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Our second day of diving started with another breakfast of butter-fried foods at Captain Bob's and a trip out to Middle Turtle Rock, which had been one of the highlights of the scouting trip. This day the visibility was only about 40 ft or so, and the water was murky with algae. I got in the water and down to about twenty feet or so before my right ear refused to clear, so I hovered over the rocks and watched everyone explore until I could equalize.
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Middle Turtle rocks are a pair of bombeys (coral heads) about twenty feet tall, covered in various forms of coral, including several huge blue fans. Around the fans and over top of the rocks a school of jacks hovered in the current, and mixed in with them the requisite grunts, snapper, and squirrelfish gathered together. Lower down the coral head, smaller fish darted in and out of the
formations, as well as graceful angelfish and some parrotfish. I moved
counterclockwise around the formations and documented as best I could,
then moved out to the surrounding bottom formations to explore.
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Dive two of the day took us back to the Strip, where we found more of the same from the previous day, with better visibility. As I got to the bottom and started snapping pictures, I found that I only had 1500 psi in my tank, so I snapped as many pictures as I could and handed the camera off to Tim, who then gave it to Steve. Returning to the boat, Melanie switched out my tank
and I returned to the bottom with no bulky camera to deal with. My
experience underwater became dramatically different without the camera
and the nagging voice in my head that told me to snap as many pictures as
I could. I hovered over the coral, taking the time to stop, look, and identify the species I saw, as well as explore under and around the coral for shier wildlife. I was rewarded by seeing a green moray with his head in the current, some spiny lobster, a very well-camoflauged scorpionfish, sea cucumber (I had
completely overlooked these previously) and a very angry soldierfish who wanted me away from his algae farm. I also was able to identify several smaller species- the fairy basslet became visible as well as other small hiding fish. At this point I wished I had a fish ID card strapped to my belt. I was able to stay down for a total of about seventy minutes, my best on the trip, and made it out of the water cold but not unhappy.
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We also attempted to snorkel this reef in hopes of catching the whole thing with the towed video/GPS system; Todd, Rick and Steve snorkeled the course on each side and felt pretty confident of success.
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Unfortunately, I heated up too quickly after the second dive and began to feel sick, and thus missed out on one of the highlight dives of the trip, a drift dive over Little Caverns with Audley leading the way. On their return to the surface, the group told us about turtles, reef sharks, moray eels, and stingrays as they floated with the current South to North over the long dive area.
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Our dinner was at The Anchorage again, as credit-card acceptance became a factor with our cash reserves and the folks in charge preferring one credit card receipt instead of a cash receipt.
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