I should have known something was up with the weather Sunday night; I kept waking up to the sound of my wetsuit, which I'd left hanging outside, flapping against the sliding glass door.
Monday morning early the flags were all stiff and pointing south, and if you stood anywhere near the pier or the hammocks at Scubaclub you were going to get wet. Waves were crashing into the rock and concrete, and it was fun watching the little water jets shooting up through the small cylindrical holes in the pier half a second after a wave hit.
However, as I stood there watching, the sea noticeably calmed and over a period of half an hour, as the sun rose, the wind slacked and the white caps disappeared.
My growing confidence that we were going to be able to dive was boosted at the sight of one of the DMs wheeling a cart of tanks down to the pier. I turned and went to my locker to get out my gear.
The diminished wind was still rather brisk beneath a low ceiling of ragged clouds, and on the Reef Star I actually felt a little cold with my wetsuit peeled down to my waist. I laughed at myself a little, thinking how I try to be brave on winter surface intervals in Monterey, where the surface air temp is 52 degrees and the wind chill factor on blustery days is, well, colder than Monday was in Cozumel.
As I retreated into the protected area on the boat I looked astern and there was a very low, broad, dark, and nasty looking squall descending on San Miguel. I asked Martin if it was headed our way and he smiled and said that we'd got out of the harbor at the right time and that the rain would miss us.
The sea was bumpy where we stopped for a dive at Palancar Caves, and there was current. Nestor made sure we were all ready to go at the same time and counted us briskly off the stern like airborne troops being deployed over a drop zone.
Once in the 79 degree water I dealt with the chop by using my snorkle at the surface before we descended, and then, much to the entertainment of the boat crew, forgot that I didn't have my reg in my mouth when I began my descent. This little embarrassment behind me, I caught up with the group as we dropped gently in the current over the massive reef structures.
Once again, descending upon the great monolithic pinnacles and buttresses extending to the north made me feel small. Then, dropping over the precipice to see the spires and walls disappearing into the vertical depths below was as exciting as ever. We floated down to a sand berm connecting two big blocks of reef and immediately Nestor vanished into a hole in the rock. We followed him into the narrow passage in single file, and the seven of us threading one-by-one through the winding arches and tunnels set the theme of the entire dive. Here's a video.
Sometimes we would come to a juncture of multiple caverns, and we would have to wait for divers in other groups to go through into the next hole. Nestor would wait and we would hover in the large, roofless chamber behind him until he signalled us to follow him. The passageways would wind down and then up in spiral paths from which we would exit, as on earlier dives, onto a bright, white sand berm. It was fun to turn and watch the other divers coming out through the hole. Some of them would rotate onto their backs to take in as much as possible as they emerged.
Very early in this dive Nestor stopped at a hole in the wall and gestured for us to look. There was a good sized lobster sitting half way out of his hole, and he didn't retreat when we approached. I was able to get a few decent pictures of him, but I had told myself not to lag behind the group, which I'd noticed myself doing earlier in the week, so I didn't stay long.
As it turned out, this was the big day for wildlife and the lobster was just the first of many close encounters with marine life including octopus, eels, lots of angel fish and parrots.
We continued our tour of the underwater maze, swimming through a series of unique tunnels, cracks, and fissures in the massive reef, and we gradually worked our way up into shallower water near the inshore sand flats. As we moved back up past the top of the reef the sunlight had come back out and set fire to the yellows, reds, purples, and greens across the reefscape.
Heading back to the north against the remains of the norte was an exciting, bumpy ride, and to sit out on the stern of the boat was to ensure that you would be engulfed by spray coming off the bow. Unsurprisingly, everyone abandoned their perches on the bow and midships to huddle up in the cabin. The windchill was probably around 65 degrees, and that may seem only slightly chilly, but it was just plain chilly.
In any case, things were brightening up; the squall that had hit San Miguel earlier was gone, replaced by lighter, less menacing clouds, and where we stopped, at Punta Tunich for our second dive, the sky was sunny.
During the prior two days of diving I'd grown a little frustrated that I hadn't got as many pictures of the great fish, the angels and parrot fish, that these reefs are famous for. I'd seen a few angels, but they had been a little wild and ran away, even though I was doing my best to keep my bubbles soft and unthreatening.
What I realized upon descending onto the sloping reef and wall at Punta Tunich was that the reason I hadn't seen too many fish up to now elsewhere was that they were all here. Borne along in the moderate current across the reef I could see all three angels, and parrots everywhere, along with juveniles including lovely juvenile spotted drums.
Nestor stopped us to show us an octopus holed up, and a Green Moray sitting halfway out of its hole, actually posing for me it seemed. Unfortunately, due to photographer error, I didn't get the shot. There were Stoplight and Rainbow Parrotfish, and a few Grey Angels and French Angels that swam right up to me, though the Queens continued to keep their distance. Under rock ledges were schools of hundreds of grunts, and the sponges and coral were alive with color.
The reef surface was studded with small, lovely arrangements of rock, coral, sponges and fish that were perfect works of natural art, simple, in complete balance, lacking nothing. I tried to photograph these but the pictures just don't give the same feel of artistic perfection beyond the inspiration of even the most gifted human artist.
Drifting along with these thoughts I was suddenly distracted by Nestor waving and pointing. A sea turtle had launched itself off the reef and was soaring up into open water.
At our safety stop I continued my habit of remaining at around 10-15 feet even though my computer had released me to go up. I still had some air and enjoyed just drifting along looking over the reef as I rotated myself slowly through 360 degrees. It was truly like you could see forever, at least to me, used as I am to Northern California visibility which on an average pretty good day is 40 feet. During these interludes I also amused myself watching Nestor reel in his line and gradually coax everyone to the surface.
I was happy with my catch of fish photographs from this day, and would have been completely satisfied if this was all I ended up with for the trip. So imagine my delight to get more shots I was really happy with on the next day, my last in Cozumel, at Cedral Wall and Chankanaab Reef. That story is next.
At 6:30am Sunday I was astonished to see the ocean even calmer than the day before. It was almost completely still; you could just hear the faint sound of water lapping at the pier, which amounted to the greatest commotion Mother Nature was in the mood to stir upon the face of the Caribbean Sea.
What I didn't know at the time was that in 24 hours a fairly angry Norte would be blowing into Cozumel, and the still sea surface would be transformed to a chaotic jumble of whitecaps and chop.
As we rode south past the Fiesta Americana Hotel on the Reef Star I couldn't believe the saturated sapphire and azure tones of the sea beneath its glassy surface. Sunlight glinted sharply off the bow wave and sparkled in the foam we left in our wake. It was a perfect day to go diving.
We stopped (you don't anchor for drift dives) just north of Punta Sur at Columbia Reef. This is one reef further south than Palancar Gardens where we dove Saturday. Once again our DM, Nestor, led us down onto unthinkably massive rock and coral towers and monoliths jutting vertically out of the sand but also perched at the edge of the drop off, so that the effect of descending into that world was as though parachuting into a large city with tall, irregular buildings built upon the edge of a cliff.
As we swam deeper down the face of the huge towers we dodged among overhangs and into valleys whose sand floor caught the bright sun at 90 feet and made it clear and bright as day.
Visibility was probably 100 feet or so.
As we had the day before, we swam through labrynthine passageways and tunnels all somehow connected in an impossible maze that Nestor no doubt has completely memorized. My compass was no help; you could only go through the holes and arches that honeycombed the reef, and where you exited relative to entry was a complete mystery.
The scale of this place is unimaginable. It's like walking into New York City when you've never seen anything bigger than Lodi.
Again, at the end of the winding swimthroughs we would be spit out onto bright white sand berms peaking just to the west before plummeting vertically to the depths. From there we could see more huge outcroppings which would be the beginning of our next maze.
At one point I decided to turn onto my back and look up the entire length of these monoliths to the sea surface, and they were so massive and tall that they almost disappeared into the haze and only the bright sun streaming across their ramparts marked their outline.
The current picked up, and I was watching out to sea when I realized that I'd missed the exit for the next series of tunnels. You really can't swim against the current on a drift dive at 70 feet and expect to have any air left after 5 minutes. So I shrugged and contented myself with following the little bubble streams filtering up from the roof of the structure the rest were passing through. I ended up happy about this because I was able to get some nice sunny photos. As i swam over the edge of the reef I looked down onto the sand and watched the other divers squirting out of the rock 20 feet below me. I rejoined them, but it was really time to begin ascending so we all headed east toward the sandy flats and put the monster reef behind us.
Magically, the boat appeared precisely when and where we surfaced, though it must have been a mile from where they put us in.
After almost an hour boat ride back to the north we slowed just off the Villablanca Hotel. We would do a drift dive along the sand and patch reef shoulder of the Villablanca Wall. Once again the current was fairly ripping and I assumed my customary seated position while the ocean carried me along the reef. One of the divers turned on her back and amused herself by kicking against the current on her back. She was getting nowhere, but that was the whole point. I have a video of this which will eventually appear here.
Highlights of this dive, once I tired of hovering motioinless, were the two tiny seahorses we saw, the Yellow Stingray and another shadowy turtle off in the blue beyond.
In the afternoon we got back on the Reef Star for a special dive on the wreck of the Felipe Xicotencatl, a sunken minesweeper in about 80 feet of water west of the Fiesta Americana Hotel.
Dropping down onto this ship created an eeire feeling; it looked like a ghost ship. When I got there there were already people inside, and their bubbles streamed in tiny rivulets up out of the rusty hull and superstructure of the ship.
I was the only one on the boat who refused to penetrate the wreck. I'm sure it was safe, and everyone came out just fine, but I was more than content to putter around the outside, now and then passing a hole in the side through which i could see the other divers like aquarium attractions inside the wrecked ship.
Actually, the outer hull and superstructure of the Felipe was alive with sponges and marine life that I set to photographing, and before I knew it the others were streaming happily out of the side of the boat. We waved at each other and I joined them. Here's a shot of Nestor just after they came out. The others were low on air and began their ascents but I still had some air left so Nestor showed me around and pointed out the tiniest brittle stars I've ever seen.
Here's a video of the approach to the Felipe.
Strangely, at this point on the coastline of Cozumel the current goes north to south which is opposite of what we'd been getting out on the reefs. This same opposite current took us north to south on Chankanaab Reef two days later. Chankanaab is a macro photographer's dream, but more about that in Tuesday's Cedral Wall/Chankanaab report.
On our return to the dock the sun was low in the sky. It had been a whole day of diving, interspersed with eating and lounging in the sun. If I'd looked to the north I might have seen the dark clouds forming that would engulf us the next day, however, when I went to sleep I just assumed that Monday would be a perfect day like every day is in Cozumel.
Well, Monday did end up pretty good despite the blustery Norte. in fact, we escaped San Miguel just a half hour before an intense downpour hit the town which we viewed safely from the stern of the Reef Star on our way south to Palancar Caves. That report is next.
If you walk out of San Miguel to the south, past Hotel Cozumel toward the lighthouse, you pass a stretch of rocky shoreline that makes you think for an instant that you're in Hawaii. Sharp, craggy black limestone rocks (look like volcanic but aren't) form an uneven barrier to the waves that, on days like today, Monday, March 24, are driven ashore by the strong north west wind.
As I awoke today, Monday, I imagined that the sea would be bright and calm as it had been Saturday and Sunday. But the sea has different moods and not all of them, or probably even most of them, are friendly. This morning there was a hard wind blowing onshore and the seas were rough with 4-foot wind chop. I thought, "I'd dive in this, but it would be annoying to spend too much time on the surface."
Saturday, my first day of boat diving, had dawned with scattered white clouds mirrored on the sea as on polished glass. I was excited as I looked on the assignment board for the boat I was scheduled on. My name was on the list for "Reef Star." I scanned the picture of "Reef Star", "Oh, good," I thought, there was probably a head. I would prefer to avoid peeing in my wet suit, which has a wool lining, and some of the faster boats just don't have heads. Also, there was shade, which I also value. The number of names was about 14, not a bad size group.
By 8:15 divers were lining up at the dock awaiting their boats. As we got underway, heading south, Nestor came up to me and confided with a wink and a smile., "We are going to Palancar Gardens." I took this as meaning good things.
I began to fathom what he was talking about when, after we'd descended onto a patch reef surrounded by sand at about 60 feet, he motioned the five divers in his group, I among them, to follow him through a large notch in some massive coral and rock pinnacles just ahead to the west.
As we swam through the opening a whole blue world unfolded before me. We swooped over the edge of the wall and glided down through a fluted space between gigantic rock buttresses, covered with sponges, hydrocoral, gorgonians and busy with multi-colored fish like the Queen Angels shown above. I could see a sandy ledge below me at about 80 feet, beyond which was the abyss. Faint outlines of divers down that wall were just visible a hundred feet away and another 30 feet below us. They were deep.
Here's the video of our descent.
Massive rock and coral columns and dikes extended out toward the brink of the wall, and there were multiple hole and fissures forming a kind of labyrinth of passageways, corridors, and tunnels connecting the structures and providing fun places to swim.
We turned a corner and suddenly, beneath an overhang, a baby turtle saw us and bolted. Here he is in mid-flight.
We meandered through sunlit expanses above the wall among the buttresses and pinnacles, and followed passageways beneath them that spilled us out into some other sandy patch berm connecting the huge outcroppings.
Every few seconds Nestor would turn and look for us. Here he is with his yellow and blue fins.
Always, to the right there was an infinitely rich ecosystem of marine life, invertibrates, coral, sponges, and fish growing from this or that protuberance or overhanging bit of reef; always to the left was the deep blue. You could look straight down a hundred feet of that wall and it was lifeless blue, like a doll's eye, uninterrupted dim azure fading darker the farther down you looked. Hovering there in 90 feet of water looking down probably another thousand, with those massive buttresses everywhere, it makes you feel small.
Eventually we gradually ascended up over the top of the reef and onto the sandy flats with patch reef that constitutes most of the inshore areas of Cozumel. As divers ascended in buddy teams as they became low on air you could see groups hanging at different depths all the way back down a hundred or more feet behind us.
At the very end, just as we were swimming out of sight of the blue world a giant Sea Turtle appeared just barely in view off in the pelagic distance.
For some on the boat, Cozumel Vets, this was just another impeccable reef dive; for me it was a visit to a large world that I will never forget.Next stop was Las Palmas reef, a drift dive patch reef at the top of the wall just south of town.
This established a pattern: first dive on the southern reefs, not much current, but incredible structures and marine life, second dive a drift dive in ripping current back toward San Miguel.
Las Palmas has a broad, sloping shoulder of patch reef with little rock outcroppings and many fragile stag antler coral and gorgonians. Nestor had cautioned us that the reef here was very fragile and not to disturb the bottom. Hovering above the reef about 10 feet I assumed a cross legged, upright posture and rode the current like the Disneyland train, watching the underwater tableaux go by beneath me. Literally, all I had to do was sit there and breathe. This, I thought, is what drift diving is all about.
Suddenly, out of the blue i could see the outline of a very large Spotted Eagle Ray. Its majestic wings beating the current up the slope toward the top of the long berm. Then, breathtaking to see, it circled back and soared down the slope its wings motionless, as though it was riding a thermal. I was of course speechless, because I was under 60 feet of water, but dumbfounded is basically the same wherever you are. Here is the video.
Later Saturday as I walked into town to spend money and see the big cruise ships I kept looking at the sea and it still maintained that azure, clear quality, as though you could jump in and see all the way under water to Playa Del Carmen on the Mexican mainland. I imagined the sloping shoulder of the island as it gently then abruptly plummeted into the deep and thought, "wow, three more days here."Next Columbia Bricks.
Late Sunday Afternoon, after I'd rinsed and put away my gear I walked down the sunlit concrete pathway to the water's edge by the pier. If you look seaward you may see bubbles coming up off the artificial reef out in front of Scubaclub Cozumel. What this indicates most likely is that guests have probably checked out tanks from the dive concession, strapped them on, and walked into the water or strided off the pier. That is exactly what I did Friday after my arrival, clouded a little by lost luggage containing my dive lights and some other sort of important but not totally essential gear. I checked in, ignoring the fatigue from having taken the red eye to Houston Thursday night and then connecting to Cozumel Friday morning. As I checked out a tank and put my gear together, realizing that I was only feet away from crystal clear, vibrantly azure, warm water the horrors of the red eye (horrors indeed) faded from memory.
I walked the short distance to the small grotto with stairs down, perfect for dialing in weights, I passed the little thatched hut with six or so hammocks all in a row. I didn't know it at the time but Sunday afternoon I'd be in one of those hammocks pretending to model for a Corona commercial. The little grotto has a small archway that you swim through to get to the ocean. Once through it opens up into a jumble of volcanic rock walls and small buttresses surrounded by mostly sand, sand made by Parrotfish.
This opening was my first experience of Cozumel diving, and it was lovely. The clear water enabled me to see all the way across the property to the pilings of the pier extending to 20 feet depth or so. Further out there is a very interesting artificial reef made from cute little fish houses and structures that were probably condemned trash when on land. But underwater they became palaces for fish, and the fish are moving in.
Every little recess or overhang or indentation was populated by a Blue Tang that became agitated when you or another fish drew too close. I witnessed a few fishy skirmishes out on that reef.
Nearby an instructor was teaching a Scuba student a class and I swam around them to the far side of the reef.
Looking oceanward I saw an amazing fish. It looked like the Mola Mola we have in Monterey, but it was pure white. This was an Ocean Triggerfish (see pic above). Beyond it there was a shimmering wall of fish, French and bluestripe Grunts. They reminded me of another wall of fish I'd seen on kauai with Lynn.
Playing around Friday on the little concrete reef out in front of the hotel was a perfect warm up for the massive walls and gardens of the Southern Reefs that I visited in the next few days.
As I scrolled these memories of my first day, from my Sunday hammock perch, watching other divers going in and coming out, I thought, I'm basically on a liveaboad dive boat except that I sleep on land. Saturday was my first day on the southern reefs, at Palancar Gardens. That story is next.
I'm always up before 6am on these Channel Islands boat trips. I like to get up to the galley and have some coffee before there is a big crowd. It's very peaceful, just like underwater, except with coffee.
Sunday morning, March 9 was the first day of Daylight Savings time and it was still dark when I arose, presumably the daylight was being saved for later. Soon enough there was a glow in the east. Here's what it looked like from the dive boat Truth, anchored on the south side of Santa Cruz Island at Blue Banks.
It was a two-day trip, and Saturday's dives had been good but not spectacular. Mostly, we'd dived on the south side of Santa Cruz, at places like Heart Attack Rock, Albert's Wall, and Blue Banks. Santa Cruz has a lot of sites that are rockslide rubble that has fallen from cliffs and formed a series of stepped walls gradually falling to a sand bottom at around 50 feet. These are great habitats for fish and invertibrates, and they usually have some fun caves and spires to swim around in and through. Saturday had been very sunny and the rocks had been alive with color, especially on our first dive at West of Pedro, where we also found a very large cave, but couldn't see in because I'd forgotten to bring my light.
Visibility, however, was less than usual on the Channel Islands, varying from 15 to 40 feet depending on where we were diving. There was some surge and current but little swell.
The boat was less than half-full and divers had a lot of room to stretch out and get comfortable. Above is a shot of the dive deck late Friday night before departure. By Saturday most of these stations had been filled; here's what it looked like in the morning before the first dive.
Saturday had been busy. We'd all had three or four dives by the time evening fell, and we arrived at Blue Banks, the location of our overnight mooring and the night dive.
I'd planned on doing the night dive and had looked forward to it, but as I stood on deck in the twilight looking at the surge on the rather exposed point we were anchored by and the rising wind and chop, I decided to thumb the dive and have a beer. About half a dozen divers, led by Bob DeFeo, the instructor on board, went in, and it was fun watching their lights glowing in dim pools of ghostly luminescence filtering up from the depths.
I was on my second beer as they came up and boarded in the wind. Here's Bob getting checked back on the boat by Captain Bob.
Sunday morning, as I stood brewing coffee and looking out at the sea, I hoped we'd head for Anacapa which was just across a small channel from us and offered some of the most spectacular dive sites I've ever seen.
After the magnificent sunrise Donnie pulled anchor and headed back to the east. I could see Anacapa dead ahead of us and went up to the wheel house to ask if we might be going there. Sure enough, we were. "Maybe Coral Reef?" I asked hopefully. Donnie turned in his chair and said, "yeah, that's where we're headed." I was elated. Coral Reef was one of my two favorite spots last trip, and I was excited that we were headed back to Anacapa.
As it turned out we had to go dive the north side of the island due to ripping current on the south side, and we had a very nice dive at Deep Goldfish Bowl.
It was a sand bottom at almost 90' with little rock gardens all over the place overgrown with gorgonians and invertibrates. We'd heard in the briefing that there was a wall to the north down to over 100' and we originally planned on going down this wall and hanging out at the bottom for five to seven minutes. As it turned out we never found the wall but had a hugely entertaining encounter with a young harbor seal who darted in front of Anne and me and did spiraling figure eights in front of us for 15 seconds or so.
Back on the boat I was feeling better about the trip. The seal encounter had gotten me excited in a way that Santa Cruz hadn't the day before. As Truth powered back around the western tip of the island we could see that the sea was calmer and more inviting. Meanwhile divers rested in the galley eating snacks and logging their dives.
We anchored just west of Cat Rock near shore at a place called Channels. It was a nice kelp garden with sand patches perfect for the OW class dive Bob had to teach. It was the last dive for the class, and the students had to remove and replace their gear on the surface, do a navigation exercise using their compass underwater, and perform an ascent sharing air with their buddy.
My job was to help Bob by accompanying students on their navigation run and by going up with the first pair of air-sharing buddies and staying with them on the surface. There was still some annoying current, and the skills were not easy, but the students all performed and within 20 minutes of entering the water there were 5 newly certified divers on the planet. We all celebrated with peanut butter and bagels, and the boat moved a couple hundred yards seaward. The new spot was called Underwater Island.
I was excited because my role as helper was finished and I could just dive. I'd been itching to get in the water with my new camera rig, which for a day and a half had sat in the galley unused.
If I was going to take my camera in the water for only one dive on this trip, Underwater Island was the perfect choice. It is a long, relatively narrow outcropping of rock rising out of a sand bottom at about 60' and cresting to about 25'. The entire east side of the structure is a huge, vertical wall with many crevasses and holes for fish to hide in. The wall was covered with strawberry anemones and sponges. Spanish Shawl nudibranchs were everywhere as were sea cucumbers, limpets, sea hares and urchins. Garibaldi swam out of holes to look us over and Anne and I found a big Ling Cod who unfortunately bolted before I could get a picture.
Here are some shots from this dive.
One of the most interesting things we saw at Underwater Island was man-made. It was a memorial stone that had been placed at the base of the east wall. Someone name T. Meloche is memorialized at 60' off the south side of Anacapa. Here's the stone. As we continued past beautiful, fragile pink and purple gorgonians we found the south end of the rock and turned back north traversing the west side of the rock. This side of Underwater Island was much different than the east side. It was a rounded series of hillocks with brittle stars everywhere.
Later, finally arriving at Coral Reef, we saw billions more brittle stars waving their tiny tentacles in the current. The entire west ridge of the outer Coral Reef is a blanket of brittle stars, so dense they look like a kind of thick grass. Only when you get up close do you see their millions of tiny tentacles waving in the current seeking nutrients.
Coral Reef was just as beautiful as before, even in diminished visibility that obscured the view of the broad swales that lead like great canyons to the south into very deep water. We hovered over the precipice at the south end, where big rock columns jut up from over 100' to about 35' at the top. We had to stay above 50' on this dive because our bodies had absorbed a lot of nitrogen earlier in the day, but it was breathlessly fun to hover out over the edge or down the wall, always fascinated with the textured explosion of life competing for every square millimeter of rock surface.
Coral Reef is like an underwater theme park with different rides and attractions depending on which direction you go. I'd asked one of the crew if you could swim all the way around the structure and he said he doubted it given its massive size and breadth. You could come back and dive this spot every day for a month and still not see everything.
Finally it was time to head back to the mainland. Everyone got busy breaking down their gear and gathering up their belongings. Here's one last image, a shot of Anne at the bow anchor line as we descended onto Underwater Island. Goodbye Anacapa, we'll be back.
The swell forecast changed for the worse overnight, and when I arrived at the Breakwater at about 8:45am I'd already heard from Sarah that Lovers Point and Coral Street weren't diveable. I had already figured as much, since I could see the whitewater out on the point from Highway 1 in Marina. There was a good sized swell running into the east wind on Del Monte Beach, and it was pretty, with the spray feathering off the tops of the waves. I thought, "I should have brought my surfboard."
I found Sarah and Michelle at the Breakwater, and we walked out to the steps to survey conditions. There was a good bit of chop and some intermittent 2-3 foot waves helping the tide come in. Waves were breaking on the wall and creating an annoying cross wave as the surf swept up onto the sand.On the grass classes were kitting up, and I saw Ron and Todd, a couple of my instructors who were beginning the last day of an OW class. Michelle knew them too, so we went over and said hello. Todd asked me if I wanted to help with his group, and since it was looking like Sarah, Michelle, and Brad, who had joined us, might thumb the day, I told Todd I might be able to pitch in.
Sure enough, everyone but me decided to go to the aquarium. So I rushed over to my van and got my gear on as fast as I could, since the class was already heading down the steps. Todd told me to catch up with them in the water, and I finally did find them halfway out to the bend.
My job was to stay with two of the students while Todd went below and did drills with the other two. Visibility was so bad that people had to descend holding onto each other.
After everyone had done their drills it was time for the tour part of the dive. A "tour" of the breakwater in surgy, 1 foot visibility is basically miserable. You just scudd along the bottom looking at your compass. But the students were gamers, and they followed Todd around the sand, holding onto each other, while I brought up the rear making sure nobody got disconnected.
Finally it was time for the students to do their last task, which was to navigate their reciprocal course back to the beach. I took two of them while Todd watched the other two. My group, two girls, were undeviating from the 240 degree course I'd dialed in on my compass, so I just followed them across the sand ripples. When it was time to exit it looked like there was just enough surf to make things interesting.
Todd asked me to go in first, ditch my fins, and come back out into the surf zone so I could be there to help the ones he sent in if necessary. The students did a great job getting through the waves to the beach and I had very little to do except help them up if they tipped over. In the picture you can see a few students crawling out near the rocks by the wall.
I ended up calling it a day at that point, feeling happy that I'd got to get wet after all and even help out a little. It was a way to feel better about driving all that way only to find that Mother Nature wasn't showing her most dive-friendly side.
Once again, descending upon the great monolithic pinnacles and buttresses extending to the north made me feel small. Then, dropping over the precipice to see the spires and walls disappearing into the vertical depths below was as exciting as ever. We floated down to a sand berm connecting two big blocks of reef and immediately Nestor vanished into a hole in the rock. We followed him into the narrow passage in single file, and the seven of us threading one-by-one through the winding arches and tunnels set the theme of the entire dive. Here's a video.
Very early in this dive Nestor stopped at a hole in the wall and gestured for us to look. There was a good sized lobster sitting half way out of his hole, and he didn't retreat when we approached. I was able to get a few decent pictures of him, but I had told myself not to lag behind the group, which I'd noticed myself doing earlier in the week, so I didn't stay long.
During the prior two days of diving I'd grown a little frustrated that I hadn't got as many pictures of the great fish, the angels and parrot fish, that these reefs are famous for. I'd seen a few angels, but they had been a little wild and ran away, even though I was doing my best to keep my bubbles soft and unthreatening.
What I realized upon descending onto the sloping reef and wall at Punta Tunich was that the reason I hadn't seen too many fish up to now elsewhere was that they were all here. Borne along in the moderate current across the reef I could see all three angels, and parrots everywhere, along with juveniles including lovely juvenile spotted drums.
Nestor stopped us to show us an octopus holed up, and a Green Moray sitting halfway out of its hole, actually posing for me it seemed. Unfortunately, due to photographer error, I didn't get the shot. There were Stoplight and Rainbow Parrotfish, and a few Grey Angels and French Angels that swam right up to me, though the Queens continued to keep their distance. Under rock ledges were schools of hundreds of grunts, and the sponges and coral were alive with color.
The reef surface was studded with small, lovely arrangements of rock, coral, sponges and fish that were perfect works of natural art, simple, in complete balance, lacking nothing. I tried to photograph these but the pictures just don't give the same feel of artistic perfection beyond the inspiration of even the most gifted human artist.
