Water-Based Activities

I've been on two dives so far - one yesterday and one this past Thursday. Well technically, three (my dive computer registered a short, 2 minute, dive in shallow water while I was demonstrating that I knew the basic skills: mask clearing, regulator retrieval and purge, and buddy breathing). At the risk of being repetitive, the water is amazing. My computer recorded a water temperature of 84°F on both dives. I didn't even need my wet suit. And visibility must be 200 feet! Even better is that the lack of tourism in the area means that the dive sites are empty and undisturbed. Careless divers can do serious damage to coral.


The first dive was at The Arch, which is a natural coral formation that arches over the sea floor. We even swam through it. It's about 10 feet high, 20 or 30 feet wide, and about 20 feet long. The abundance of marine life is a little hard to believe. There's more coral and fish than I've ever seen (the only one I can identify so far is the Squirrel Fish). I just wish my underwater camera case was good enough to withstand those depths, so I could show you some of them here. We also had a brief Reef Shark siting, and a fantastic look at a Hawksbill Turtle (a "critically endangered" species). The Hawksbill hovered a little above us and swam away as I tried to keep up. It's the first sea turtle I've ever gotten a good look at.

Squirrel Fish

Hawksbill Turtle

Yesterday I dove at a site called Spanish Chain, which is named for the massive (10 ft?) anchor and and chain lodged in the sea floor. I was wondering where the ship full of gold that it was connected to ended up (apparently, there are two known Spanish shipwrecks in the area). Visibility, I was told just before going under, was a bit poor today. Funny, I could see about 100 feet or more. On this dive we got a close look at a Sting Ray (in addition to the 100s of fish I can't yet identify and loads of coral). For about half of the dive we traveled along a "wall," which is an undersea cliff that drops off quite dramatically, I believe, to over 800 feet (which is nothing compared to the east side of the island where it drops off to 8000 feet). All you can see over the edge is a deep blue color. It was a bit less intimidating than I expected though. I've never dove at a wall before, and I always imagined being terrified of whatever large creature might be lurking below. We also swam over the island's telephone cable. It's strange to think people had to physically lay cables under the oceans before the advent of wireless systems. Will (an intern and dive instructor) and Jan (another intern) have been nice enough to take me out on these dives and help refresh my skills.

On Friday, between the two dives, Jessee and I went for a snorkel over to the nearby Dove Cay. It's probably a bit more than 300 meters from South Caicos to the Cay, but not a super difficult. Jessee was worried about me because I'm not the strongest swimmer, but when you have a mask and snorkel it's much easier to stay calm and conserve energy. It doesn't get that deep there either, and the reef makes the deep parts look pretty shallow too. It's amazing how much you can see from the surface; all the same fish and brilliant coral species. We had a huge Barracuda following us for the last bit before the Cay. They're pretty curious fish, I gather. On the way back we saw the biggest (and scariest looking) crab I've ever seen! I didn't want to get anywhere near its claws, which were bigger than my hands. The Cay is just a small rock outcropping, but a nice place for a salty picnic.

You might have noticed I've created a new "gadget" on the sidebar of this blog (unless, of course, you've been reading these posts through email or a feed reader instead of at the website). It's my "dive (b)log." It's good practice to log all of your SCUBA dives, so I've written an application that reads my logbook and publishes my dives on this blog. It's not up yet, but I'll be activating it soon.