Brian after navigating the Cathedral dive passages swims into the deep blue ocean
Our 10 days of diving in the Solomons with the Master liveaboard was amazing. Some things about the trip are quatifiable, 37 dives in 10 days is, a pretty big number of dives. The countless thousands of fish we saw was impressive. We saw large schools of jacks, fusiliers and barracuda. But the diving wasn’t just about the numbers. There were many story lines along the way that standing alone could make great stories. Consider one of the dives we did was named Simon’s dive site. Simon lives in the Florida islands and is quite a naturalist. He has among other things replanted coral on the reef on his property and has gotten the government to recognized his property as a nature preserve. His efforts have helped grow stag horn coral in places where it appears to have either not existed or which may have been in existence but needed to be reseeded. With growing reefs come critters. We did a night dive on Simon’s reef. Among the things I saw was a nudibranch that was enormous, almost 10 centimeters in length. Now I have shot this same species of nudibranch in other places such as the Philippines, but I don’t think I have ever seen one this large.
But the trip wasn’t just about nudibranchs or small critters. One of the things that stood out in my mind was just how healthy the reef was on all of the sites we dove. In paticular, the wide range of hard corals struck me.
But the soft corals were also quite abundant. Not since I dove rainbow reef in Fiji had I seen so many different colors of soft corals on any dives. Red, purple, yellow, orange and white soft corals covered many sections of the reef.
And of course there were a number of the usual suspects that you find in the coral triangle, such as clown fish.
Nemo’s eye
But of course the thing that keeps me coming back to diving is the friendships that are formed by diving with people from all around the world.
I grew up living near the Great Lakes. It was not until much later in life that I saw my first shark. The shop I was diving with at the time had told us to expect that we would see a shark or two on the dive. We did see a shark, but he took one look at us open circuit divers and swam the other way. Before his tail had completely disappeared into the distance, I thought well that wasn’t too bad. That sighting was over 20 years ago and since that time I’ve seen many varieties of sharks, but seeing a shark never gets old for me. And no, it is not because in my day job I’m a lawyer and I have enjoyed professional curtesy with the sharks in the water.
A nurse shark cruising over the soft corals
Before last year, I used to think oh there’s a nurse shark. Whoopi, a very docile animal.
Well, last year I was on a night dive where we knew nurse sharks would be feeding. In the briefing we were told to stay off the bottom which was only maybe 35 feet below. So we stayed in the mid-water about 15 feet off the bottom. I’m glad I stayed off the bottom. What I observed were a handful of nurse sharks pounding every hole in the reef looking for a sleeping fish to swallow. I have been in a cage and watched bull sharks go after fish bits that were tossed into the water near the cage. The bulls sharks were not that much different from the vigor with which the nurse sharks crashed the holes in the reef to find fish. The thing that startled me the most was the speed at which the many attacks were launched by the nurse sharks. Had Micheal Phelps been in one of the holes in the reef he would not have stood a chance of out swimming the nurse sharks.
Some close up scars on a handful of feeding bull sharks
In the murky water of the harbor where the shark cage was it was stunning how fast the bull sharks came at the cage and how careful I was at keeping everything well inside the cage.
Then there was the dive where we were watching and taking pictures of great hammerheads swim in water that the visibility was not great. After having visibility that was awesome a few days before, I began to feel very uncomfortable when I realized that a 12 foot hammerhead could swim up behind me while I was focused on a similar sized hammerhead in front of me and missed the one that was on my blind side. Glad my buddy was watching out for me.
And visibility got worse from here.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t attribute some ill will to sharks. They just do what they have been doing for hundreds of millions of years. They are a top predator and they are just looking for a meal. They are intelligent predators and they are designed to move through the water far more efficiently than we are. And, they do an excellent job of cleaning off the the sick or otherwise unhealthy reef critters.
In your face
Of course as top predators, the existence of sharks in a particular dive site I always take as a good sign that the reef is healthy. That is, if the top predator is doing well then all of the fish and creatures that are on lower levels of the food chain must be in at least decent shape otherwise there would be little in the food chain to support the top predator.
Over the course of the last 20 years or so, I have traveled to most of the islands in the Caribbean. Generally speaking, the water is warm, the visibility is good and the locals are friendly to divers. What’s not to like, right? I can remember when I first started diving and even before that that I often heard this chewing sound while under water that I eventually came to recognize as the sound of native reef fish species caring for the reef by feeding on the algae that would otherwise overtake and over come the reef. The fish thus kept the algae in check, got a good mean, and the reef stayed healthy and life on the reef seemed to be in balance.
I had been to Roatan before nearly a decade ago and I was somewhat disappointed at that time because while the dive shop was friendly, the water was warm and there was relatively good biodiversity underwater, I still came away with a sense of gloom. During my prior trip there just seeemed to be something that was missing.
At the time I first thought maybe my day job was just weighing me down. Later I thought maybe the fact that the group I was with, who speared several hundred lion fish during the week, bothered me because it occurred to me that each invasive lion fish had eaten way more than its weight in native species of reef fish. Still later I thought maybe it was the fact that the divers who were spear fishing lion fish had missed many of the targeted lion fish which meant that many of the native species of fish would remain at risk for predation by lion fish who had no native predators. It was only towards the end of the trip that it hit me, I had not heard what I had become accustomed to hearing, the feeding of the native fish species chewing on the algae that was growing of the reef. Yes the reef did not have an over abundance of algae, but I had notice there seemed to be many juvenile reef fish that were missing. That is, there were quite a few adult reef fish, but there seemed to be a gap and what was missing were many of the small colorful reef fish that I had grown accustomed to seeing.
Roll forward a decade. I had an opening in my work schedule so my wife convinced me to jump on a liveaboard that sails around Roatan. Okay it didn’t take much convincing. The week before the trip, I looked at the weather map and saw there was going to be quite a bit of wind and a potential storm or two that might affect the trip. I thought to myself well I wonder how many dives we will get in with the expected weather. As we were waiting at the airport to catch flight down to Roatan, we met a group of divers who were going to dive from a resort in Roatan. I talked to several of the divers and figured I would probably see them on the return flight back to Dallas the following week so I thought I would talk to them on the flight back to see how their trip went.
When we got the the live aboard later that day, they told us about the weather system and that the captain would be sailing us around Roatan which has some tall hills which he hoped would hide us from some of the wind that had been forecast. He also predicted that we would see alot of dive sites that the boat typically did not go to because they were quite a ways away from port, but that was how we were going to avoid the worst of the storm and wind. Our crew, with the exception of the engineer, were all from Roatan and went above and beyond what I have often seen crew do to make passengers comfortable.
A week later, and 24 dives in the book for me, I think the captain and crew did a great job keeping us out of the wind, and finding interesting dive sites with a good amount of reef life for us to see. And, for me all of it made interesting subjects for me to break in my mirrorless camera rig.
For me the highlight was the one day that we could go out to a sea mount and dive around the Cocos sea mount. The reef life was spectacular. Yes there were schools of creole wrasse. And yes there was the largest school of Atlantic spade fish I have ever seen.
A small fraction of the Atlantic Spade fish school
From what I could tell from talking to the other passengers, everyone seemed to have had excellent trip. Did I see a few lion fish during the trip, yep, but they were speared fairly quickly by the crew.
And I was also glad to see some of the usual suspect such a nassau groupers who seemed inquisitive and healthy.
Not far off the coast of West Caicos, which is part of Turks and Caicos, is a failed media idea that nevertheless still makes a very interesting dive site. Thunder dome was intended to be an underwater set for a television show that was based on what most scuba instructors would tell you is a fairly dangerous practice; i.e. mixing skin diving with compressed gas. The concept was that contestants would dive down 30 feet to a set which had a bubble system that spilled out pearls. The contestants would gather the pearls and when they needed more air they would go to a “mermaid” with a regulator connected to compressed gas, essentially a scuba system, would take a breath or two and continue collecting pearls. The object was to collect the most pearls and take the fewest hits of compressed gas and that contestant would win the most money. What could go wrong with that? Well, plenty. None of the contestants appear to have been trained scuba divers so presumably they had never heard the number one rule of scuba diving: Don’t hold your breath? Why—- because by breathing compressed gas and changing depth a person risks an over expansion injury; i.e. you could over expand your lungs so much they burst, among other serious injuries. Fortunately, while the production company did make a pilot or two, someone finally woke up to the risks of the project and killed the project. Nevertheless, the production company left the set for Thunder dome where it was in Turks and Caicos. The dome and other set pieces have made an interesting man made reef structure. Thirty years later, the set makes a very interesting site for certified divers.
habitat for fish
While I was exploring the set on scuba, did I look for pearls, yes, but not so much. I figured they would be hard to find and after 30 years had probably been pretty picked over. But there was still plenty to see because in the last thirty years quite a few sponges and corals had claimed the set as their new home.
grunts looking for pearls?
Although Thunder Dome was a failure as a television show, it nonetheless does make for a very interesting dive site to explore. So if you get to Turks and Caicos Thunder Dome is definitely a worthwhile site to dive.
When my flight from Dallas to LA was delayed more than 4 hours and I missed my connecting flight to Manila, I was starting to wonder would it be worth traveling from Dallas to Manila? My concerns were only heightened when I found out later that day that because I missed my flight to Manila my business class seat was gone and I would be flying economy. Ugh. Well I got lucky, even though I had a middle seat in the 777 the guy next to me had bought an extra seat which was empty which almost gave me enough room to be comfortable. I was lucky there was only one empty seat on the whole plane, and it was next to me. Twenty plus hours of flying is not fun. But if you want to see amazing biodiversity, then the Philippines is pretty much a game changer.
In 10 days of diving 3-4 dives a day, I saw a lot of incredible critters. (Yes work occasionally got in the way of diving, but at least not too much of the time).
This trip I spent a lot more time using a snoot to shoot images. A snoot is just a light restricting devise to keep the flash beam of light very narrow so much of the surrounding sub-straight is not lit. Of course that is useful because much of the substraight is not particularly pretty.
I was trying out the backscatter mini flash 2 which does have some very nice features. I would say the focus light is brighter than the mini flash 1, and the switch to turn on the flash has been significantly improved. I just wish they would change the snoot restictor from a slide mechanism to an aperature type arrangement like what is used on the maralux snoot. Now one of the engineers I met in the Philippines had modified his mini flash and printed out on a three D printer an aperature devise that worked with his mini flash. Wish I was an engineer but alas I can break almost anything without even trying and certainly putting a new devise in a flash is just way beyond my skills.
To give you as sense of the difference between the biodiversity in the Caribbean which is close to home for me, and the Philippines consider the difference in diversity of nudibranchs (shell less mollusks). The Caribbean has maybe a few more than a dozen different nudibranchs. The Philippines has over 1,000 different nudibranchs and they are still finding previously undescribed nudibranchs.
This was my third trip and the question I always ponder: Was there any overlap between the critters I saw this trip and my two prior trips, –In a word: yes. But there were still creatures I have not previously seen. So will I go back to see if there are still more critters different critters to see, yep.
Not long ago I asked a relatively new diver whether she was going to do a night dive that was part of a trip. Her response was: I’ve never done one will I see anything? My response was probably a bit snappy: yes assuming you turn on your torch and keep your eyes open. I went on to explain that since we were diving in the ocean and on a reef she would normally see the “night shift” of critters. Many of them would be hunting for their dinner while the creatures she had seen on the reef during the day might be hanging out in holes in the reef and trying to sleep all in hopes of not being eaten.
An octopus waiting for prey to swim by
She asked who were the critters that we might see that we’re hunting for their dinner. I said if we were lucky we might find some octopus feeding.
An octopus hanging on to the crab he would be dining on
She asked what else might she see. I said well we might see a nudibranch or two.
A nudibranch crawling on the reef
She asked will we see anything weird? I said well it depends on what you mean by weird but since we were in Southeast Asia I said well we might see a bobbit worm.
A bobbit worm feeding at night
On that night dive we did see a bobbit worm which the dive guide would periodically push a morsel of food to. Our newer diver was startled the first time the jaws of the bobbit worm snapped shut and the worm pulled his prey into his hole in the sand.
When we eventually returned to the surface our newer diver said can we do that again? My response was well perhaps tomorrow. Will the boat need to save a space for you? The answer was: Of course…..
I had been diving for nearly 20 years before I ever came across black water diving. When I first heard that to do the dive we would be out in very deep water at night (perhaps over 1000 feet deep) with video lights on a string providing light to the creatures that might swim up for the depths, I had a few concerns. Sure I had done quite a few “shark” dives over the years, but I had always done those dives in the daylight so I could at least see them coming. I talked to the dive leader and heard that in all the black water dives they had done to that point they had not been visited by any sharks. Then I asked about what I might see in the night. I then heard about the great vertical migration. The short version is that billions of larval size creatures swim up from the depths each night to feed at the surface, only to return to the depths before daytime so they do not become some predator’s breakfast.
Like much in diving good buoyancy control was essential because unlike some places that do tethered black water dives we would be swimming fee without being tethered to the boat. Now controlling buoyancy plus controlling light for taking pictures sounded like quite a challenge. One of the tips I did hear and pay attention to was to listen to my ears. If I was having to clear that meant i was going deeper. So I thought that what I would do is have one eye on the string of lights and the pumpkin at the top, and have one eye focused on what was available to see.
Some of the creatures are surprisingly long
My first black water dive, I swam around a ton and my focus light had a very wide beam. I thought I was swimming in a snow storm. The closest I got to getting a usable image was a picture of the ink from a squid that had jetted away from me.
Three years went by and I returned with the same camera rig except this time instead of a wide angle focus light I used one with a very narrow beam. Was it hard taking picture of the creatures I found on my second black water dive? In a word: yes. But I was more confident of what I would do and had a good bit more success in capturing some of the critters that had come up from the depths. Now buoyancy was still a big concern because even with having the string of lights as a reference point it would have been very easy to drop below the last light. What I can say is that black water diving is an advanced skill and if not tethered it is really a dive that should be saved until the diver has excellent buoyancy control skills.
Warm blue water with a ton of marine life to me is a great hook to go visit an island. In early July 2022 we sailed around St. Martin and got in a pedestrian 8 dives in a week. Nevertheless, we still saw a good variety of reef live. Some of my favorites were the turtles. All were green sea turtles but there were quite a few of them. Most were eating on the reef. Only one was swimming apparently looking for a meal.
A turtle at rest
But we also saw a variety of fish. Some were the usual pretty grunts that would show up in relatively large schools.
Ceasar grunts and goat fish swimming through a wreck
But the colors on the reef were not limited to browns and yellows. Instead there were also reds and other colors.
Black bar soldier fish beneath soft corals
And of course, often on the edge of visibility there were grey reef sharks patrolling around the divers.
