Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Blackbeard's Recap 2

Day 2 started off with some strong coffee and breakfast and then we hit the water of the Eleuthras.

We dove Closemon Reef, Dog Rocks, and Tunnel Rocks. 

We had Gio join our dive buddy group to form a three-man team.

Gio is a very fun, extroverted, guy from California with a ton of energy.


He became a good dive buddy and we stayed a three-man team for pretty much all the dives on the trip from then on out.

Closemon reef dive had a max depth of 19 feet and lasted an hour and three minutes.  It's right off of Pimlico Cay, hence the reef is Close, Mon.

The highlight was a stingray flying through the water which was cool to see.



Other than that there were typical reef fish and coral.



 

Dog Rocks was 78.2 feet and 43 minutes.

 We dove down to the church site with the coral swim through that makes it look like a cathedral. A very pretty dive site.


The church had some pretty cool looking fish nearby:


 

and there were lots of Barracuda swimming around as well:

 

Tunnel Rocks we dove both during the day and nighttime.

39.7 feet for 51 minutes during the day, and 45 feet for 54 minutes that night.

It has some interesting coral growing trees that have been placed there to help increase the coral.


 Quite a few lionfish were seen on every dive. 


It's a pervasive invasive species, with some nasty venomous spines on it.  It apparently is a rather tasty fish once caught and filleted, but the Bahamas has yet to declare open season on it, unlike other Caribbean locations, so no fishing for it for us.

A jack joined our dive team for awhile likley looking for prey we might make appear:


 On the night dive, those same jacks were out and about looking for food:

If you had a smaller fish in your light beam, a jack would likely swoop in out of the darkness and appreciate you finding its meal.

We also saw a turtle resting during the night dive:

It was a nice, relaxing night dive.

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