auchmeddan

I had some footage from our Reef Dive in the middle of our Shark Trip, and have put together a short clip of some of the highlights. It made sense to leave this out of the original video, but I wanted to put it up so friends back in Bermuda can see the difference between what they are used to and what they can see if they head to the Bahamas. If you can take your eyes off the reef sharks you’ll see there are a lot of fish out there.

This was our last day diving with Blue Water First dive was the Hermes and as we’ve done it a few times we just decided to stay on the boat. Was pretty funny watching as chaos enused with all the divers trying to get themselves in the water and down to the wreck. When they were all eventually away I took another couple of leaps off the boat from the top deck, its not that high up but I still get a wee bit of a rush jumping off.

After we got back wanted a group shot of everyone. While waiting to get them all together Tracy was kind enough to do a cartwheel up the lovely plastic dock, the dock which by the way Dave fell off while exiting the boat one day, ha, ha. Finally got the group shot so I’ve put that photo along with Tracy’s stellar gymnastics below.

We did our last dive at Southwest Breaker yesterday, but it ended on a high thanks to Ondrej telling us about “Charlie”.

Charlie is a Yellow-tailed DamselFish that lives in a spent Artillery shell that the Americans used to fire at Southwest Breaker for target practice. I won’t get into how I feel about the Yanks using a millions of years old formation for target practice…

Anyway, Charlie is a very aggressive (I can attest that he bites) and very houseproud little fish. If you put a small stone on top of his home and make him aware of it, he throws it away into the reef.

The video below shows Jules playing with him on what was her 200th Dive in Bermuda. Thank you Ondrej for drawing us a map so we could find him.

The Diving this weekend was OK, didn’t see as much as we usually do. Just proves Dave’s theory that all the fish work Monday to Friday and not on holidays. I did find some interesting things in the water though.

While out at Darlington on Saturday I came across a US drivers license for a guy called August. Thought he was on the boat but it was only someone that looked like him. I have no idea how it ended up in the water but it was right by the boat so he must have had it on him when he jumped in. Dont think you need a drivers license to dive……

The other item was much better, found that on the Monday afternoon trip. With me being a women I’m attracted to shiny objects so naturally when I see something blinking in the sunlight on the sand I have to go and investigate. To be honest I thought it was the ring part of a keyring but I didnt want to leave it in the water in case a fish or something ate it. When I picked it up I realised that it was someone’s wedding ring, the inscription on the inside read “Your kitten loves you”. Showed Dave and continued our dive with it on my thumb. Got on the boat showed Ondrej who was going to put it in lost and found, didnt think for a minute that it was from one of the divers on the boat. Happened to look at the young couple sitting opposite us and noticed that she had on a wedding ring and engagement ring but he didnt have anything on. Asked him if he’d lost a wedding ring which he had, told him what I’d found and it was his. I’ve never seen anyone suddenly look so happy, you could see him sighing with relief. Him and his wife were so glad that it wasn’t lost, don’t think he’ll be wearing it diving again.

That’s my good deed for the week.

Too vague? OK. It’s The Final Countdown. I only have a few days left at work, and it’s less than 2 weeks until we leave Bermuda.

Jules is boxing items to ship to NZ, selling the TV and Car, and sorting out the clothes we need for Palm Beach/The Bahamas and Scotland (are there two regions on earth with more opposing definitions of Summer?). I closed my savings account today and moved our savings to the bank, copied our passports and Residence visas, and agreed to sell my bike this morning.

It’s getting a bit hectic now, but I can see it coming together. We’ll be gone before we know it.

During our week off together we took a dry day and went to Somerset Bridge to feed the fish. While we were there I got some film of a Scrawled CowFish that lives there. The video is below. I removed the sound as the noise of the traffic crossing the bridge was a bit distracting.

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.