Crying shame

And still in this day and age, stupid and greedy people continue to look out for themselves. line their pockets and screw the marine life. It's enough to make you cry.

A few weeks back we had the morons at Cayman Dolphin Discovery taking tagged stingrays out of the wild for their own aquarium and now we have the CTF (Cayman Turtle Farm) who have been damned in two independent reports by the STC (Sea Turtle Conservancy) and the WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals).

The Turtle Farm breed turtles not only for the meat but also supposedly to release a large number into the wild and keep the population healthy and thriving. However both reports show "photographic evidence and peer reviewed scientific analysis”, which revealed many welfare issues, including overcrowding, disease, cannibalism and unnecessary prolonged suffering."

They've made photos available which show the conditions the turtles are in and it's not pretty. Diseased turtles with no eyes, turtle carcasses that have been eaten by other turtles, overcrowding in stagnant, filthy water and downright appalling conditions.

"WSPA said it is not calling for the CTF to shut down all of its operations but to operate as a rehabilitation release, research and education facility that can still draw tourists. It recommends a shift away from commercial production for human consumption to conservation, but said the Farm should “immediately halt the inhumane public handling of turtles due to the animal welfare concerns associated with this activity.”

Until the farm can tend the care and well-being of the turtles in the long run, please avoid this place. If you want to see turtles, get in the water and dive or snorkel with them. 

There are hundreds of turtles all round the island at dive sites and isn't it much better to see them in their natural environment as opposed to diseased, disfigured and suffering at a turtle farm that can't/won't look after them properly?

Which do you prefer. This......?

Diseased, suffering turtles with no eyes

Or this?

Healthy turtles in their natural habitat

You decide because only we can make the difference.........

Hog Wild

Apologies for tardiness with blog update. It has been a very, very busy couple of weeks here on the island and I've hardly had time to catch my breath. Sat 6th October was the second annual hog roast in aid of the Feed our future charity.

The Smokin Bros contender......

With a hog head-to-head cook off, live music, cocktails and dancing on the beach, it was well worth the money to make sure kids don't go hungry.

vs. the Hew Done hog

 From the feedourfutureayman.org website:

"A large percentage of Cayman’s teachers regularly see children who come to school hungry because they aren’t getting enough to eat at home.  Teachers are among the first line of defense for students who regularly come to school hungry and will take action in a number of ways to address the hunger they see in their classrooms or lunch halls.  The reality is that on average many teachers are spending their own money to purchase or provide meals for students in their classrooms."

"Historical data shows that a large number of children in our public schools rely on subsidised or free school meals. For many children this school meal is the only solid meal they will receive the entire day.  The statistics below show the number of children who have been assisted with school lunches for the past ten years though it has been reported that these numbers are severely understated in that many more would qualify, if they came forward and funding allowed."

Basically in this day and age, there is absolutely no reason to not feed the kids. The Caymans aren't a third world country for goodness sake but this happens every day where kids are going hungry because their parents aren't feeding them.

If you can and want to, please make a donation via the charity website at www.feedourfuturecayman.org

The Smokin Bros. hog was the eventual winner on the night. Well done!

 

Captive stingrays returned but numbers still falling

Soon to be a thing of the past?

Ask 1000 divers or even standard holiday makers what one of the main attractions are on the Caymans and they will say Stingray City. But maybe not for long as local dolphinarium operators are just plucking them out of the sea to fill their own attractions, yes, I'm looking at you Dolphin Discovery.

What makes it worse is that the stingrays were already tagged as part of a scientific study but it still didn't stop them from being taken. It still beggars believe that in this day and age that laws are still not in place to prevent environmentally sound practices like this from happening. 

The DoE has managed to get some of them released back into the wild but some still remain captive. Whatever your thoughts are on dolphinariums and keeping animals in captivity, stealing them from the wild for the entertainment of others is just plain wrong on so many levels.

If you you ever come to the Caymans, please see these fantastic creatures in their natural habitat and I hope yourself, family, friends and fellow divers boycott Dolphin Discovery along with every other dolphinarium out there. 

The more that unscrupulous, narrow minded, money grabbing individuals interfere with creatures in their natural habitat, the less likely they are to be around for future generations to enjoy and learn about them.

Link:STINGRAYS RESCUED

Link:STINGRAY NUMBERS FALLING

One horse town

Well we definitely had a good omen as we left the house to get some quality bottom time in today. Double rainbow!!

Try not to lose your sh*t when you see this

We hit Sunset house at the crack of dawn to get the right light and avoid the crowds to work on some scenic shots and squeeze some wreck shots in.

Plenty of light from the surface helps to build up the layers

The fish were definitely on a mission today as they just would not leave us alone! I have so many shots of snappers and angelfish bumping the port and just obscuring Jill completely it's comical. Especially the ones that make her look like she has a fish for a head. I'll maybe post them one day for a laugh.....

The fish come out to play

We had to change up our dive plan a bit as we were kind enough to take along a holiday maker who had no one to dive with, so we allowed him to tag along. He told us he was very experienced and his air consumption was great, so what could possibly go wrong? 

Ha! We had half our usual bottom time and he rode the imaginary bicycle the entire dive. Lesson learned. Unless you've trained them, don't get in the water with them! I gave him some friendly (honest!) advice afterwards though, so hopefully he'll think more about his dives in future.

Lovely flowing shapes on the main wall

We then headed to Lighthouse Point as we had been looking for the elusive seahorses that were rumored to be there, but we had yet to find any. 

At his point, it was raining, cloudy, dark, thunderstorms brewing, waves at the surface, strong surge below and the bottom was getting stirred up badly. Like diving back home in winter time and I had a good feeling that today would be the day we find a seahorse.

After a hell of a game of hide and seek, we found one

And after about 20 minutes, I headed to around the 5 metre mark to check some potential hiding spots and I found the orange seahorse nestled in amongst some sponges. There is also a yellow and two black seahorses but they weren't to be found, not on this dive anyway.

A (sea)horse with no name

He was a frisky little blighter and was quite happy to gallop over the bottom to have a nosh on the greenery from time to time. I got a little video footage but due to the conditions, it's not the best in the world, but you get the idea.

There were another pair of divers in the water about an hour after us and had been combing the area for the seahorses as well. Being the kind soul that I am, I took them back to where I had found the wild stallion and pointed him out. I was their new best friend after that!

Jill found a nice big green moray having a good clean  at the rock pile and came and got me for some shots before it ducked back in. A good healthy sized one, probably about 4-5 feet judging by head size and body thickness.

A thing of beauty

Plenty of the usual suspects where out and about, mantis shrimps, jawfish, filefish, flounders, octopus but to be perfectly honest, the main focus was to find the seahorse and we did that with resounding success if I do say so myself.

Banded jawfish looking for some attention

One final shot for the road

Google maps takes a dive

Link: HERE

Yes, now Google maps has got in on the life aquatic by updating their maps to include d(r)ive-bys of underwater regions in the world.  

Well worth checking out if you can't make the trip to dive it yourself. True armchair diving.

"We’ve added the very first underwater panoramic images to Google Maps, the next step in our quest to provide people with the most comprehensive, accurate and usable map of the world. With these vibrant and stunning photos you don’t have to be a scuba diver—or even know how to swim—to explore and experience six of the ocean’s most incredible living coral reefs. Now, anyone can become the next virtual Jacques Cousteau and dive with sea turtles, fish and manta rays in Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii"

Elmo's World

Got some nice  boat diving in on Saturday which more than made up for the poor showing last weekend. A 30 min boat ride will see you at Elmo's Wall and depending on who you ask, they will tell you 10 different versions as to how it got its name. 

With a sand patch below us at 20 metres, we followed it along to the swimthrough which takes us down onto the wall proper.

If you followed it all the way to it's conclusion, you can come out at around 42 metres or if you prefer to be a bit more conservative you can swim out earlier at around 28 metres.

Swimthrough at 42

We headed out West along the wall with the current and worked in and out the cuts. Some lovely scenery here with loads of colour and life. The big stuff wasn't out in force today but still very pretty indeed.

Vibrant colours in the depths

Large shoals of triggerfish, grunts, jacks and snappers where happy enough to cruise on by with the occassional visit from some pretty large tarpons to see what were about.

On the cruise for the next meal

Most of the dive was spent getting some scenic shots for an upcoming project, luckily the light was in the right place a lot of the time and the viz was exceptionally good. It's one of those dives where a lot of things seem to come together at the right time and you're able to grab those magical shots.

End of Elmo's Wall

It was pretty lumpy getting back on the boat seeing as the wind had picked up a little, but we didn't have far to motor over to the Ironshore Gardens. I've done this a couple times before and just like previous times, there is a lot of surge and sand which makes it pretty challenging from a photographic stand point, so not my best shooting experience but still plenty to see and do with plenty of cuts and swimthroughs to play about in.

"My, what a hell of a lot of teeth you have Grandma!"

If you can anchor yourself to the bottom and resit the surge, it pays just to stop and check all the little nooks and crannies as they are teeming with life, especially of the smaller variety.

Small and perfectly formed

Gobies, blennies, shrimps, morays, cowries, hogfish, hamlets, they were all present and correct and quite happy to mooch around the dive site. We did get a nurse shark come in for a nose to see what we were about but it disappeared sharpish and I got one crappy picture of it in the distance. Still plenty more fish in the sea, pardon the pun. 

Also if you can find the telltale signs, there's quite a few octopus (octopi, octopusses, take your your pick) to be seen. Although they were reluctant to show a tentacle outside of their holes.

Unwilling to come out and share the octopus love with us

Also worth paying attention to some of the coral heads and islands sitting out in the sand as they have plenty of scorpionfish sitting out, waiting to be photographed.

A lovely, lumpy little fellow

And have a good nose in the sand as well as it's very easy to miss some really nice stuff in the cat litter.

A face a mother could love. Possibly

We had a great day diving with Ocean Frontiers, as always and with finishing up at lunchtime, we still had plenty of time to get back home for cocktails in the sun. Perfect.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Well we took a chance and tried our luck with a local dive operator to do some boat diving with them on the Saturday. That was our first and last time with them I reckon. 

It's true what they say, you get what you pay for. It's the first time we've ever got back on the boat with 140 bar still left in the tank!. Short dive times, shorter surface intervals and to make it worse, the staff listened to the majority of the divers (not us I hasten to add) and took them where they wanted to go instead of where the best diving actually was. 

The majority wanted to go to a particular dive site to get the best pictures (they said). As I've said for many years, the general public are idiots and they don't know what they want. We ended up on probably one of the sh*tiest dive sites I've been to anywhere in the world, and I've dived in some right old filthy puddles in my time.

To put the world to rights and put that horrible episode behind us, we went shore diving on Sunday. We only did a single tank dive but we had a 147 minute run time, which more than makes up for the utterly miserable dives the previous day.

Nurse sharks, angelfish, groupers, tarpons, octopus, but still sad to say the seahorses are continuing to elude us. Maybe this weekend..... And we nearly saw a scrap between a turtle and a barracuda, but they both backed down at the last minute and headed in opposite directions.

I must say the nurse shark pics and video I got aren't my greatest but they were very skittish and I didn't want to frighten them, off so please excuse by below par shots.

As close as I dared without frightening the poor thing

And another shot for good measure

Loads of flamingo tongue cowries were out and about, it must be breeding season for them. Or some sort shellfish convention or something....

I love these little colourful cowries

There was a good selection of petersons shrimps scuttling over the reef as well and when you can get them to sit still for a few seconds you can get some great shots that really show up their colours as well as allowing you to see the eggs in their translucent bodies.

A petersons shrimp, sitting still

We had some really nice angelfish follow us around as usual, if it's not snappers or groupers then it's usually angelfish that are looking to be adopted by visiting divers. I swear they can remember you from previous dives. Maybe fish do have memories after all?

The adopted angelfish we always wanted...

....and the porcupine fish we never wanted but it adopted us anyway!

Jill made a nice find of a nesting octopus so now we've got it's location pegged, we'll be able to visit it whenever we're out. Unfortunately at this point it was content to stay in it's hole and blow bubbles at us. Maybe it'll be out for a forage next time we're out.

Anti-social octopus

And of course the obligatory christmas tree worm shot, because I like sneaking up on them and they're just so colourful and photogenic..

No excuses, I just like them

This coming weekend, we're out with our friends at Ocean Frontiers who may not be the cheapest for dives on the island, but they are the best on the island and we always get well looked after whenever we're out with them.

And maybe Sunday, we'll go seahorse hunting and try and find the little blighters once and for all!