0.00131663067 leagues under the sea, part 2

Diving with a shop like we did is certainly more expensive than just jumping in with a buddy, and if we were in a dive-friendly location more regularly I would definitely forego the extra expense. However, one of the nice things about having a guide is that you get to go out with a group of like-minded people and have extended versions of the kind of conversations you might have on an airplane or at a museum fundraiser. We still exchange Christmas cards with a Canadian couple we met in Belize a few years ago. On this trip, we met a bunch of nice folks from all over. Inevitably, the talk turned from marine topics to real estate, as everyone down there is in some stage of the real estate buying process (from daydreamers like us all the way to owners).

And, of course the guides know where to go to see the marquee creatures. Our other divemaster was a woman named Jenny, who fits the label “old salt” better than any TV pegleg pirate you could imagine. She followed the siren call  some years ago and now makes her living diving and selling underwater pictures. The Pier is famous for its seahorses, and we saw a bunch, but I didn’t get a good enough shot to post.

It’s obligatory to post the pictures you take of those headliner critters, and so I have done here, but I could spend a long time staring at the “regular” fishes, more common than pigeons in the park, watching them nibble and squabble and drift. My underwater camera is at the lower end of the “real camera” spectrum, and it’s a few years old now, so it doesn’t have as many pixels as I would like it to. If I make more investment in SCUBA stuff, I might choose a new camera over more gear to wear. It’s easy and cheap to rent gear, and it all works about the same, but getting to know your camera is important and takes some practice. 

These pics, both from the Pier and from nearby Sugar Reef where I went for my only boat dive of the trip:

a hawksbill turtle (there’s a protected turtle nesting beach just a mile or two away, and apparently in season it’s quite a sight to watch them nesting and hatching and so on)

a stingray, obviously. I was proud to be the first person in the group to spot this guy

a green moray eel (3 or 4 feet long, just to provide a sense of scale), who came all the way out of his lair to swim with us, uncomfortably close at times. Jenny said some less-responsible divers have been feeding him lionfish, see below, and so now he’s like a Yellowstone bear, not as afraid of humans as he normally should be

a deep sea fan, unusual at the shallow depth we were at.

coral and scenery, and

one of my fellow divers in the process of spearing a lionfish. Lionfish are an invasive species that have established themselves in the Caribbean over the last 10-20 years. They’re beautiful, poisonous, voracious, and fecund. On our very first dive trip, the government of whatever island was actually offering a bounty for them, but now they’re everywhere, and you just try to find them and kill them. Sad. On this trip, the guy said he’d bagged about 50 of them or more.