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.

Captain Ahab

Given the recent goings-on here on South Caicos, I thought it suiting to begin reading Moby Dick. (Actually, I'm cheating a little by listening to the audiobook, but that's neither here nor there). The idea came after others started poking fun at me, saying I was obsessed with finding the whales. The book is about Captain Ahab's crazed search for the elusive White Whale (actually an albino Sperm Whale). He becomes completely consumed by the hunt and is left unable to focus on or take pleasure in anything else. While my recent obsession with whale watching certainly hasn't reached this degree, the parallel they've drawn to Ahab is might not be that far off base for many other things in my life.


We spent much of the day yesterday in search of the whales. But we were not lucky enough to find them. The season is coming to a close soon. Most of the whales should be gone by the middle of March, though some stragglers can supposedly still be seen well into April.

On one of the dives yesterday, I could hear them. The male humpbacks are known for deep their whale-songs. The sound can travel for miles and miles, but I kept hoping they'd just come swimming by. It's really hard to swim with them let alone dive with them. They move so quickly that you can't really plan that sort of thing. You just need to be lucky.

I went out to the very tip of the East Bay Spur (a coral formation that juts out into "the blue") hoping they'd come by.

Elusive Whales

The whales are nearby. Yesterday there were two sightings; one by me from land, and one by the students from the boats. So this morning several of us got up for a pre-breakfast excursion to look for them (and go for a dive). As it turns out, whales like to sleep in. We didn't see any. They seem to like the south side of South Caicos, though. It was from the bluffs at Shark Bay that I saw them yesterday, right next to the place where I saw them breaching Tuesday. Pepe suspects that these ones aren't just passing through, but are spending some time here. I hope that is true.

Yesterday from Shark Bay.
It looked like 3 whales (1 adult, 1 juvenile, and 1 sub-adult).

Waving Hello

Shark Bay from the Bluffs

I was disappointed about not seeing them this morning partly because seeing them from land just isn't the same as seeing them from the water, but mostly because Jessee was along and she hasn't gotten to see them yet at all. It's not fair sometimes that she doesn't get to enjoy as many of the perks of being in a place like this. Even when the other staff are really busy, part of their job requires that they go in the water. When Jessee's busy she can go weeks without being able to get out there. Tomorrow's Sunday, though, and hopefully it will be nice and sunny (there's has been a serious lack of sun on SUNdays lately) and we'll be able to spend lots of time out there looking for them.

From the dive: a funny looking Smooth Trunkfish, looking it's funniest.

Breach at the Beach

This morning I went for a walk to East Bay to read my book. When I got there I sat down on a bench somebody had built between two trees. After a brief moment, I caught from of the corner of my eye the unmistakable shape of a whale breaching! It was just beyond the reef in the vicinity of one of our regular dive sites.

I had to ask myself if I'd really seen what I'd just seen, but there was no question about it. It was massive and it's entire body (except the very end of its tail) was out of the water. There's nothing else it could have been. I stood up and walked to the water's edge just in time to see it do it again! And again! In all I saw them breach 8 times!!! I couldn't believe it because I had spent hours over the past few weeks trying to find them, and here they were when I wasn't even looking.

On the lookout, weeks ago.

There's no saying how many there were. I was too far away and the surf was too rough to see anything besides the jumps. I was able to confirm that they were Humpbacks though; I distinctly saw the long pectoral fin on one of them. The breaches were spaced far enough apart that it could have been as few as just one individual, but I think there must have been several.

Watching Nothing

They were heading East so I scrambled to get my things, keeping my eyes on the water, and hurried down the beach in their direction. I got out to a point by Shark Bay that would have had a great view, but they had passed. I only wish I had had access to a boat so that I could get out there to see them up close.

Whale Video

It's only a few seconds, and you can barely see them at all, but here is my whale video. It is of when they started to move and I started to get uneasy.

Humpback Whales
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCY_v_2Bzz0)

More Cetaceans!

As if dolphins weren't enough, today I swam with Humpback Whales! Two of them, a mother and a baby. It was a very brief encounter. A few of us went out on a salvage mission to recover lost items from our destroyed boat (more on that later) and a dive. When we surfaced from the dive, the two that stayed topside yelled excitedly for us to get in the boat. Apparently the whales had swam right by us without us knowing! I didn't believe them at first, but sure enough one of them surfaced moments later for a breath of air!

The baby surfacing.

We got the boat started and headed in their direction. They were in very shallow water (about 30ft) and moving very slowly. When they came to a stop, we jumped in and swam in their direction. I was out in front, and when the big mother came into view I got a bit nervous. Their size is quite intimidating. She was probably about 50ft long with huge pectoral fins (the fin in the picture below is at least twice as long as me!). The baby was on the far side hidden from view and I started wondering if they're protective of their young in the way bears are (sheesh, I'd hate to find out).

Big Whale, Shallow Water

Size comparison sketch from Wikipedia.

When she realized we were there, she lifted her tail very slowly and started swimming away. Her movement was very gentle, but the size and power was enough to make me hesitate. In seconds they were nearly out of sight. I called over to the others and suggested heading back to the boat was the only way we'd get to keep watching them. We did, and we followed them for about 10 minutes until they crossed out of the boundary of where we're allowed to take the school's boats. Even when they're not on the surface you can track their movements pretty easily. With each kick of their tail, the water churns with such force that it leaves a "footprint" of swirling water visible from the surface.

Slowly raising her tail.

And pushing away.

Seeing them isn't unusual, but also not very common. They pass through every year from the North to the Dominican Republic where they give birth, but they mostly travel farther East near Grand Turk and Salt Cay. I'm very hopeful we'll see them again. They're so incredible! I especially hope that Jessee will get the chance to see them. She didn't get to see the dolphins (work has been especially busy this week) and she chose not to come today because it was chilly (i.e. about 72°), gray, and a bit rainy. Now she really regrets it, and I feel guilty for seeing so much without her.