31 March 2024
Good morning from Belize!
As beautiful as this sunrise is, don’t expect to see too many early morning pictures from this trip- the Aggressor boat is so much quieter than the Amira (which is a good thing!) so I won’t be sleeping up on the sundeck and waking up with the sun. Once our room cooled down (we may have slept with the door open for most of the night), I was out and even when the boat started moving, it was very quiet. The advantage of a metal boat I guess.
This is roughly the course my boat will be sailing:
Courtesy of www.aggressor.com
Where we actually dive will be dictated by weather/conditions, but basically, we left from Belize City and sailed east to the Turneffe Islands. We’ll dive a couple sites here today, then head out to Lighthouse Reef for the majority of the rest of our dives before returning to Belize City.
Here’s today’s (food) schedule:
Dives will happen between each meal/snack.
One of the things that surprised me about diving here was how much they stressed having to have a buddy. There was always a divemaster in the water that we were free to follow (and that was my plan), but they were also totally ok with us just going off and doing our own thing- as long as we were with a buddy and were back within an hour. Totally unlike any other diving I’ve done.
When we were setting up our gear last night, I noticed the diver at the station next to me also had a backplate/wing! We got to talking a bit and it sounds like we dive pretty similarly- slow, easily distracted by pretty fish, and we both love nudibranchs- so we paired up. I warned her that I’m not a great navigator, but if she’s ok taking lead on that, I’ll happily follow wherever 🙂
Dive #1 – Amberhead South
Welcome to my first Belizean dive site!
It always takes me a couple dives to dial in my camera/flash settings, so these first few dives are a bit off color-wise, like this little lizardfish:
Juvenile spotted drum:
I had to ask what this little guy was- he’s an Urchin clingfish!
Isn’t his little curly tail adorable!?
Threespot damselfish:
Longspine squirrelfish:
Cool pinchy polyps:
Ugh, I will get a better picture of this guy- the Butter hamlet:
Pederson cleaner shrimp:
Normally, these guys look super-cute with their little claws crossed, but this guy is missing one of his 🙁
Spotlight parrotfish, mid chomp:
A slightly-out-of-focus remora!
I wonder who he came off of…
Divers on our safety stop:
The boat drops a hang bar at 15 feet- you can either hold on or just use it as a visual reference. Sometimes, depending on the current, the boat swings back and forth quite a bit, and it can take a few minutes for it to return to where you’re doing your stop, so holding onto it keeps you with the boat, but if the boat is really swinging and there are several divers on the bar, it tends to pull you up and down, shallow->deep->shallow->deep and that’s not so fun on the ears.
Also, that triangle on the right is an emergency air source (though honestly, if I’m already that shallow and have an emergency, I’m probably just going for the surface).
I was super-excited for warm chocolate chip cookies after this dive, plus, our rooms had ROBES! The were so plush and cozy- I’m probably going to live in my robe all week 🙂
Water temps are about 82°F / 27.8°C and while I’m comfortable for now in my 5mm + hood, I’ll probably be switching over to my hooded vest eventually for the extra insulation. I’m not cold yet, but started to get a bit cool toward the end of the first dive and I know that’ll only get worse as the trip goes on.
Dive #2 – Amberhead South
Same site, different direction. Turns out, navigating here is super easy- you start deep(er), following the wall, then turn and come up shallow over the reef back to the boat. Even I can do that!
Longspine squirrelfish, this time with his fins extended:
Oh, this poor little baloonfish did not want his picture taken!
He kept turning away from me and trying to hide.
Barred hamlet:
Hamlets seem to be pretty common down here, but they’re still fairly new-to-me.
Grumpy McFishous (Blue chromis):
Seriously, look how pouty he is!
Can you spot the scorpionfish?
Creole wrasse:
These guys are fast- I will get a better picture eventually!
Christmastree worm:
This guy was bold- usually they tuck back in if you get too close, but he tolerated me and my pictures!
I tried to take a selfie with this giant leafy coral, but my lens wasn’t quite wide enough:
School of grunts:
I saw several of these guys- they are a really cool blueish-indigo! The Indigo hamlet:
Another thing you won’t see much of on this trip- islands. Most of the reefs/atolls we dove didn’t really have an accompanying above-water structure:
While we ate lunch, the boat relocated out to Lighthouse Reef.
Dive #3 – Julie’s Jungle
This is my buddy, Ariana, in her element 🙂
She had a fun cat-ear hood and the coolest dive skins! It made her super-easy to spot.
This odd-looking red guy is a neck crab:
Once you knew what to look for, they’re fairly easy to spot, but not all of them are in a nice spot for pictures:
Grown Spotted drum:
Tiny Sharpnose puffer:
I absolutely love these little guys, but the Belizean puffers seem to be more shy than their Floridian counterparts 🙁
Hello there, Mr. Permit!
Skeptical side-eye…
Little arrow crab hiding in a coral:
Nurse shark with a remora stuck to his head!!!
French angelfish:
Two! indigo hamlets:
First nudi! A lettuce sea slug / Elysia crispata:
The prettiest little fish- a Fairy basslet:
I absolutely love its colors and long fins!
A school of jacks hanging out under the boat at our safety stop:
Dive #4 – Julie’s Jungle
First night dive of the trip!
So, these are bloodworms:
They are attracted to light and they were EVERYWHERE! I feel like there’s usually at least a couple on every night dive, but tonight was especially bad. It was so hard to take pictures because they would just swarm in front of the camera, between the light and whatever I wanted to take a picture of.
But this is a Basket star:
They eat bloodworms. So if you point your light/pile of worms at them, they’ll catch them and eat them, and occasionally you’ll see a little puff of blood as one gets smashed. So satisfying!
Basket star:
Basket star feeding:
I quickly learned the best way to deal with them was 1) use someone else’s light and just turn my own off (there were enough of us on this dive, and we stayed close enough together that I could see alright without my own light) or 2) turn on my back up light and point it down/behind me. My back up light is much brighter than my camera’s spotting light, so the worms would swarm to it instead, leaving my camera mostly unobstructed. I could feel the worms hitting my hand though, and that was kinda gross.
A sleeping Blue tang:
Awake, these guys are solid blue- sometimes lighter, sometimes darker, but I’ve never seen one with bands before.
A sleeping parrotfish:
The edging on that pink coral was glowing blue!
Hermit crab:
A little shrimp with a bloodworm mustache:
Brittle sea star on coral:
Two-tone coral:
I think that bottom sponge is a red Encrusting sponge, and while they can help anchor corals to the reef, they can also grow over existing corals. Fortunately, I didn’t see a lot of this, but the two-tone look is kinda neat.
Giant snail!!!
My buddy was filming this guy- apparently there were two and they were either fighting or mating, but by the time I checked them out, they had separated.
What a stellar first day of diving! I can’t believe this awesome reef is so close to home! I had heard the coral here was in rough shape and was worried that the bleaching that affected Florida last summer would also be affecting the corals here, and while I did see a couple white corals that were either dead or dying, for the most part, the coral seems to have bounced back and there’s a lot of fish life.