11 Oct 2023
Despite the time change and being an hour ahead of my time zone, I woke up bright and early, before my alarm and before the sun, and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I prepped my gear and walked over to my dive boat:
Today, I’ll be diving Molasses reef in the morning and Conch Reef in the afternoon- a new to me location!
Dive #1 – Hole in the Wall
I knew temperatures here had been high for most of the summer and was glad to find the water was still in the mid 80s. I mean, I still wore my 5mm suit, but I didn’t overheat and, more importantly, didn’t freeze like the last time I was here!
Trumpetfish, sleeping amongst the sea fans:
Lettuce sea slug / Elysia crispata:
Blackfin snapper (top) and Porkfish (bottom):
I didn’t even notice that little eel when I snapped this picture of this Graysby:
This pair of parrotfishes just look so happy and chompy!
Lobster:
Sergeant major and his egg den:
Stoplight parrotfish:
I tend to forget that my flash only reaches a couple feet before falling off, hence the terrible coloration.
Another lobster:
The waters here have been warmer than normal all summer, and while I’m loving the warm waters, the corals here are struggling. I saw lots of bleaching on this dive, like this one:
This coral isn’t dead, yet, and hopefully, if the temperatures cool back down, the coral will be take their algae back in and recover, but they’ve been heavily stressed and many have died.
A pair of Foureye butterflyfish:
A Princess parrotfish at a cleaning station:
French angelfish:
Fire bristle worm:
Dive #2 – Fire Coral Cave
Peterson’s shrimp:
Hawksbill turtle:
Where a ray used to be:
Goliath grouper!!!
So, sad story: partway through the first dive, I noticed my camera battery was draining faster than normal. A few trips ago, I had a battery doing the same thing, but I was pretty sure I had marked it and taken it out of circulation… I was wrong. It ended up back in the rotation and is in my camera now.
And it died partway through this dive. I could occasionally get the camera to fire back up for a shot or 2, but there wasn’t always enough juice to power the flash, so that first picture is lit by just my spot light and this one… well, by not much of anything 🙁
Smooth trunkfish:
There were lots of moon jellies hovering around the surface, but this long armed guy was alone and being snacked upon by filefishes, neither of which I managed to photograph, but I did get this last shot before the camera died and wouldn’t fire back up again:
Dive #3 – Conch Wall Drift
This dive started out rough- we did a hot drop (the boat gets into position and we file off the back like paratroopers) but stayed at the surface for longer than usual for a drift dive. When we dropped, the wall was no where in sight.
Either the boat misjudged the location, or we drifted away while at the surface, but either way, we spent 20 minutes swimming back toward the wall, staring at this boring bottom:
I was so excited when I spotted this little guy!
Life, finally!
Isn’t he adorable!?
I hoped he came off a reef and wasn’t just free swimming in the blue, and fortunately, a couple minutes later, the wall finally came into view!
Barred hamlet:
Rock beauty:
Lionfish:
Invasive, but pretty
Gray angelfish:
Rainbow parrotfish:
Scrawled filefish:
Dive #4 – Snapper’s Ledge
This site definitely lives up to its name- so many grunts and snappers!!!
Sharpnose puffer:
Trumpetfish:
Sneaky scorpionfish hiding under a ledge:
Blenny! look at his little eyebrows!!!
Flamingo tongue snails:
Filefish (just out of reach of my strobe):
Peterson shrimp:
Bluestriped grunts (the black tail guys) and Schoolmaster snappers (the yellow tailed guys with the peach-ish faces):
Smallmouth grunts:
Goatfish:
So as excited as I am to be breathing underwater again, I can’t help but feel… bored? here. I love seeing the sea life, but it’s very repetitive, there’s not a lot of variety, and while I think grunts and snappers are super-cute, I like hunting the little stuff and there aren’t a lot of nudibranchs here.
Plus, I struggled with my lighting and that was frustrating. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.