Rain on my Parade

June 2nd, I mentioned last year, is a special day for us. As of yesterday, we've been together for 8 years! We didn't get to spend it together last year, so I had grand plans for it this year. But there was rain on my parade.

Rainy Day

There was thunder and lighting for the better part of the day. Both of us were a little bummed out because of it, but incredibly things cleared up in the evening and we still had an enjoyable time (even if I wasn't able to carry things out in their full glory). We went for my final South Caicos dive, just the two of us. And while we were down there, I gave Jessee her card.




It was a good last dive too. We got a good sampling of the regular South Caicos megafauna - a Nurse Shark, a Reef Shark, and a lone Eagle Ray. It was as if they were all coming out one last time for me. Aside from that we saw lots of Horse-eye and Black Jacks (my favorite fish) and a Sharpnose Puffer (Jessee's favorite). Just before we ascended I spotted a Golden Coney too. Coneys are quite abundant, but Golden ones are a rare color variation. I've only seen 3 or 4 others the whole time I've been here.

A bit blurry.

A bit grainy.

Nassau Grouper

Sharpnose Puffer

Golden Coney

They're somewhat shy.

That's supposed to be an 8

After we cleaned the salt off our equipment (extra thoroughly for mine since I'll be hanging it up for a while), we went out for dinner. There's not much in terms of "fine dining" on this island, so we embraced the situation and went for the bottom rung of what was available - The Chicken Shack.

Fried chicken and french fries. It made us both feel sick.

Bruno was happy, though, because he got our bones.

And one more thing, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!

The Daily Routine

As Jessee mentioned, we're trying to keep in the habit of running. I don't really like doing it, but I do like having done it. It makes a world of difference in how you feel. For the last two days we've taken advantage of the fact that the water has been dead calm and, instead of just floating around at the dock to cool down, we went for a couple of long snorkels. Yesterday we swam around Dove Cay, and today we crossed the entire bay to Shark Alley. According to Google Maps, each route is about a mile.

View Snorkel Routes in a larger map

The water has gotten much warmer since the winter and it's really nice to be out there. The surface water was especially warm because there were no waves to churn things up, and the thermocline was especially distinct. The top 12 inches was probably 8° or 10° warmer than the water below that. It's just a shame it wasn't this flat when Jessee's family was here.

Dove Cay

We attached our shoes to the signal float. Yes, that is ocean water not pool water, by the way.

Jessee always pulls the float because she's the better swimmer.

There's some new Elk Horn Coral growth on the far side of Dove Cay.

A Massive Lobster

That's a nice leaf.

We saw this same "buddy pair" both days - a Sting Ray and a Bar Jack.

The swim across to Long Cay today was especially eventful. Well, actually, Shark Alley (the area at the tip of Long Cay) was. It never disappoints. We saw three turtles (two large Hawksbills and fairly large Green), 7 Eagle Rays, and a Reef Shark. The two Hawksbills had tags, and when they saw us they took off without looking back. I guess they recognized us. The Green turtle came swimming by while I was photographing the shark. I actually got both of them in a single frame. Shark Alley is really one of a kind. If you saw any single one of these animals in the Dominican Republic, it would be something to talk about. Here you're not even finished looking at one when another comes swimming by. This is really a special place.

We started at the dock for a more direct line across the bay.

Barracudas spend most of their time lurking.

It's a bit grainy, but the turtle is just behind the shark in the lower left.

Queen Triggerfish

There was an abandoned fish trap at Shark Alley with a Coney trapped inside. I decided I'd free him. Sometimes in rough weather traps get lost. Until all the bait is used up, they'll continue trapping fish, which simply die of starvation. It took about 10 breath-hold dives to get the gate open. I had to untie several knots and bend some wires, but eventually I did it.

The fish is in the top right corner.

Gate's Open

And the fish is free. You can see him swimming away to the left.

Yesterday afternoon we went for a dive too. Right off the boat we saw the biggest Snapper (a Dog Snapper, I think). It was probably 3.5 or 4 feet long, absolutely enormous for a commercially valuable species! I can't imagine what it weighed. It was a beast. Again, there aren't many places in the world where fish like this still exist.

Monster Snapper

This Cero Mackerel swam curiously around us for several minutes.

Jessee looking at her favorite fish, the Sharpnose Puffer.

100 Hours

As of this afternoon, I've spent just over 100 hours underwater since arriving on South Caicos. That's more than 4 full days! It took me 138 dives to do it.

100 Hours

I've been diving quite a bit in the last few days - 2 to 3 times per day. The students are on Spring Break, so the staff have had lots of time on their hands. We've done and seen a lot. First off, we did a little more exploration and re-discovered another lost dive site - The Cone. This site is at the far end of the allowed range and has been missing for quite some time. It was listed on a paper map that we found, so we estimated it's coordinates on a digital map and located it using GPS. Once we were underwater, we located the mooring and marked the exact location.

There's no good reason it's called the cone - at least we haven't found anything distinctly cone-like yet. It's not an overly impressive site, unlike the last one re-discovered. There's a lot of sand and some sickly looking Gorgonians. At the drop-off, however, there are some nice coral blocks, but they're very deep. My low opinion of it might primarily be due to coincidental poor visibility, so I'll give it a chance before I write it off completely.

On our first dive to The Cone, Jessee stayed on the surface - something one person is required to do ever since one of the boats was lost. She missed the dive, but lucky for her, she got to see whales because of it! They passed right by the boat. If only we had gone 15 or 20 minutes later, we would have seen them from below too (we had already passed through the area where they were). So close!

Jessee did go on another dive where we had a really impressive sighting. We saw a swarm of 39 Eagle Rays! And, today we saw them again, but there were only 20 this time around.

39 Eagle Rays

39 Eagle Rays
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1pfXps9VPY)

Here are a few more photos I've taken in the last few days:

Rainbow Runners

Jessee

Diver and Horse-eye Jacks - my favorite fish.

Butter Hamlet

Diver and Hawksbill Turtle
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N48IbwBrD0)

There's also been a lot of big Groupers around lately too. Some of them are quite fat - as if they are carrying eggs. Groupers spawn in large aggregations at precise times of the year. This makes them particularly vulnerable to fishing because the whole lot of them can be scooped up at once. Fin-fishing (i.e. not conch or lobster), though, hasn't been very big in this area so Grouper populations remain relatively high. The spawning aggregations are supposed to occur in December or January, but seeing so many has made us wonder if they could actually be getting ready to do it soon. I caught the following footage of a couple Tiger Groupers on a dive at The Cone.

Strange Grouper Behavior
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wdW3G2GS3s)

To top it all off, it looks like the health care bill is finally going to pass! I've been checking in on C-SPAN throughout the day - which has been surprisingly exciting - and it looks like it will just squeak through.

Back to School

The students have returned. They arrived on Monday. Everything seems to be going smoothly so far, despite having so many new staff. In fact, things actually seem to be working better than before. The staff is more cohesive and burnout is far less of an issue.


I'm especially glad for all the new energy for diving too. The new waterfront staff are just like me and want to dive at every chance they get. This morning we anchored at "The Maze" for a dive (the permanent buoy was lost in a storm). We saw a Shark and a school of 5 Eagle Rays. I'm not sure what the reason is, but they have been gathering in larger groups recently. Since the returning, I've seen a school of 10, a school of 12, and a school of 5. Right now the students are out doing their "dive checkouts" and going on their first snorkel trips of the semester.


Eagle Ray
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZQKOC6CHSE)

All the added diving means we've been running the compressor quite often. I've spent hours just sitting around waiting for tanks to fill. That's just the price I have to pay. It's a bargain.

Business as Usual

The meetings have ended, and most of the guests have cleared out. Almost all of the staff have returned or arrived for the first time, and soon things will be getting back to usual. First, though, a couple friends of ours will be visiting from Paris - they arrive tomorrow afternoon. It's always a lot of fun to show people around the island, especially because they're easily impressed by the things we see (just a couple days ago, for example, we saw a school of 10 Eagle Rays (!) and I felt like I was the only one who thought it was something to make a fuss over).


School of Eagle Rays
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1spVhFVIzzQ)

Some recent photos:

My, that's a strange looking fish.

Cushion Sea Stars

Jessee and a Sea Star

It's too shallow for the boat to go to Sandy Point at low tide, so we shut off the engine and I pulled.

Giant Anemone

Yellow Jacks

Lionfish
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5uzi77hywU)

An Eventful Snorkel

It's been a while since I've written about any particular dive or snorkel. This is mainly because it's really difficult to put into writing some of the spectacular things we see here, but also because it can be a little repetitive reading about every Eagle Ray, Shark, or Turtle we see. But today's snorkel at the South End of Long Cay is noteworthy. Unfortunately, it was the first time in a long time that didn't bring our camera!

In the span of about 45 minutes, I saw five Eagle Rays, two Nurse Sharks, a Reef Shark, and four Sea Turtles (one huge Green, two female Hawksbills, and a giant male Hawkbill). At one point the big male Hawksbill was swimming just over and in between two of Eagle Rays and in front of a Reef Shark. Seeing any one of them would have been worth watching, but seeing all four in an area that could have been framed in a single photograph was something else. The bigger of the female Hawksbills had a pretty severe injury - it was missing a back flipper and had a volleyball-sized piece of shell missing. I'm not sure how it survived such a serious injury, but it seemed to be fine. The Eagle Rays were rather unconcerned by us. I swam down towards two of the smaller ones and they didn't really seem to care. I got so close I could have reached out and touched one of them on the tail. I didn't though. This description really does no justice to what it was like to see all these things all together, especially without any pictures!

Boatless

The boats have been out of the water for the past few days. Initially, they were taken out because Tropical Storm Erika was heading our way, but after it petered out we just took them out to clean them. So we've had to make do with limited access to the water. All the same, we made the most of it. On Saturday (after a long day of work for Jessee) we took the kayak across the channel to nearby Dove Cay. It's a one person boat, so after futile attempts to put both of us in it, Jessee just swam. We sat on the small rocky outcropping on it watching two resident Ospreys for a some time and then went for a snorkel with our new underwater camera.

Eagle Ray

Notice the (now healed) injury it had on its right wing - a bite mark, possibly from a shark.

Osprey

Banded Butterflyfish

Yellowfin Mojara

Flamingo Tongue

Yesterday morning we went for a walk (in the unbearably hot sun) out to the salinas with our new bird ID book. We didn't have binoculars, so it was pretty difficult to see anything, but we tried nonetheless. We saw several types of herons and egrets, the flamingos, some Killdeer, and plovers.

In the afternoon we drove out to Highlands Bay and went for a snorkel from the shore. The water is very green and murky over there (due to the prevailing current and extensive sea grass beds), but the there are really interesting coral formations with tunnels and caves all throughout. Here are a few of the pictures from there:

Eagle Ray

Eagle Ray

Eagle Ray

A large brain coral

This morning Jessee got up really early to head for the airport. She'll be spending the day in Provo, greeting the students as they arrive (!). They're coming already! It's hard to believe.