Eddy's Scuba Blog

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.