Eddy's Scuba Blog

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.

Today we woke up to our last day at Bloody Bay Wall in Little Cayman. We had two days of great diving and great weather so far. Luckily this continued on our last day in Little Cayman. The plan was to have one more day of diving here and then move to Cayman Barac overnight.

That morning I took advantage of the great morning and sunny day to take this top-side picture of one of Rorqual tenders with Little Cayman on the background. Notice the transparent turquoise water that lets you see thru the bottom on shallow places.

Today's dive sites were Joy's Joy and Randy's Gazebo which we dove before on our first day at Bloody Bay.

Joyous Dive at Joy's Joy
Joy's Joy had a very shallow plateau (less than 20 ft) which then plunged into the wall. We were told that there was a "coral chain" at about 100 ft, if you followed a certain sand groove. My dive buddy, Nadine, followed the instructions but found no coral chain. After noticing that we had "missed the target" after reaching 122 ft, we proceeded to back to 50 ft. where ran into creatures like this french angelfish and this barracuda:

We also noticed queen triggers and several Nassau groupers. However, I kind of felt dissapointed that we did not find the coral chain that we were told about. So we returned to the boat. While swimming along the boat, I noticed that its starboard was facing East, therefore getting a lot of sun, while on my side (port side) was under the boats shadow. There were three divers on the starboard side, aparently returning to boat. That's when I took this picture that captures the silloutte of the Rorqual's propeller with the three divers. Notice how close the boat is to the bottom.

Benji's Family and Nurse Shark at Randy's Gazebo
After lunch we moved to our second site of the day, Randy's Gazebo which we knew from before. Lo and behold, we ran into Benji's family, a pair of groupers that followed us and even played with us.

Here's a movie that I took of Nadine, my dive buddy, petting and playing with a Nassau grouper. The groupers were so friendly that would not run away.

On the second dive at Randy's Gazebo, we explored the West side of the wall and run into a creature that I haven't seen before. It was a "whitespotted filefish":

It had an interesting orange color with white spots all around it. While I was taking a picture of this guy, I suddenly noticed some commotion with some other divers near me. So I looked up and I noticed a 4 ft. creature swimming along the wall and number of people behind it. Fortunately, they were swimming perpendicular to me so I had the chance to "intercept" them and get a close-up. It was 4 ft nurse shark and here's a video to prove it:

The guy after the nurse shark was Roy with a video camera. Roy was one of the most colorful guys on the boat. He was the one that always joked during the dive briefings.

After this dive we had the chance to relax and watch the beautiful Caymanian Sunset.
We had one more dive left here at Randy's Gazebo. It was also our last dive at Bloody Bay Wall.

The night dives at Cayman Islands had been disappointing to me so far, and this one was as well. Compared to Cozumel or Belize, I never saw any night creatures like an octopus. We did, however, see lobsters and groupers.

The second day at Bloody Bay Wall continued to be great and getting even better. The weather was great all around, it was sunny and visibility continued to be great (70-80 ft), but not as good as yesterday's (80-90 ft). The water temperature was in the range of 82-86 F. I was wearing my 1 mm wetsuit all the time, primarily for protection against scratches.

Today we were diving three sites: Marilyn's Cut, Magic Roundabout and Jackson's Reef and Wall.

Nice Coral Formations at Marilyn's Cut
On this site we had the chance see some big specimens of corals. Since this was our first dive of the day we went a bit deeper (88 ft.) and had the chance to see tube sponges, sea fans, and barrell sponges. Here's a collage of variety of corals that we found on this dive site:

On this dive we also saw many Nassau groupers. By the end of the dive, I was really mad that my camera was fogging and my battery was running out. There was a ledge that lead into the deep wall. A Nassau grouper was next to a green moray eel. I managed to take some pictures, but it came out foggy and the moray was undistinguishable. So I decided to return to the boat and follow some other divers that were heading in that direction. While I was swimming at the back of the boat, I noticed a small hawksbill turtle near the surface, as I was close to my safety stop (20 ft) I decided to chase it hoping that my battery will have one last bit of juice. This is when some other more amazing creatures appeared: squids. The turtle have led me to them. The squids were swimming close to the surface, perhaps at 15 ft. I tried to take a picture of them, but the battery was really dead. I was so mad. Anyway, I decided to follow them and continue observing them. They are so graceful when swimming with their flaps. They move in a strange way, almost like in space (perhaps because they look like from another planet). I also signaled other divers, since they were coming back to the boat as well. This was the first time ever that I saw squid on a dive.

Shark! at Magic Roundabout
We did one morning dive at Marilyn's Cut. The next dives (one morning dive, another afternoon dive) were going to be at Magic Roundabout. The name of this dive site comes from coral heads on the shallow area which you can swim around and swim thru. Most dive sites that we dove had a similar configuration with variations. They had a shallow area at about 30-40 ft and then a drop-off that plunged into 90 ft of deeper. On the first dive here, we did not bother with the swim-thrus, we went along the wall at about 78 ft. and were discovering big creatures like this black grouper:

I was lucky to get this shot since the grouper was swimming towards me and I happened to have my camera ready to fire. Sometimes you get shot like this and cannot redo them because it's very difficult to get the creature to pose. While I finished this picture, I took a look at Nadine, my dive buddy, and noticed that she was looking at something out on the deep water. Then she signaled Shark! Shark! with her hand on her forehead. And we started to chase what it turned out to be two reef sharks swimming on the deep water along the wall. I was kicking so hard to try to get closer, so was Nadine. We went easterly first and then westerly. By end of the chase we were really exhausted, breathing heavily and hot, but I managed to get this shot to prove it:

After the shark chase, Nadine and I headed back in a leisurely swim to the shallow area and towards the direction of the boat. I was ahead when I looked back and Nadine wasn't there. I swam back to try to find her, but could see her. So I decided to do my safety stop because I did not see the boat and I was towards the end of the dive. After the safety stop, I surfaced to look for the boat. I was away for long shot, perhaps 600 yards or more. I still had 700 psi of air, so I swam just below the surface to avoid the choppiness of the surface. This is when I noticed a small hawsbill turtle at about 20 ft.

Since it was close to the surface, I decided to chase it for a little bit and I got this brief movie out of it:

After taking this movie, I headed back to the boat.

That afternoon I was so tired that I took a little nap after lunch. That little nap turned into a long nap, to the point that Nadine, my dive buddy, didn't wait for me :( and wenton the second dive with Rodney, another of our dive buddies. We tagged along together as a group of three. Not to worry, one of the Nekton Rorqual's crew, Tucker, was happy to dive with me.

In the water, we did see Nadine and Rodney, exploring the West side of the wall. In the morning we were on the East side. We spend most of our time in the shallows going thru the swim-thrus. The dive was not ideal, because we were on a rush to finish by 3:00pm because the boat needed to reposition and we had started rather late on this dive.

Thru the Laberynth of Jackson's Reef and Wall

After the last dive, the Rorqual repositioned to Jackson's Reef and Wall. The plan was to have one afternoon dive and the night dive here. This dive site was very similar to Magic Roundabout in that there were lots of coral heads in the shallow area. We spent more time in the shallow area this time. On this dive I saw one interesting coral formation:

It was a bright yellow tube sponge, almost lemon yellow. The opening at the top of the sponge was not that wide and it had bumps all over. I could not find references to this particular kind of coral.

On this dive I also saw an anemone, black groupers and Nassau groupers being cleaned. It seems that there was a large number of Nassau groupers around Little Cayman. We saw them almost on every dive. It must have been "Benji" and his family.

The site on the shallow area looked like a laberynth. You could either swim right above the sand through the grooves or swim on top of the coral heads. This was a good opportunity to get silloutte shots since divers were passing overhead. I took this shot facing West. Notice the sun coming from the top left corner, the silloutte of the two divers and the coral heads underneath. If I had manual settings on my camera I could have gotten a better shot.

We did a night dive at Jackson's and spent all our time in the shallow area. I did not keep good track of the number of pictures I had taken with my strobe, so my strobe died that night. That was a lesson learned. However, I did manage to get one shot of this huge green sea turtle that almost everybody in the group got a picture of:

From then on, I was more disciplined in replacing the batteries in my strobe. The turtle was perhaps the biggest turtle I've ever seen in the Caribbean (over 3 ft in length). It was also at night and swimming right towards me.

On Sunday night, we started the crossing from Grand Cayman to Little Cayman. The weather was rough that night. Even though they claim this is a "no sickness" boat. The rough weather got to me, it woke me up a couple times and in the morning I felt pretty dizzy. I had to lay down to put up with the dizziness. I immediately took some Dramamine to get the dizziness taken care of. By breakfast, I was feeling a bit better, but not hungry at all.

I had paired up with Nadine, who was interviewing for a position at the Nekton. We met up at briefing on Saturday and we became buddies for the rest of the trip.

At 8:00 am we had our first briefing on Little Cayman. The briefing was given by Kat, one of the dive instructors. This time, I made sure to capture this briefing on Bloody Bay Wall, one of the top diving destinations of the world. The weather was great, clear skies, sunny and 80-90F of air temperature.

I did find out about the origins of the name "Bloody Bay". The Cayman Islands had long history of pirate and privateer activity in the 16th and 17th centuries. Bloody Bay was so named after an horrendous battle that took place in this bay that left the water blood red. While being on the subject of history, the Cayman Islands was first a Spanish colony and it was known as "Islas Tortugas" or "Turtle Islands" named after the numerous sea turtles that inhabited the islands. In one of those wars between Spain and Britain, it was ceded by Spain to Britain in the 17th century and became a British colony. It later became known as "Cayman Islands" because of the many caymans that were sighted the islands. I guess over the centuries, the caymans ate all turtles and later humans hunted all the caymans. Nowadays, most of the caymans are gone or emigrated to Cuba, but you can still see some turtles in the wild.

We were also told about "Benji the Grouper" (named by a local divemaster called Jerry), an extremely friendly grouper that is fed by the locals. I was very excited to get into the water. After my experience at Grand Cayman, I was expecting a lot more, and as one of the top diving destinations, Bloody Bay had better deliver. Our dive site for the two morning dives was Lea Lea's Lookout.

Finally we got into the water. My first impression of Little Cayman and Bloody Bay was that the visibility was incredible (no blood in sight ;))! There was at least 90 ft of visibility and you could see the little details on the coral floor. Another thing that amazed me was the health of the sea floor. You could see tiny sponges and tubes growing on the sea floor. You could distinguish the bright yellow, finger-size tubes against the white lime sediment floor. I have not seen something like it before.

Here's a picture of a yellow tube coral growing right on the sea floor. This one was about 1 ft tall, but the tiny yellow specs on the floor were actually yellow tubes as well! You had to be really careful about not touching the floor!

Encounter with "Benji the Grouper" and Friends

On the fist dive on Lea Lea's we went along the wall to a maximum depth of of 103 ft. We did not spend much time at that depth though and ascended to the ledge soon after. We saw groupers out on the distance going up and down the wall. But the big (pleasant) surprise was when returned to the shallow area (about 40ft.). On a small cave, there was this enormous Nassau Grouper sitting by its cleaning station. Unfortunately for me, there were 6 other divers (from our boat) already taking pictures. Since this was a sandy area, a lot of the silt had already been kicked up and the visibility was rather poor. I did manage to take several pictures, one of them is the first one on this set. This was the biggest Nassau grouper that we saw on Bloody Bay, so I presume it was Benji. It measured 3 ft. easily. This is the biggest Nassau grouper I've ever seen so far. This couldn't be possible if it wasn't for the protection given by the Caymanian government to these waters. I heard stories of the "scuba police" on Bloody Bay. This was a local goverment enforcement team that would "intercept" divers and check people wearing gloves (you get a stiff fine if you are found wearing gloves) or carrying "contraband" from the ocean.

Anyway, after having my chance at taking pictures at Benji, Benji decided that his spot was too crowded. So he swam away from the paparazzi.

On the second dive at Lea Lea's Lookout, I got a second encounter with Benji. After swimming along the wall and returning to the shallow area, I somehow ended up around the same small cave where we found Benji the first time. He was there again, being cleaned. But this time, I got him for myself! There were no other divers around. I spent close to 15 mins taking pictures, observing him and and petting him. I wanted to get a picture of Benji with my hand, to give the picture some notion of scale. His head was bigger than my hand.

I also had the chance to take this brief movie of Benji while he was being cleaned by wrasses:

Unfortunately, you can barely see the minuscule behavior that was going on. Benji was sitting still, opening his mouth and gills while wrasses were moving around his head and his mouth. This picture shows what was going on in better detail:

After watching Benji for a while, I started seeing other creatures "joining the party" as well. Small arrow cabs (I believe) were approaching the bottom right side of Benji's mouth which can be seen on this picture:

After this picture, my strobe battery was dying, that's why the picture came out greener.

In addition to Benji we also found "his friends", other smaller Nassau groupers that were also very friendly. These groupers would approach us, be pet and even swam along us. I thought that the friendliness was in the family and this was not going to be the last time we were going to see them at Bloody Bay. Here's a picture of one of Benji's friends, a smaller 2ft Nassau grouper:

Afternoon and Night at Randy's Gazebo

During lunch we moved to another dive site: Randy's Gazebo. The plan is to do two afternoon dives and a night dive here. This site got it's name because of an archway located along the wall at about 60 ft. The coral formations at this site were very healthy and creatures abundant and diverse. Here we saw lot black coral in addition to tube and barrel sponges.

So far, on every dive we had seen Nassau groupers of all sizes, occasional hawksbill turtles like this one:

And difficult to shoot creatures like the banded butterflyfish. These guys are usually found in pairs (I believe they mate for life) and are so difficult to shoot because they swim up and down along coral and never stay in one spot. I have read that the best strategy to get a shot at these guys is to wait in one spot that is in their travel path. That's what I did and got this picture of this banded butterflyfish. Unfortunately his (or her) mate did not come up that well in the picture:

So far, my night dives in the Cayman islands were uneventful. This one was going to be different. To begin with we found this beautiful green tipped anemone:

Here's a close-up of the same anemone:

Speaking of the difficulty of taking pictures of butterflyfish, I got very lucky that night. I saw couple of four-eyed butterflyfish and I was lucky to get this shot of a pair, swimming in opposite directions:

On the way back to the boat, I was following my buddy Nadine, who looked back at me and made some sort of signal. At beginning, I didn't know what she was signaling. Suddenly a 4ft brown creature swam toward me and passed me almost between my legs. When I finally understood Nadine's signal, I realized it was a nurse shark. Once she passed me, I tried to chase her a little bit, but she was too fast, but I managed to take this picture to prove that we had seen her. It was a shot from the hip, because I could see her on my visor and she was swimming too fast.