute little guy below.

The file is around 8MB, so if you’re on a slow link hit the pause button until the video finishes loading.

First, this is the photo I meant to post the other day.

I’ve got a bunch of vacation days and Time-in-Lieu to use up, so I’m taking next week off to relax and dive. I’ll hopefully end up with a lot of photos to put up in the photo gallery.  Although I’m finishing soon I feel like I need a week off as I’m getting kinda bored now that I’ve handed over all of my clients to other engineers.  Between now and then, I’ll be relying on Howard Stern to keep me sane at work. 

After my enforced break from diving (while my gum healed) and all the nights I’ve spent studying for my CCDA it was nice to knock the exam on the head on Friday, and start to relax knowing I was going to spend Saturday and Sunday diving in seas that were predicted to be about 1ft - perfect diving conditions. 

Saturday ended up being even better than I hoped as we headed out to a reef site Jules had told me about** where she had previously seen a bunch of grouper in a cave/swim-through, and it didn’t disappoint.  We were diving with Dave and Carmen and I was excited for all of us when we hit the cave and found 7 Grouper (mostly Black Grouper, but by size and markings one or two looked like Goliath Grouper to me) and a school of Horse-Eyed Jacks and Gray Snapper.  To put this in perspective of Size:

Horse-Eyed Jacks and Snapper are 1-2 ft long.
Black Grouper are 3-4 ft long.
Goliath Grouper are over 5 ft.

To be among this many big fish was very exciting, and while the Grouper tend to stay a little distance away we were practically able to swim through the Jacks and Snapper and look them in the eye. The only downside was my Camera was fogged from previous dives and unusable, but considering how much fun the dive was I could live with it.

In the wee hours of Sunday morning we were both woken by a thunderstorm that went on for some time and, unbeknownst to us, knocked out our internet connection at home.  The storm brought the seas up on Sunday from the predicted 1ft to more like 3-4 ft swells.  While this makes the diving less fun, it ended up forcing the boat to go all the way back to (the slightly calmer) the same site again and this time I had a working Camera!

The rougher weather on Sunday created a much stronger current in the cave than there was on Saturday, and in turn this created a lot of particles in the water which cause “backscatter” from camera flashes and made most of my photos unusable.  Fortunately, I took one photo of a Grouper without using my external flash and ended up with a nice silhouette.  I’ll post the photo when we get internet access back at home.

** - I removed the name of the dive site as I know people who might read this and then head out there and try to fish.  Groupers have not been common sightings here for the past few years and appear to be starting to come back again.

I’ve had toothache on and off for the past few weeks, with pain that has varied from a constant dull throbbing to extreme stabbing. Despite an attempt at a temporary filling a couple of weeks ago, I had to rush into the dentist last week when the pain was bordering on unbearable (with painkillers).  In about 3 seconds flat I agreed to have the tooth extracted. Fortunately, it’s right at the back so it’s not one anyone would notice. 

The downside of having the tooth extracted is I had to pass on diving this weekend as I didn’t think it was wise to expose the wound to either pressure or (bacteria-filled) sea-water. Jules did get out though, and saw more Black Grouper than I could have aimed my camera at.  Typical! 

To make up for my house-arrest we went to Flatts on Sunday to feed the fish some crackers, and we ended up feeding the ducks as well.  I was able to lure one of them pretty close, as the photo below shows.  It wasn’t diving, but at least I got out and near nature for a while.