Yesterday, we did a morning deep drift dive. The site was at the SW corner of the island where two currents come together, so there are typically bigger fish, huge sponges, and occasionally some sharks. We descended to about 100'--unfortunately, it was pretty hazy, so the visibility wasn't as good as it could have been had it been bright and sunny, but as we swam along the reef wall, we could see it got very deep, very fast. A few of the divers in the group headed out over the blue water and we kept along the wall. Soon enough we heard someone banging on a tank and divers started swimming fast. My husband cum dive-buddy started swimming hell bent for leather in their direction and I decided I had better follow, despite the fact that I wasn't keen on sucking up all my air chasing mystery animal--but as I got toward the group I could see there was a hammerhead shark cruising around and people were very excited! This is a pretty rare sighting, apparently, and there was a lot of boasting when we got back to the dive shop. It was probably about 7-8' but by the time we got back to the dock it had grown to about 10'+. We still aren't sure if it was a Great Hammerhead or a Scalloped Hammerhead, but it did have a scalloped hammer for sure. I'll have to check in with the shark folks when I get back to work to see if we can figure it out.
We had a few hours before our evening dive, so we wandered about town a bit, got some baleadas (a Honduran specialty I had been wanting to try--yummy), and then returned to the boat with full bellies. Unfortunately, the entire town lost power for most of the day, which was bad news for many of the shops and restaurants. The poor cruise-shippers had no place to spend their money!
Speaking of cruise ships, it really is amazing the impact they have on these small island towns. One ship came in the other day--it had over 4000 passengers and 1700 staff! West End was over-run. Yesterday, there were 3 ships in. There are catamarans that bring would-be snorkelers on day trips to the marine park where we are moored. We set out to go snorkeling the other day when one of these catamarans discharged its passengers--there's nothing like a bunch of flailing cruise-shippers, new to snorkeling and with ill-fitting equipment to drive the fish away. We kept hoping the few barracuda that were out and about would exact some revenge, but even they were hunkered down. It was really like being in a human-filled aquarium--this day the people provided more entertainment than the fish. The look on one lady's face when Barbara told her the fish she was looking at was a barracuda was priceless...I think if I was going to be here much longer I would have to devise a few practical jokes for this group. Apparently, some of the other cruisers have already discussed a remote controlled shark.
Anyway, we went back into town a bit early in hopes that the power might be back on and we could find a working ATM and make a trek to the gas station to fill the outboard tank. The power was still out, but we got both tasks accomplished thanks to generators. Mark and I hung around and people-watched before our night dive met up--it's a nice town to just sit and chill in, watching the comings and goings of Semana Santa partiers and all the activity on the waterfront.
We met up for our night dive and set out--there were 5 of us, plus two divemasters, all of which we had been diving with before at this point, so that was good. We descended just as it got dark and before long we saw a huge crab crawling about the reef and a small octopus. I could have watched the octopus for the rest of the dive--they are so curious and so fun to watch. We saw a bigger one later and since I was at the back of the pack, once everyone else moved on I turned my light off and then back on again and saw that he had turned this brilliant red color when the lights weren't on him and paled up as soon as the light shone on him. Pretty cool. We also saw some nudibranchs (my favorite!), many lobsters, a large green moray, and lots of tiny cleaner-type shrimp out and about. Mark spotted a cool scallop-type thing too. Night dives are always so neat because a lot of the animals that are tucked into the reefs during the day, like urchins, come out to feed and they are really active (well, as active as something with tube-feet can be). And the water clarity is so good here, you have really good visibility even when the flashlights aren't on. Very cool.
So, we're done with diving since we fly back to San Pedro tomorrow morning, but now that we're fueled up on tasty coconut bread french toast and fresh pineapple, we'll get a few snorkels in today at some of the sites we haven't hit yet. Hopefully, we'll avoid the fish-scaring splashers, and see some more fish and critters before we have to leave. I could definitely come back to Roatan!
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment