The first dive we did in British Virgin Islands (“BVI”) in 2018 was at the  Cistern point off of Cooper island. We dropped down behind the boat and swam to the mooring line.  We dropped to the bottom which was at 27 feet at the mooring ball.  The area around the mooring ball was mostly sand. It looked like the cat. 5 hurricane last year had beaten up most of the hard coral. But the hard coral is slowing making a come back.

The soft corals are ok, but a bit sparse. It was a sunny day to start, but later in the dive the sun started to go behind the clouds, meaning that I had to turn up the strobes a bit .  I found quite a few large lobsters in various overhangs. They looked to be in the 5 + pound range.

There were several dips in the ocean floor. I dropped down to see the various animals hiding in the hole in the reef. The fish seem to be making a bit of a come back. We saw several scrawled file fish. I saw one queen trigger fish.  I saw quite a few box fish and one adult barracuda.  We saw three large tarpon near a cave mouth. Inside the cave were some silversides and there were two lion fish hunting the silversides.

Later in the dives we got reasonably close to the tarpon.

Late in the dive we found a turtle. I took quite a few shots of him and got a few with my daughter Megan in the picture.

Near the end of the dive we found one spotted moray who was pretty well hidden.

At the end of the dive an eagle ray that was easily 6 ft across came through the site. He was missing a tail.

I swam hard for both the turtle and the eagle ray.  The turtle wasn’t too hard to catch.   The ray was pretty fast and it was hard to get close to him.

I was a bit tired after the dive since the swim back to the boat was through some surge and the wind had picked up and was blowing us away from the boat.

The new housing and strobes worked well. I took over 200 images on the one hour long dive. Maximum depth was 42 feet. Viz was maybe 50-60 feet, less at the beginning and end of the dive. Better in the middle of the dive.