Eddy's Scuba Blog

This is trip was the result of knowing Jack and Sue Drafahl from underwater photography seminars that I have attended at Boston Sea Rovers and at Beneath the Sea. The Drafahls are well known for being pioneers in digital underwater photography and the use of Adobe Photoshop for underwater photographs. Every year in May, the Drafahls offer a "Digital Photo Adventure" at Captain Don's Habitat in Bonaire. The program is a combination of lectures, photo critiques, in-water instruction, boat and shore diving and a photo competition. Since I had never been in Bonaire before, this was a great opportunity to visit the "Macro Capital of the World" and at same time learn first hand from digital experts like the Drafahls.

The program started on a Saturday. I flew the "red eye" flight out of Houston on Continental. This is probably the only red-eye flight into Bonaire. My flight departed Boston on Friday night and arrived to Houston that night. The flight to Bonaire departed just before midnight and was scheduled to arrive in Bonaire at 5:15am.

As a diver, this was a very convenient flight. You are able to use most of Saturday (diving) and don't need to spend a hotel night on Friday. Looking around me I noticed that most--if not all--of the passengers on this flight were divers. They were sporting scuba t-shirts, scuba watches or had stickers with scuba motifs on their luggage. Our flight was the first one to arrive in Bonaire, since the airport seemed to be just "waking up" upon our arrival. The lights were still off and the staff was just taking their posts. For this reason the luggage took a bit longer than expected to retrieve. There was only one luggage carousel in the whole airport.

Passing customs in Bonaire was a breeze. Your passport was stamped and off you were. At the exit of the customs area, I was glad to see Sue Drafahl greeting me. She did that with everyone that was part of the Photo week. Vans were arranged to take us to Captain Don's Habitat, which was about 20 mins. from the airport. On the van from the airport, I met Norma and Jamie, two gals that were on the Photo week as well.

It was still early when arrived at the hotel. It must have been about 7:30am. To our disappointment, we learned that most of our rooms were not ready yet, since checkout time was at noon. So the advantage of having flown the red-eye was wasted. We left our luggage in a storage area (basically in the office behind the hotel counter) and went for breakfast. It was pretty inconvenient to take out our stuff from our luggage and get changed, for example.

In the meantime, we had time to get something to eat from the breakfast buffet. The buffet was good. They had fruits, cereal, the usual eggs/bacon/sausage, omelettes made to order, a variety of breads and do-it-yourself freshly squeezed orange juice. Breakfast was served in the main dining area which is outdoors. Most tables have a view to the ocean and diving dock.

After breakfast we had time to kill. A number of us sat around the lounge next to the dive shop trying catch some sleep after the red-eye flight. We were waiting for the dive orientation to start at 9:00am, which is required for new arriving divers. The orientation was pretty basic, they told us what you could do and what you couldn't. As most other places like Cayman and Roatan, gloves are not allowed. There was also a $25 fee for the use of the Bonaire National Park.

Captain Don's Habitat Dive Dock

At about 10:00am our rooms were still not ready. Fortunately, Sue came to the rescue and offered me to store my luggage in her room. Jack and Sue were in a Villa Ocean View Room that had two bedrooms, kitchen, living room with TV and porch with dinner table. She graciously offered me the use of one of her bedrooms (since it wasn't occupied), so that I could ready up for a dive that were planning before noon.

At about 11:30am, I was finally ready to go diving. Thanks to Sue, I had somewhere to change and get my photo equipment out of my luggage. I had already left most of my diving gear in the locker room near the diving dock. Sue again came to the rescue by "reserving" the lockers on top, which are more convenient to reach.

The Trumpet Fish Capital of the World, First Shore Dive

Just before noon, we went off on our first shore dive. There was a group of about 4 or 5 of us from the Photo class. This was our opportunity to check our weights and check our camera equipment. This time my camera and strobe were working perfectly. Every picture that I took was firing the strobe correctly. In my previous trip to Roatan, I had so much trouble with the TTL connector and the strobe.

My first impression of Bonaire was "Trumpet Fish Galore", I was seeing lots of trumpet fish of all sizes and colors. I could easily count 20 or 30 of them. They should have called it the "Trumpet Fish Capital of World". It was amazing to see that many trumpet fish. At other places I've been like Belize, Cayman and Roatan, it was a "treat" to find one trumpet fish.

Trumpet Fish

Blue Trumpet Fish

In addition to trumpet fish, we also saw many 3-ft+ tarpoons following us above and below us. It was surprising to see them like that in the open at daylight. I thought that tarpoons liked to stay close to swim-thrus and caves. We also saw angel fish, trunk fish and sand divers, not in the numbers as the trumpet fish.

Almost at the end of the dive, we circled around a small wreck just in front of Captain Don's. It was the wreck of a small 25-ft boat sitting at the bottom upside down. Near the wreck we found a grouper, which looked like a tiger grouper, although with no noticeable stripes. It was been cleaned, so it was very steady and opening its mouth open. A nice photo opportunity.

Grouper at Cleaning Station

After taking pictures of the grouper we headed back. This dive was a nice taste of the things to come and it looked like they were going to be really good.

Second Shore Dive, Finding New Creatures

After the first dive, we finally got our rooms ready, so I spent some time unpacking. I ended up sharing an Ocean Villa similar to the Drafahls. It was a nice room, with a full kitchen, living room with TV, 2 bed/2 bath, a porch with a dining table. The kitchen was very convenient to setup my photo equipment. The sink was extremely useful to rinse my equipment. After settling down I headed to the dining area for lunch. One annoying aspect of Captain Don's was that the food was billed separately from the hotel. So you had to open a tab with Rum Runners (that's the name of the restaurant that operated the food service at Captain Don's) and sign your bill everytime you had lunch or dinner. For breakfast, you had to sign in, as breakfast was included with the lodging.

At about 3:30pm, we were ready to go for our second shore dive. Marnie was my roommate and dive buddy for the rest of the trip. We only had a very short time for this dive (30 mins.) as the lecture was scheduled to begin at 4:30pm. In addition to the creatures we saw on the first dive, I was pleasantly surprised to see new creatures in our front yard. A spotted moray eel appear swimming in the open at broad daylight.

Spotted Moray

This dive then became a nice treat. We spotted a hawksbill sea turtle swimming along the reef and we followed it. The turtle didn't seem scared of me. I also made sure to swim along it, instead of behind it, so that I wouldn't scare it. The turtle was not even bothered, it was doing its thing munching on the sponges. This is the best picture that I took of that turtle:

Sea Turtle Closeup

We cut our dive at 4:00pm, as the first lecture was scheduled for 4:30. Even though the dive only lasted about half an hour, it was well worth it because of the moray and the turtle.

Digital Photo Adventure Orientation Lecture

Because we finished our dive 4:00pm, the time tight for me for the first lecture of the program. I barely made on time. Sue gave us an introduction of the program and what to expect. This schedule was put together for us; however, we made some changes to it along the way.

The days throughout the Photo week were organized like this:

• Boat or shore dives in the mornings
• Lunch
• Boat or shore dives in the afternoon
• First lecture at 4:30
• Dinner
• Second Lecture at 7:30
• Night shore dive if interested

Jack was in charge of the lectures and one-on-one computer instruction. Since just underwent back surgery, he was "confined" to top side activities. He also had "office hours" in the mornings and afternoons. The lectures were at an air conditioned conference room right behind the dive shop. Sue in turn was playing hostess and in charge of diving with us. She would occasionally join us on shore dives.

Lecture: Getting your Digital Camera Setup for a Dive

We started the lecture by introducing ourselves and talk about our underwater photography experience. It was interesting to observe that 4 or 5 people were using the Olympus SP-350 or older Olympus 50xx. Even Jack had one himself. These are the notes from the lecture.

Kit (always carry these)

• Batteries, always have extra, as they always go bad
• Cosmetic q-tips with a pointy tip
• Moisture Munchers that can fit inside the housing
• Hex Wrench
• Silicone Grease, to lubricate o-rings

Housings

• Don't put them in the sun as they will fog. Cover them with a towel, don't let direct sun hit it.
• Camera tank is worse place to leave your camera. Somebody with heavy SLR might put on top. Rinse it and put it away wrapped in a towel.
• Ikelite custom housings can go deeper than original Olympus or Canon

Chargers

• Get an international one, not American, capable of 110-220v 50-60 Hz. If possible, get more than one. Laptop chargers are always international nowadays
• Sea & Sea 90DX has problems with rechargeable batteries over 2000 mAh

Accessory Lenses

• Inon builds the best attachments. Bayonet Mount: wide angle and macro
• digideep.com - camera + housing
• wetpixel.com - latest diving and uw photo

Flash Trigers

• Cable: Nikonos, Sea & Sea, Ikelite
• Fiber optic, works with most compact digital cameras.

Strobes

• Nikonos 105 has the best slave sensor. Can still get them on Ebay.
• Inon D2000, very complicated strobe. Don't forget manual

Travel and other Tips

• Bring camera and housing on plane
• Western Digital Passport external hard drive. Very light plastic. USB no power supply, $120. Very useful for backing up pictures.
• Don't delete files in computer, use camera instead. Can recover photos with programs like PhotoRecovery and ImageRecall to recover files from cards.

The Resort
Since the begining of the trip I've heard CocoView's reputation for its returning customers. That reputation was indeed based on true facts. People come back to CocoView because of the diving.

CocoView enjoys from prime diving real estate. It has the Prince Albert wreck on its front yard and it's shore dive accessible. Also shore dive accessible are CocoView Wall and Newman's Wall, both walls drop to hundreds of feet and are full of coral life and critters.

CocoView Bungalow

The reef around CocoView is so full of critters that there are "house eels". As it turns out, our Captain Osman, feeds a group of juvenile spotted moray eels and green moray eels every morning at beach dock. Even when you go out for a shore dive, you might see an eel, a mantis shrimp or an octopus in the shallow grassy area at the beach.

CocoView Beach - Where Shore Dives Start

CocoView has definitely a unique character. It looks rustic, unlike some of other plush resorts. The trails to the different buildings are not paved. You could say they are "dirt roads". The common area buildings are not air conditioned and you can tell that some of the buildings have been there for years. However, this doesn't mean that CocoView is behind the times. Later, I'll talk about their dive operations, which are top notch.

CocoView Boat Approaching Dock

The main common building is the hub of the whole resort. Here is where you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. The bar is also located in this building and next to it there are recreational areas with a pool table and ping pong table, which are not used too much unless there is a big storm and dive operations are cancelled.

CocoView Dining Room	CocoView Bar
CocoView Pool Table	CocoView Ping Pong Table

On the second floor, there is a meeting area and TV room with satellite dish. Here's where the first day orientation is given. On the second floor, there is also a balcony area with lounge chairs and hammocks. They face the beach. In front of the main building (towards the beach), there is an outdoor dining area and a dock and gazebo area with lounge chairs and hammocks. This is a nice place to sip a drink that you pick up from the bar, relax and watch the night divers return to shore.

The Beach Houses

Four of us in the group (Cindy, Dina, Dave and me) stayed at beach house #10. It was the last house in the resort. It was relatively far from the main building and the dive lockers, about a 10 minute walk. Fortunately, they had bikes that you can borrow to go back and forth. The house itself was nice, but it wasn't air conditioned. It did have ceiling fans and high ceilings.

The house faced the beach, but it was not swimmable. It had lounge chairs by the beach, but there were too many bugs outside. We had lounge chairs and a hammock in a screened area. That was a nice area to relax. The house had two floors, one bedroom on the first floor and two bedrooms on the second. Each bedroom had its own bathroom. The rooms and bathrooms were cleaned every day during the morning while people were diving.

Cindy found a washing machine, but I never found it, so I never used it. The house had a full kitchen with utensils, cooking ware, oven, fridge, but no microwave. There was also a water fountain. The dining room was next to the kitchen and could sit 6 people. The living room was quite big and well ventilated by the open screened layout and ceiling fans. We also had extra regular fans in the living room and the bedroom.

On the last day we did suffer a snafu, the electricity went out. The electricity at the resort comes from a generator and on that day we were having problems. There was also no water because it was pumped by electric pumps. After diving and the hydroplane tour, I had to wait untill late in the afternoon to take shower that day :(.

Interior of Beach House

Sunset View from Balcony of Beach House

The Dive Operations
The dive operations at CocoView were superb. Not only did they have the latest compressor equipment, but they were very well organized. They counted with a fleet of 5 boats, some of them with an entry passage in the middle of the boat. When you arrive to the resort you are assigned the same boat for the whole week. That way you become familiar with your captain and your divemaster. And you always know where to find your equipment if you leave it behind at the boat. The boat becomes "your boat".

There are 4 boat dives daily, well, two boat dives and two drop-off dives. The boat dives depart at 8:00am and at 2:00pm. On the return, you are dropped at Newman's Wall in the mornings and at CocoView Wall in the afternoons.

Nitrox is the rule rather than the exception at CocoView. There were more nitrox tanks, than air tanks and sometimes you would even have trouble finding an air tank. From this you can extrapolate that most divers that come here are Nitrox certified.

Full Tanks

Empty Tanks

Next to the dive dock is the dive locker area where you assigned your locker for the whole week. Your equipment sits in the open at night and I noticed that it is guarded by armed guards at night. I usually took my dive computer home every night though. Next to the dive locker area there is a changing area with showers (no hot water though) and specialized sinks for cameras only and for the rest of your dive gear.

Booties Drying

Nitrox!

Compressor Room

Sink and Shower Area

I was impressed by the compressor room. The equipment looked spanking new and it was very clean and organized. The compressors, I believe, run all night to meet the tank supply in the morning. Each locker area had a Nitrox analyzer and you could analyze your tanks the night before and leave it in your locker. In the mornings, the crew would take your tanks and equipment to the boat. They would also put your gear together for you.

The diving setup at CocoView was one of the best I've seen so far. The layout of the dive dock, the lockers and the showers and sink area were very well thought of. The boat operations were also very well organized and you rarely saw confusion in the morning. Indeed, I could see why people return to Cocoview for the 5th and 6th time and why CocoView claims to have one of highest return rates in industry: more than 40%.

Locker

Empty tanks usually outstrip full tanks at the end of the day

That Friday afternoon was our free afternoon, as we were done diving for the trip. Some of us in the group just decided to relax and enjoy the beach house, whereas some of us signed up for extra activities.

Hydroplane Tour
Dave and I signed up for the hydroplane tour. Bay Island Airways located right at CocoView, had a two engine hydroplane and offered 30 min (US $60), 45 min ($90) and 1 hr ($120) flights around the island. We went for the 45-min version. We picked a flight plan that crossed into the North coast, flight eastward to the Eastern-most tip and then return Westerly along the South coast where we had done some dives throughout the week.

Hydroplane

The North coast seem to be an interest place to dive. We had never done so because CocoView is on the side of the island that faces the mainland. It would take a boat several hours to get to the North side. From the air, yo ucould see there were areas where a barrier reef would extend along the coast. In those pools of water, we saw many spotted eagle rays.

Pilot and Dave on the lookout for Eagle Rays

Eagle Ray Found!

On the East end of the island we saw this interesting little island that reminded me of islands in Thailand (from pictures that I've seen). We also passed by Half Moon beach where we stopped by on one of our surface intervals. At that surface interval, we swam to the beach and walked around picking up shells and nice pieces of dead coral.

Island on the East End

Half Moon Beach

On the way back to CocoView, we circled once to take a good look at the resort and surroundings. This was a good chance to take aerial pictures of CocoView and it's neighbour Fantasy Island.

Fantasy Island Beach with CocoView Resort in the Background

CocoView: The Peninsula

It was also a nice chance to see from the air places that we've been to or living in. These are pictures of beach house #10, where Dave, Dina, Cindy and I were staying, and the CocoView dive dock, where our dive boats departed from.

Beach House No. 10

Dive Dock from the Air

Finally at our final approach, I took a close picture of the CocoView "front yard". This is the place where we spent lots of time diving. In the middle of the picture, you can notice the sand channel that leads into the Prince Albert wreck. We returned thru this channel on every drop-off dive.

CocoView Closeup From the Air

Farewell Fire Show Party
That night the resort organized a farewell party as most of us at the resort were leaving on Saturday. The party was after dinner and it was pretty fun. It look place at the "island", a small island on the West side of the resort.

There was a free drawing for a week-long stay at CocoView during the July 4th week. Unfortunately, none of us won it. We also celebrated Dave's 700th dive and Chis's 100th dive. The resort was nice enough to give them diplomas :)

The party was animated by a live band and there was free rum punch. This contibuted to our eagerness of participating at the limbo party. I managed to finish in the top three, but it was really hard to keep balance on a wooden floor. Cindy, my dive buddy on a lot of dives, ended up winning the limbo contest. Women have the advantage of flexibility and center of gravity ;).

The party continued with a fire show. It was a lively display of dancers spinning canisters filled with kerosene attached by a string. They spinned it and waved them in very interesting patterns. This was a chance to take slow shutter speed pictures. I rested my camera at the bar and used the self-timer to take very slow pictures (over 1 sec).

Fire Show

Fire Show - More

Fire Show - How'd they do that?

At the party, Dave had the idea for all of us to wear the Fantastic Endeavors t-shirt that he gaved us and signed one for CocoView to keep. In the briefing room at CocoView, there is a tradition by dive groups to hang their t-shirts.

This was the chance to express our creativity and write about our our experiences throughout the week. It was a really fun activity as all of us wrote or drew something that made this trip memorable. We had inscriptions like "No Kicking the Eel", "I Forgot my Fins!" and "Where is Mel (the DM)?".

Fantastic Endeavors Signed T-Shirt

Throughout the party we discovered Chris's drawing ability and Craig as a comedian. The going joke towards the end of the week was one ocassion when Craig and I were the last to leave the shore at a night dive. CocoView had a protocol for keeping track of divers going for a night dive. You were supposed to take a tag that was provided in dive locker area. The tag had a number and you would write your name on a board.

On the way out to the wreck, there was a buoy where you had to hang your tag. On the way back you were supposed to take your tag with you. If there were no other tags left on the buoy, you were suppose to take the strobe that was hanged there by the first night diver that got there. By taking the strobe, it signified that were no people left in the water.

So on that night dive, Dave had already taken the tag and walked back to dive dock. Craig and I were still at the platform taking our fins off, when a pair of guys accused us of breaking the resort's rule for diving "without a tag". One of those guys was badgering us in a Scottish accent, "Where is your tag? No tag, no strobe! I've taken the strobe, now CocoView will be very mad". Craig, told this story over and over and made us laugh to the floor. He even added a German accent for comedic effect. So on the t-shirt, Craig wrote the phrase "Vere is your Tag?" ... it was the motto for this trip.

Vere is your Tag?

Hanging the T-Shirt

On the way back, Dave and Dina hanged our t-shirt for posterity. Afterwards, we continued the party at the beach house. Dave had stocked the bar and Cindy turn out to be a great popcorn maker (without a microwave). Craig turned out to be a real comedian, he entertained us with countless jokes. At about midnight, we ran out of gas and retired to our rooms. Some of us had still packing to do. Fortunately, I had finished my packing already that afternoon.

On Thursday, Dave (the group leader) arranged to do three dives as opposed to the regular one boat dive site, one drop off dive and another boat dive. That day we did 3 boat dives to three different sites in a row. The dive sites were: Calvin's Crack, 40ft Point and Golden Chain. As this was not part of the regular package, we gave the captain and the divemaster a little bit extra tip.

40-ft Point
40ft Point was the second morning dive of the day. The site was located just in front of Fantasy Island, right next to CocoView. It turned out to be one of the best dives of the trip. The site was abundant of fish and creatures. On the way to the bottom, we saw a school of Atlantic spadefish in a cool formation.

Atlantic Spadefish

We also saw a green moray eel, Nassau groupers, black groupers and lots of chubs and jacks. I was saying to myself, why we waited until the end of the trip to go to one of the best sites so far and it was really close to CocoView as well. The dive got even better when the divemaster Mel found a yellow sea horse on the reef wall.

Yellow Seahorse on Branch

This was the first time I had seen a yellow sea horse. I have seen red ones before. I got so excited that I committed the crime of hogging the time with the sea horse. Part of my problem was that I was not having good results with my camera. The strobe was not firing correctly, the pictures were coming up too dark and they were out of focus.

Yellow Seahorse curled on Coral

I later learned my lesson to set the sensitivity to ISO 100 or higher, and perhaps use manual focus. If I had my settings ready, I wouldn't have hog the time with the sea horse too much. When we go back to the boat I was guilty as charged for hogging the time with the sea horse.

Golden Chain
After lunch, our next boat dive was to Golden Chain. A shallow dive site with a sea bed full of staghorn coral. I had never seen something like it at other places in the Caribbean. It was really a forest of staghorn of coral, the same type of coral all over.

Staghorn Coral Forest

CocoView Happy Hour
That night we relaxed a bit and decided not do a night dive. Also, we wanted to celebrate Dave's 700th dive with a dawn dive the next morning. We spent the night at the outdoors dining area right next to the bar.

Fantastic Endeavors Group at Happy Hour. Front row, left to right: Carol, Chris, Christina and Craig. Standing up from left to right: Cindy, Dave, Eddy and Dina

This is a night picture of the main building at CocoView. The left side is where the outdoors dining area is, conveniently located next to the bar.

CocoView Bar at Night

That night we headed to bed relatively early, as we had planned to meet at 6:00am for Dave's 700th dawn dive.

Last Day of Diving and Last Good Picture
On Friday, our last day of diving we woke up to meet at the dive lockers at 6:00am for our only dawn dive of the trip. I had never done a dawn dive before, mainly because it was hard to wake up and even harder to make a dive buddy wake up. This group, on the other hand, was very motivated. It has been one of the best groups I've dived with.

That morning we did Newman's Wall. I was still having problems with my camera as the pictures were coming dark and the strobe was not firing. Afterwards, I had concluded that there were several factors that contributed to my not getting good pictures in this trip:

1. TTL connector got flooded (on the camera side). One of the pins got corroded and was making a bad connection. This caused the strobe to not fire.


2. Used new rechargeable batteries that were not "broken in". This caused the strobe to stop working after a few shots and make the camera believe it had no strobe, thus firing its internal flash.


3. My Mode #1 was set with a film sensitivity of ISO 50, only able to detect very strong lighting. This was causing my pictures to come out dark.

After the dawn dive, we had breakfast and was ready to "start" the regular day. However, Dave, again, arranged for us to stray away from the ordinary. Intead of doing one boat dive and a drop-off dive, we did two boat dives: one at French Bay Cut and another at Menagerie.

At French Bay, I managed to get this picture of a gray angel fish munching on the coral. Again I was still having problems with my camera, but this one was the exception. The strobe fired correctly and the exposure was right.

Grey Angelfish munching on Coral

The dive site was pretty good. There was a lot of fish following us. For a change Captain Osman went diving with us instead of our DM Mel. There was a reason the fish was following us, Osman was feeding them bread.

Our last dive of the trip was at a site called Menagerie. This site was really good as well. I saw more than one spotted drum fish. However none of my pictures came out well. We also saw Nassau groupers, schools of chubs and jacks, and big mutton snapper that was following us towards the end of the dive. Again Capt. Osman was feeding the fish and looked like a bait ball. I also experimented a bit and brought a piece of bread. The fish started to "attack" me, so I had to cover myself with my camera and two arms, it made it a fun last dive though.

Today, Wednesday the group decided to do a shark dive as an additional excursion. This was not included in the package at CocoView. Since I had never done a shark dive I decided go along. Four others in our group were coming too (Cindy, Dina, Craig and Christina), as other people from the resort.

The shark dive was run by a separate company: Waikuha Adventure Diving. Their operations were located about 30 mins from CocoView by car. The trip to their location was somewhat painful. We had to carry all our equipment on to the water taxi that takes you inland. That included Nitrox tanks, since they only provide air tanks at the shark dive place. Then we had to take a van to Waikuha, which was located in not-so-well-known and poorly maintained resort, which name escapes my memory. It seemed that the shark diving operation was the thing that kept the place alive. The facilities there were poor, there were no proper bathrooms or even running water for any kind of rinsing.

The Orientation
The operation was ran by an Italian emigre (his name escapes my mind), who was a lawyer back in Italy, so the shark diving operation was up his alley ;). The story goes that he was visiting Roatan and was told that fisherman always sighted sharks at a location called "Cara a Cara", which is Spanish for "face to face". From then on he managed to atract sharks every time he chummed the waters, eventually he started to bring people along for his dives with sharks and that's how he started his business. On the way to the dive site, he said that he did at least 2 dives a day, every day, bringing an average of 20 people in each dive. That is $90 per head, not bad business.

The orientation was a 30 minute briefing of the procedures and rules. The site is located at 70 ft of water with a 10ft wall surrounding one side of it. After descending with a line we were to stay at bottom, forming 2 rows with the wall behind us. The people in the front row would be kneeling and the people in the back would be standing up. If conditions were adequate, the sharkmaster would tell us that is ok to swim among with the sharks. The dive was to last about 30 minutes. By the end of the dive, the sharkmaster was to open a bait bucket underwater. We had to come back to our two-row stationary location when this was done. We were told that there were also two local residents at the site: a Nassau grouper and a green moray eel.

The Dive
To reach the dive site we boarded their boat, which was not designed for diving. It had seats on both sides (starboard and port), but no place to put stuff away. So once you picked your location on the boat, you couldn't move around, so you had to make sure that all your equipment was setup and ready to go. We donned our wetsuits and assembled our gear back at the dock. I wore 2 lbs of extra weight to make sure I could stay at the bottom. The space was kind of tight at the boat. We were about 20 people total, plus the sharkmaster and a videographer, we were 22.

The sharkmaster was wearing chain-mail gloves. He was the person who was going to handle the bait bucket. In the picture below he is driving the boat towards Cara a Cara. The dive site was located about a mile off the coast. I was impressed at how he was able to find the dive site. Although it was marked by a buoy, I couldn't see it from a distance. I don't think he had GPS on this small boat.

The Shark Master

Group of Three Sharks

The weather was overcast and rainy. Once we arrived to the dive site, the assistant threw in the bait bucket. I did a backwards entry into the water because it was the most convenient way. There was a little bit of current at the surface, but I could swim along the line without holding it. Most of the others did hold it. Once in the water, I could see the sharks circling around already. It was a sensation of excitement, awe and a little bit of fear.

Shark Close-up - Full Body

Once every body in the group was at the bottom, the sharkmaster signaled us that was ok to swim with sharks. Sometimes he doesn't allow this based on current conditions or behavior shown by the sharks. Cindy, my buddy, was eager to photograph the sharks and leapt to the ocassion. She is the one that appears in one of my video clips with a Nikonos V camera. Other people decided to stay behind with the safety of the wall on their backs ...

Shark in Front of Divers

We continued to swim around with sharks for a good 10 minutes at least. The sharks were ready good at swiming around us, although, once I felt a little bump. We were told not extend our limbs and keep them close to our bodies.

After looking at the pictures that I took, I realized that I had the wrong settings. My ISO setting was set at 50, so my pictures were coming out dark and you could barely see the impact of the strobe. Also a wide angle converter would have been useful. Sometimes the shark couldn't fit inside the frame because I was so close to it.

Shark Head Close-up

Shark - Full Body

We continued to swim with the sharks and I was trying to get close-up pictures. This one is one of the closest one I got. The shark was no more than 4 ft away. You could see some effect of the strobe. However, the picture was still too dark because I had pick a low sensitivity, ISO 50. For these kinds of shots (wide angle with fast moving subjects), now I know, I should have used at least ISO 100 or even go with ISO 200 or higher, if I didn't want to show any movement. I was mostly shooting at shutter speed of 1/60 sec. Also, I could have used shutter speed priority (S), as showing motion was the only variable I wanted to play with.

Shark Close-up - Eye in Focus

I also was looking up to try to take shar pictures from below. Unfortunately, sharks swim so fast that there is no time to "frame" a picture, you are lucky to get the shot. It is almost like shooting pictures at a sports event. A faster shutter response could have been useful. This is one of area where SLR cameras shine, and point and shoots lack.

Shark - View from Below

After taking many still pictures, I switch to video mode to capture some of the shark behavior. Notice how fast the sharks swim and turn. In this video, my buddy Cindy is also a protagonist, taking pictures as well.

Some people in our group also ventured out to take pictures. Here's Craig taking a picture of a shark ... I took the picture on the other side.

Craig Taking a Picture of Shark

Frenzy Starts: Opening the Bait Bucket

Almost at the end of the dive, the sharkmaster instructed us to go back to our "huddle formation", back by the wall and stay there. He was to open the bait bucket. Not only sharks wanted to be in the action. There were also lots of Nassau groupers, black groupers, and jacks. Strangely, the sharks did not eat them! We were told that the sharks are really lazy and that they go for sick or already dead animals. So the stereotype that (all) sharks are "killers" is very wrong. Sharks are the scavengers of the ocean.

Three Sharks After the Bait

Shark on the Prowl

The sharkmaster used a metal pointer to release the cover from the bucket. He was keeping his distance from the it and was doing it very carefully. He was ready to swim away at any moment. As he was doing this, the sharks were circling around faster and faster. The sharkmaster had several failed attempts to open the bucket, but he finally did it after 3 tries ...

When the Bait was Gone
When the bait was gone, all of the sudden the sharks were gone in a flash. Later I learned that this particular dive site was a crossroads of deeper water, so sharks come and go thru this point. The site by itsef had local residents as well. There was a big Nassau grouper (3ft long) relaxing at the cleaning spa and a green moray eel coming out of his hole after the party was over.

Nassau Grouper Head

After the show was over, we were told to return to the boat. Since I had nitrox and plenty of air left, I stayed behind and let the rest of the group go back to the boat first. It was going to be a logjam, since we had to do our safety stop and the boat was not the easiest to get into. So I spent about 7 more minutes at the bottom, taking pictures of the grouper being cleaned.

Nassau Grouper being Cleaned

I also had the chance to have the moray eel to "myself" as everybody body else was returning to the boat. The assistant, who was filming the whole event, was around patrolling the area, so I was ok. Almost when I was ready to go to the surface I witnessed a behavior that I had never seen before: a gree moray eel yawning. At that time I didn't know what it was, it didn't seem that he was attacking me, as I wasn't very close or harassing him.

Green Moray from side

Green Moray Opening Mouth

Green Moray Yawning?

I later looked it up on the Internet and found a couple of references to moray eels yawning, but only a few. I have to ask a marine biologist some day ;)

After the dive, we returned to the dock and watched the video of the dive, which was for sale. They have perfected this so much that they were able to come up with the video in record time: no more than 30 min for the editing. They must have done this before ;)

The facilties at this location were poor. There were no proper bathrooms, other than the ones used by the staff, and they were not the cleanest. We tried to rinse our equipment with a shower by the dock. The water was coming out brown. So he had to wait until we were back to CocoView. We took the van back and eventually the water taxi back to CocoView. We got back at about 1:00 in the afternoon, in time for lunch and the afternoon boat dive at 2:00pm.