Friday – April 16, 2010

Today was supposed to be an all-day-in-the-water day.  Bob was scheduled to dive in the morning, we were both set to visit Sting Ray City in the afternoon, and Bob was doing a night dive after dark.  Unfortunately the weather caused a cancellation of both the afternoon at Sting Ray City and the night dive.

The morning dive went very well.  Our first dive was at a location called Trinity Caves.   It wasn’t really caves, but rather tubes in the edge of the coral reef.  We started at about 50 feet and ended at the drop off near 100 feet.  The structure was interesting but the fish at the 50 foot level were much more interesting to me.  I did see a barracuda cruise by looking for a snack.  There wasn’t anything highly different from the Wednesday dive sites, but there were a lot of fish and it was very entertaining.  One thing that was interesting was a anemone with white arms and fluorescent green tips.

Our second site was called Oro Verde after the freighter of that name that was intentionally sunk on the site to make an artificial dive reef.  The name originally referred to the banana cargo it carried, but could have equally been applied to the herbs it later carried over from Jamaica.  It was this later cargo that got the ship seized and then abandoned to be sunk.   Since it has been on the bottom, the annual storms and hurricanes have broken her up completely so there is a lot of steel, but little that looks like a ship.  Right on the bottom, was a large sandy patch with a large colony of garden eels.  These are one of my favorite creatures, large colonies that look almost like a sparse grass field.  There were all sorts of really interesting fish and this was one of my favorite dives ever.  Our dive leader pointed out a sole that was so well camouflaged I never would have seen it without her help.

In the afternoon we went into town to look at the shops.  They are set up to cater to the cruise ships that flock to this island.  Since there were no ships in port today, town was very quiet.  Maxine was able to spend time looking at  emeralds, sapphires, and rubies with the occasional diamond tossed in.  She was able to resist them all.  Good for her!!!

Tomorrow we try again for Sting Ray City.  Wish us luck.