Eddy's Scuba Blog

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.

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.

CocoView Wall
I continued to have strobe problems for the next couple days. It seemed that my cable connector was busted. The symptons look like the following: strobe will test fire on land, work for the first 8 pictures and then don't fire at all or fire the camera flash instead. It was very frustrating. I was carrying my fiber optic cable as a backup from then on. Unfortunately, the (flawed) TTL cable would cause the strobe to fire or not fire incorrectly. It also didn't help that I was relatively new with this camera setup.

On the few ocassions that the strobe fired, I managed to get very few pictures. This is a picture of a French Angel fish at CocoView Wall. CocoView Wall was the wall on the East side of CocoView resort. CocoView Wall was the designated drop-off dive in the afternoon. The designated drop-off dive in the mornings was Newman's Wall, located on the West side of CocoView. Newman's wall is located in front of Fantasy Island Resort.

French Angel

Mr Bud Wreck
On Monday, our first five was the Mr Bud Wreck. The dive site was located about 15 minutes west of CocoView. Mr Bud was a wooden fishing boat. The wreck seemed to be fairly recent, as there was very coral formations on it. Compared to the Prince Albert Wreck (sunk more than 10 years ago). Mr Bud paled in comparison.

Mr Bud Wreck

Mr Bud Shoe

That same day we did 4 other dives: Newman's Wall, French Bay Cut, CocoView Wall and a night dive again at CocoView Wall. I continued to have problems with my strobe, so my pictures continued to come out terrible. The highlight of the rest of that day was the night dive.

Octopus on the Reef
That night we went back to CocoView Wall where we were in the afternoon. Unlike other night dives that I've done before, from resorts and liveaboards, we were diving on the wall, so there was no bottom. Usually in guided night dives, they take you to only shallow dive sites, perhaps for safety reasons.

The highlight of that night dive was finding an octopus on the reef wall. In the past, I've seen octopus on sandy areas, rocky areas or wrecks. This is the first time I saw an octopus on the wall. I guess this octopus was very far from it's home as well, since it was moving around quite a bit.

On this video, we find the octopus "tasting" some green vegetation. Then it swims upside down to a deeper ledge and continues to look for food. Notice the change of color. It's green when its on the wall and turns more orange when it's in mid-water.

The next video is the continuation of the previous video, as we catch up with octopus on the deeper ledge. He continues to look for food on a more rocky surface and then disappears behind a ledge.

Day Trip to Roatan's West End
The next day, Tuesday, we chartered our boat for a day long trip to the West End, the western tip of Roatan. So far, our group had been assigned our own boat for the whole week. That was nice, usually the boat could hold more than 20 people, our group was 8 people total. Once in a while we would get "guests" of 2 or 4 people, that preferred to go to a different dive site from what they were assigned.

The dive operation at CocoView was very well organized. As I mentioned, you are assigned the same boat for the whole week. You know where you are going that day, as it is written on a board next to the air fill station. Every morning, or even the night before, you see what dive site you are going to visit. Although the exact dive site could change depending on the ocean conditions.

Today our boat itinerary was going to be different from the other days. Our boat would take us to the West End. We would do 3 dives at that location, have lunch and then return to CocoView in mid afternoon.

The boat trip to the West End over an hour. The surface conditions were rough, as it was raining since last night and the wind was causing the ocean to swell up to 3 ft. The boat ride was rough as we were jumping over the waves. As we passed the airport area, we saw the sun starting to appear and smile at us with a rainbow. The cruise ship dock is located near the airport. From our viewing point the cruise ship currently at the dock was surrounded by the rainbow.

Cruise Ship under the Rainbow

We arrived to our first dive site at about 10:00am. Our first dive site was West Bay Wall. The wall was different other dive sites we have visited so far. It was a slope that started on the beach and continued to slope to the bottom in a 30-40 degree angle. One thing that surprised me was the health and abundance of the coral formations at 80 to 100 ft. There were plenty of tubes, barrel sponges and vases at that depth. Usually coral life, at other dive sites or even in other places in the Caribbean, was concentrated above 60 ft. The reason is sunlight which allows vegetation to do photo synthesis and later be eaten by animals (corals). The only explanation that I can think of for the abundance of life below 60 ft is that they have must have wider tide fluctuations on this location or clearer water.

For our second dive that morning we dove Half Moon Bay Wall, right next to West End Wall. This was a more vertical wall. We noticed bigger creatures at these (West End) sites like Nassau groupers, black groupers, cow fish and angel fish.

At noon we docked at Half Moon Bay and stopped for lunch. The CocoView folks had prepared us a meal of fried chicken, potato salad, rolls and brownies. This whole day trip and lunch was not included in the regular dive package. We spent about an hour sitting at the dock enjoying our fried chicken and soaking the sun that was starting to come up. We also had a bit of time to take a stroll around the town. As the streets were not paved, it was really muddy due to the last night's rain.

Before 2:00pm, we were back on the boat and on way to our third dive in the West End. Our third dive site was Turtle Crossing and was going to be a drift dive. The drift direction was long the wall. At one point a group went into the shallow area, aparently chasing a couple of turtles. Unfortunately I wasn't in that group, as I stayed together with two other divers while swimming along the wall dropoff.

I continued to have strobe problems, but I managed to get a close up of this tiger grouper sitting on top of a barrel sponge.

Tiger Grouper

The West End was enjoying better weather than CocoView, as the storm that started last night was moving eastward. A radio report informed us that it was still raining at CocoView and that the surface conditions were rough. The resort was nice enough to send a van to pick us up at Half Moon Bay, so that we didn't have endure the rough boat ride back.

After our third dive we went back to the Half Moon Bay dock and disembarked. The van taking us back to CocoView was already waiting for us. This was the chance to take a well deserved afternoon nap on the way back to CocoView.

Last night it was a rough night for me, the camera was not responding as I was expecting. To begin with, the strobe was able to give only a handful of flashes. Then the camera would unexpectedly fire its internal flash.

One problem led to another. First of all, I was using new rechargable batteries and I had not "broken them in". I had charged them overnight, but they have had very little to no use. I later learned that draining them and charging a couple of times make them last longer.

The problem with the strobe caused me to fiddle with the TTL connector. I thought that it was making a bad connection (which in reality was-most probably- a problem with the new rechargeable batteries).

This morning we had to attend a briefing organized by the resort which was mandatory for all divers of this week. They talked about the boats, the shore diving and different procedures and rules. However, I was desperately trying to get my camera to work properly. I was taking pictures, but my strobe was not firing. In a moment of mindlessness, I unscrew the TTL connector on the camera side, and to my dismay I saw water inside the bulkhead. I wasn't sure how it got there. I had already dunked the camera to test its air tightness. It could have been that the o-ring was failing or that water sipping thru the threads while I was unscrewing it. I used a towel to try to dry the connector. Aparently I made things worse, now there was debris inside the connector.

In the end the cable was having all sorts of issues. I discovered this the hard way. Sometimes the camera would fire it's internal flash instead of the strobe. That was the case when the strobe battery was a bit low. For the next two dives, my pictures came up awful.

That morning we did two boat dives: Pirate's Point and Newman's Wall. The schedule for boat dives at CocoView worked in the following way: You get two boat dives, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This was coupled together with two drop-off dives. So this morning, the boat dive was at Pirate's Point and Newman's Wall was a drop-off dive. The boat would drop you off at 15-25 min swim away to the channel that leads to the resort and you swim back to resort just like a shore dive.

Boat dives start at 8:00am and 2:00pm respectively. There is a horn that is sounded twice when it's time for the boats to leave, one of them is a warning horn.

After a Connector Check
Over lunch I stopped by the resort's dive shop ("Dockside Dive Center"). Tim, the local photography expert did not find anything wrong my camera. We did a couple of test pictures and everything seemed to be in order.

I was still having problem with the strobe firing. The problem got worse the longer and deeper I was going. That would lead to suspect the o-ring. Since I was so preocupied with the camera, I didn't enjoy the dives as much. I did managed to get a handful of pictures.

These were taken at Inside/Outside our first afternoon dive. This is a picture of a cluster of antler coral. This is the first time that I have seen dive sites that were full of one type of coral. This site had a lot of antler coral.

Antler Coral

This was the exception. This is a picture of a very big brain coral very close to the surface. This was no deeper than 20 feet, perhaps taken only with ambient light.

Brain Coral

There were also areas full of lettuce coral. I tried to take a closeup of the bed. It was impressive to see whole beds full of the same coral, not just clusters.

Lettuce Coral

The divemaster on this dive was showing us "something" hanging on the branches of soft coral along the wall. For the longest time I didn't know what he was pointing to. It wasn't until I looked closer that I realized that it was moving. It was a "hairy crab", a critter very hard to distinguish from the branches.

Hairy Crab

Finally we did managed to find bigger creatures like this green moray eel. On this picture, I practiced my Photoshop skils a little bit. I used the "dust" filter to clear a bit of sand on the head of the moray. The filter works really well.

Green Moray