Happy Jack

Here we are again, Sunday morning and time to jump in the water. No the new camera is still not in operation as the housing is still on order but hopefully soon..... 

Anyway, it was time jump off a perfectly good boat with our friends from Tortugas and our old mate Roland to introduce to the harsh realities of diving in the Caribbean. Poor lads never been the same since.......it was about 6-7 knots Easterly with a minimal chop at the surface, 30-40m viz underneath and 31C temp.

There was a request for sharks, no surprise there, so Captain Nige took us off South to Jack McKenneys to see what we could see. We went one way and the rest of the groups went the other way. We saw nothing but nice scenery.

Well that's not strictly true, as about 20 minutes in to the dive we had one of the ladies in grey tail us around like a very big lost puppy. And she wasn't shy about coming in to see us either, making passes at us from all sides without showing any signs of aggression. Perfectly relaxed and happy in front of the cameras.

Did I mention it was 31C in the water. Well not entirely accurate as there was a definite thermocline which I found as I went down to get a shot. And instantly it was 4 degrees less. People think I'm mad to wear a full 5mm suit but I'm more than happy with it.

After a good 10 minutes or so down at depth we doubled back to the mooring with our new friend in tow and found several other new friends cruising around underneath the boat but a bit too far away for my meagre fish eye to cope with but we had oodles of fun with them whilst it lasted.

After a surface interval of muffins and cookies we motored back up north a little way to Roger's reef which I remember having a small pinnacle/rock formation beside the mooring pin which was always good for a nudibranch or several, in this instance elysia crispata and painted elysia. Pinky nail in the shot to give you some sort of scale as to how small the painted elysia was. It was minuscule.

We also had a red lipped blenny patiently sit out in the open for us whilst we snapped away surrounded by a plethora of it's fishy friends, not to mention many other of it's relatives.

There were also a good selection of hermit crabs to be found if you looked hard enough in amongst the sponges and corals but they were definitely there.
 

Last thing we saw on the safety stop was a nice big Southern stingray that cruised past us at about 6 metres which was a nice way to round of another fun days diving.