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On the fourth day, we went back to the Caverns to try to map out the site. On this day the weather had picked up considerably, so the swells were in the 3-5 foot range with a strong southwesterly wind blowing up the island. On our way out there, we passed through a pod of bottlenose dolphins heading southeast, and stopped the boat to get some people in the water, with little success. We attempted to shoot the Caverns from above using the remote camera, and made several passes overhead with it to try to map the site.
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The first dive was made into a strong current heading north; the site is about 80 feet down at its deepest, and I had trouble equalizing again on my first dive of the day. However, hovering at 40 feet for a few minutes meant i could shoot some overhead pictures of the site from the mooring line; I started with a shot of my compass and then did a 360 pan around from there. Once I cleared I made it down to sand level and shot some of the larger landmark coral heads in my visibility. From there I moved directly south to a point about 100 feet ahead of the mooring line and shot more landmark coral. After shooting some video of fish behavior at sand level I rose up to about 50 feet and shot another pan of the area from a compass heading. My air was gone quicker than normal with the work at depth, so I coasted back to the mooring line and waited at 17 feet with Todd and Tom-I found this line to buck a lot less than the rear sounding line, and it wasn't slippery at all. After about seven minutes we coasted back to the sounding line and ascended to the surface.
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Steve and I both had an instance where we had to kick facing upside-down to keep at depth during our safety stop because of compressed air in our BC's. Make it a point to tell people to focus on proper bouyancy first- no air in the BC and neutral trim- so that when they ascend and get above 20 feet their tendency will not be to bolt to the surface. With all that air gone, I found it difficult to stay at depth for the length of the safety stop (and actually had a nightmare about it after the second day). At the end of the dive with 500psi it's a lot harder to keep yourself down. I got to the point at the end of the trip where I had to kick downward at the beginning of the dive to get past 20 feet, and then found I was neutral below that depth.
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This dive has a lot of islands of coral on a sandy ocean; there isn't a lot of fish life to look at (what there is is considerably bigger than the shallower dives) but the formations are much more interesting. Lots of soft coral in flowing, ropy patterns; large brain and hard coral in clumps, and leafy coral with juvenile fish speckled throughout.
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Our second dive was on the next mooring line south, an area called Blacktip Reef. Here the chances were greater to see blacktip reef sharks, but I was
disappointed on that front. Again, a hard swim into the current, to the mooring line for bearings. I opened up the aperture on the camera in the middle of this dive to attempt some better exposures, and it seemed to work better for me (F6.5, 1/1000) at ranges of 5-7 feet. Working with the two program settings on the camera to switch between macro and long-range shots will help here. I also worked with the flash farther away from the camera, as backscatter in our first days' pictures became an issue.
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Again, I took a compass reading and did two pan movies of this area to compare the difference in information-gathering, and then descended to depth to shoot some of the landmark coral and overhangs.
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Offgassing on the surface, the wind began to pick up dramatically, and we got word from the base that all the dolphin and shark boats had come in, so we cancelled the third dive and went in to shore.
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