In the morning, we headed over to Maricaban Island, and spent the whole morning (including surface interval) there. Our first dive was at Bethlehem, which has scattered reef on a downslope, which flattens out to a rubbly area around 60 or 70 feet. We were promised we would find tiny nudibranchs on the dive, and we did indeed see lots of different ones. Some of the coral on the way up the slope looked pretty nice too. The reef goes all the way up to about 10'.
We spent the surface interval anchored on a little beach. The second dive was at Kirby's Rock. This site has a pretty sheer wall, and a little pinnacle just off of the wall (which I assume is the rock that the site is named for). This was one of the nicest sites, in terms of pretty reef, that we went to. The wall and the pinnacle were both very colorful, with all different colors of crinoids and tons of yellow sea cucumbers all over the wall. There was some different colored soft coral (like they have in Fiji) as well, and lots of different colored little sea fans too. So just lots of different colorful life all over the wall. This site would be good for wide angle, especially when the viz is better. We saw two frogfish on this dive, one of which was HUGE, four moray eels, a hammer crab with eggs (which Rob got an awesome picture of) and lots of different nudibranchs. It was a great dive.
In the afternoon, we went back over to Maricaban Island for a muck dive, but this time to a dive site to the left after you cross the channel. I'm not sure what the name of the site was. We were looking for flamboyant cuttlefish. Upon dropping down, we immediately found two non-flamboyant cuttlefish, which were still pretty cool, since they were the first cuttlefish we'd seen on the trip. We also saw a mimic octopus, which was so cool! We lost Rob for a little while during the dive; while we were able to communicate with him by tapping bolt snaps on our tanks, it took a while before we managed to actually find each other. This should give you an idea of what the viz was like on the dive.
The night dive was another site past Secret Bay, but a little bit further down the beach than where we went last night, I think. The theme of this dive was cephalopods. So many cephalopods. We saw cuttlefish, different kinds of squid, and octopus. Yay.
In the morning, we headed over to Maricaban Island, and spent the whole morning (including surface interval) there. Our first dive was at Bethlehem, which has scattered reef on a downslope, which flattens out to a rubbly area around 60 or 70 feet. We were promised we would find tiny nudibranchs on the dive, and we did indeed see lots of different ones. Some of the coral on the way up the slope looked pretty nice too. The reef goes all the way up to about 10'.
We spent the surface interval anchored on a little beach. The second dive was at Kirby's Rock. This site has a pretty sheer wall, and a little pinnacle just off of the wall (which I assume is the rock that the site is named for). This was one of the nicest sites, in terms of pretty reef, that we went to. The wall and the pinnacle were both very colorful, with all different colors of crinoids and tons of yellow sea cucumbers all over the wall. There was some different colored soft coral (like they have in Fiji) as well, and lots of different colored little sea fans too. So just lots of different colorful life all over the wall. This site would be good for wide angle, especially when the viz is better. We saw two frogfish on this dive, one of which was HUGE, four moray eels, a hammer crab with eggs (which Rob got an awesome picture of) and lots of different nudibranchs. It was a great dive.
In the afternoon, we went back over to Maricaban Island for a muck dive, but this time to a dive site to the left after you cross the channel. I'm not sure what the name of the site was. We were looking for flamboyant cuttlefish. Upon dropping down, we immediately found two non-flamboyant cuttlefish, which were still pretty cool, since they were the first cuttlefish we'd seen on the trip. We also saw a mimic octopus, which was so cool! We lost Rob for a little while during the dive; while we were able to communicate with him by tapping bolt snaps on our tanks, it took a while before we managed to actually find each other. This should give you an idea of what the viz was like on the dive.
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