Florida New Year's 2026: Emerald Downstream

Kevin was at Emerald a couple weeks earlier and reported very good, clear conditions, so we decided to go there.  Rob brought his camera (which he hasn't brought on a cave trip in ages), so he came up with a spot he wanted to go to take pictures.  He said that there is a jump off to the left into a tunnel that has white walls, after the T to the left.  But he didn't know any more details than that.

When we got to the site, the water was indeed VERY clear in the basin.  When we dropped the line in to stage our bottles, you could see down the line quite a long way.  We loaded up all of our bottles, and then doinked with the remote strobes a bit, to figure out how to mount them (or not).  In the end, Rob managed to rig up a way to mount the strobe on the back of my rig, using a variety of things found in Kevin's van... including a bungee loop, and old scooter O-ring, and one of those velcro straps that is meant to bundle wires together.  It worked pretty well, though.  Kevin decided to just carry his and point the strobe behind him with his hand.  After that was all sorted out, we got geared up and got going.

When we stage our bottles on the line, we put the O2 bottles near the surface, and the 50% bottles a bit below those, and the stage bottles below those.  I was the last one down and I picked up my O2 bottle, and then by 50% bottle, and dropped my O2 bottle at 20 feet, and kept going and couldn't find my stage bottle.  I kept going down the line, to check one last bottle at the bottom of the line, to find it was Kevin's 50% bottle.  So then I had to go all the way back up to 20 feet to find my bottle, doh.  It was right at the bottom of the pile of O2 bottles so I missed it.  Rob and Kevin were waiting for me around 80 feet, looking at me like I was a ding dong (in my head, anyway... apparently Kevin didn't realize why I'd gone back up and thought maybe I was having an ear problem).  And then we were finally off.

In my head, the T is like immediately after you get into the cave, but in fact it was several minutes in.  I started to worry I had passed over the T without seeing it!  But alas, it was there, just further into the cave than I remembered.  We went left.  The viz was pretty good, and it was an enjoyable dive.  The line seemed much darker than I remember it though, so I felt like it took a lot of concentration to keep track of where it was.  There are spots where the line gets a bit strange, or there are two lines running at the same time, would be nice to clean it up someday.

So we were going and going and going, and Rob checked out a few possible jumps, but never found the one he was looking for.  But eventually we found a spot for some photos on the mainline.  I got the sensor for the remote strobe out, which Rob had done a pretty good job of tying up in a knot, but I managed to untangle it.  Kevin got his strobe and sensor out too, and Rob lined us up for a couple of shots.  Of course my sensor wasn't working.  After a bit of futzing and attempting to get it to work, I was excused from the photo lineup :(  So I hung back and watched Rob take pictures of Kevin, and attempted to shimmy into the picture next to Kevin a couple times.

Eventually Rob wrapped up the photo shoot, and I told him we should turn it and not try to find that jump any longer.  It's a good thing that I did, because Rob found the jump he was looking for on the way out, quite a bit further back from where we turned.  Next time.

When we got back to the basin, we posed for more pictures in the cavern zone.  It turns out that Kevin's strobe sensor was also flaky, so the pictures from the basin were the only ones that were keepers.

When we got to 40 feet, Kevin and I poked our heads into the upstream tunnel, and made it to the sign.  From there, we could look back out at the cavern and see Rob hanging behind the down line, and leaves falling through the water all around him.  Would have made a nice picture!

When we were at 20 feet (for a LONG time), another team showed up and was staging gear in the water, and then brought some bottles down to 20 feet, and then finally got going right as we started our ascent from 10 feet.

Florida New Year's 2026: Eagles Nest Downstream

Rob proposed doing our first dive of the trip at Eagles Nest.  On the face of it, this seemed a bit nuts, but the biggest risk seemed to be that we would drive a long way and then someone would have to bail on the dive.  Which I've had to do before on non-shakeout dives, shrug.

We got going at 7:30, and made a couple of stops along the way for gas and breakfast, and made it to the dive site right around 10.  No one else was there, though the guy who checked us in (or watched us pay the use fee) said there were about 40 hunters already on the property this morning.  Eagles is so civilized now that there are covered picnic benches and a bathroom.  Especially the bathroom.

We were quite efficient about hauling all of our bottles and scooters to the water, getting into our suits, and getting the gear into the water.  Getting into our gear was not as impressively efficient, it seemed like everything that could get tangled did, but eventually we made it through all of our gear checks and walked to the water while finishing up our pre-breathe.  Before we got into the water, a few guys on bikes showed up, who were curious about the spot and the diving.

We planned to go downstream, to the T in the second to last-ish room, where we would go left.  I did this dive with Rob and Kevin once before, last year, after they did the dive without me (because I tore a wrist seal while getting geared up for the dive).  I think Rob and Kevin returned and did it again without me when Rob was in town for a work thing last spring.

I had two "gear" problems immediately upon descending.  One was easily fixed (by Kevin) at the O2 drop... the tow cord on my scooter was WAY too long.  Someone else has obviously been diving my scooter, hmph!  And the knot was super stuck and I could not get it to budge.  But Kevin could.  The other thing was that my mask was fogging on the left side of the left eye.  I never really fixed that, and just had to keep clearing it all throughout the dive.  Which is annoying, since I put defog on it as usual before the dive.

Once we got going from the 20 foot stop, things were pretty uneventful.  The viz was pretty good in the cave, but not epic.  In a lot of sections where I could pretty clearly see all of the patterns on the wall from the line.  We managed to get through the various squeezes and restrictions without incident, and made very good time to the T.  Kevin decided he wanted to bail on going left at the T, so we instead headed to the end of the line.  Well, not the end of the line -- since it has now been extended to go into the Tiny Murder Hole, as we call it.  But to the last room, where the end of the line used to be.  We went there and Rob and Kevin both looked longingly into the Tiny Murder Hole.  

Then we turned around, headed out, and took the Lockwood Tunnel jump.  For some strange reason, even though I was the middle diver, I put the spool in.  Apparently much too slowly for Rob.  The viz on the Lockwood tunnel was kind of milky, but then cleared up and it was crackling clear.  We went to the end of the tunnel, and then headed back out.  When I returned to the main line, I found my pigtail clipped to the line next to my cookie, placed there by one of my passive aggressive dive buddies.  Doh.  From there it was just a couple minutes until we started our deep stops up the slope to the downline.

Deco was long but uneventful.  Rob says we did too much deco.  Since no one got bent, we will never know.  We made a couple of changes to the deco that we've made in our deeper ocean dives lately -- more time at 30' and 10'.  Otherwise, pretty standard.  Kevin and I played wordle in my wetnotes for a bit at the 20' stop.

When we surfaced, there were a couple of tourists and yet another bike rider hanging out by the water.  They were very interested in hearing about the dive, and thought we were crazy :)

We stopped at the Freezer for lunch on the way home.  We got mussels, stone crab, and mullet dip.  Yum.

Anilao 2024

We were kind of slackers about coming up with vacation plans for this year.  This was a combination of complex work/travel calendars to plan around and just being lazy.  So in early July, I realized if we were going to go anywhere, we'd better make plans.  We decided on Anilao because it is relatively easy to get to, and we only had a week, and we liked it the last time we went.  Since United now has a direct flight from SFO to Manila, it was *very* easy to get there.  Getting back was not quite as easy, since the direct flight back is at an annoying time (that would require an overnight in Manila), but still in the scheme of things, having one stop in Hong Kong is a pretty easy journey.  It was also easy because we already knew where to stay, having stayed at (and liked) Buceo Anilao before

Some thoughts on Anilao... last time we went, I said that if I came back, I'd want to come at a different time of year.  We ended up coming the exact same week as last time, and I still think if I went again, I'd want to go at a different time of years.  There are a lot of critters that are not around in the summer, when the water is *crazy* hot.  I had 84 to 86 degrees the entire week.  I was pulling on the neck of my wetsuit to let water in, because it was so hot underwater!  

Some thoughts on Buceo Anilao... much like last time, I thought that the room was fine, the food was fine, the pool was nice, the bar was good, the diving was great, and the guides were super great.  Our guide for most of the week, Joemar, was amazing at finding teeny tiny slugs and things, and also herding slugs into a position where you could actually get a look at them.  We stayed in the Mantis Shrimp room, which was annoying far up the stairs (further than where we stayed last time, in Ghost Pipefish).  Also like last time, there were some regular kitties that made appearances in the restaurant and around the resort, which were fun to watch.

Alright, to the important part...

Anilao 2024: Day 1

Anilao 2024: Day 2

Anilao 2024: Day 3

Anilao 2024: Day 4

Anilao 2024: Day 5

Anilao 2024: Day 6

Anilao 2024: Day 7

Anilao 2024: Day 7

The last day of diving. Sigh. Joemar was off today, so we had a different DM named Benjie. For the first dive, we went to The Corner, which is right at the point by the hotel, but not exactly the same spot as where we found the Pygmy’s. I think it is where we did our first night dive though. I also think (on,y after having dived it) that Rob may have shot wide angle here on a dive on our last trip. Anyway, I think this would make a good wide angle site. There are at least two spots that have decent sized pinnacles that are buzzing with fish and very encrusted. On one of these, which is more of a ridge than a pinnacle, which a wall that goes for a bit, we saw a big turtle. I watched and followed him for a bit, and then he settled down and started munching on the reef.

The dive wasn’t too productive for Rob, from a shooting macro perspective. I think there were a good number and variety of big nudibranchs. Rob thinks these are all boring (he even has a somewhat annoying underwater hand signal for this). I don’t think they are boring to look at, I think he just finds them boring to shoot. It’s not fun if it’s easy. I twisted his arm into shooting a few that I liked the looks of. Other than nudis, Benjie found a harlequin shrimp but it was in a hole, and it was really in its hold by the time Rob came to look. He also found a nice frogfish. So not a total bust from a critter perspective, but I think the wide angle scenery was the highlight.

After that we went back to Vivere to look for Shaun the sheep’s. This is a big sand slope with not that much on it. But a lot of those little green leaves that the sheep nudis live on. I spent a lot of the dive going from green leaf to green leaf looking for Shaun’s the sheep. The things I do for Rob. Amazingly, I found two of them. One was pretty big, though it was a bit of an ordeal, as I knocked the nudi off of the leaf and oh boy did he not want to settle back down on there. The other one was insanely tiny. I don’t know if Rob even bothered to try to shoot it. Aside from those, quite a few of the blue and yellow sheep were found (not by me) and several of them were quite big. So I guess it was a success from the perspective of sheep finding. Benjie also found a black frogfish with white toes. Rob didn’t take its picture. I guess he is truly jaded.

After lunch, for our last dive of the trip, we went to Bubbles Point. We were told that bubbles would come out of the sand because of volcanic activity, and the sand was warm. This sounded interesting. As soon as we got to the bottom, I realized we’d been here on our last trip, even though the description had not sounded at all familiar. There were indeed bubbles coming out of the sand (which reminded me of the eye in Ginnie) and the sand felt warm in spots. Also, the water was very warm in spots, but it was really not uniform… I saw a 4 degree swing across the site. The site was a mix of sand and coral, there were kind of these coral fingers pointing down the slope, with sand in between. It was not the most productive dive from a macro perspective, it Rob found a teeny tiny aeolid that he claimed was his best find of the trip. There was also a sea turtle, much smaller than the one from this morning. But he also plopped on the reef and started munching on various things. Rob tried to take pictures (with his macro lens).

Rob ran out of gas, well he was down to 200 psi but I think he didn’t want to admit to this so instead of going on my long hose, which I kept offering, he kept saying to just stay with him on the swim up. When we got to 20 feet I insisted he go on my long hose, because watching and waiting for him to run out of gas seemed like more work than putting him on my long hose. So we did that and luckily Benjie did not freak out. I was a bit worried about that. When we surfaced, Rob said it wouldn’t be a warm water trip without having to go on my long hose a couple of times. Lol.

After we got back to the resort, we took apart our gear. Boohoo.

Anilao 2024: Day 6

In the morning we returned to Kirby’s Rock to look for the Pygmy seahorse again. Today we traversed the site in the opposite direction from last time. We started on top of the wall, went down the wall, around the outside of the little side pinnacle, then back through the channel with the gorgonian with the Pygmy on it. Unfortunately no Pygmy was found today. Boohoo. But near that spot, Joemar found two more of the pink tipped orange nudi that I really like, and they were pretty big and on an attractive background.

I may have mentioned this before but this site has a zillion little moray eels, including a few that I saw swimming out in the open. I found one hole with two morays just poking their snouts out constantly opening and closing their mouths. Very cute. The other highlights of the dive were two frogfish… one big gray-purple one and one small white one. They were both on the main pinnacle. Other than that spent much of the dive enjoying all of the fish life in the water column… tons of anthias and blue triggerfish.

After the dive we stopped at a little village on the water on Maricaban island, so the crew could buy some fishing lures. While they were off doing that we enjoyed viewing the local wildlife, which included a goat, a cat and a kitten, a dog, and several chickens. Then we headed to the next dive site which was just a bit further down the island. This site had a slope with patches of coral. I found this dive to be a bit of a dud, though many slugs and such were found, it wasn’t that productive and there was not much that was super notable. Joemar did find a nice magenta edge ribbon with these dark reds slugs in it. We’d seen some of these earlier in the week,but they were nice bushy specimens. I found a shy octopus under a ledge as well.

We got back pretty early so I had a long non-nap after lunch. For the afternoon dive, we were once again on the alternate boat. We went to a site just down from the hotel, past Twin Rocks but still in front of planet dive. It was a San slope with coral patches. The slope went down a ways. I made it past 90 feet and we spent a while in the 75 foot range. The dive wasn’t super productive in terms of number of finds, but there were some good ones. First and most important… a pikachu nudi!!! Well it was the white version so not sure I can call it that. A purple dragon nudi (not sure if that’s the real name or just what I call it). A big sea snake right at the end near the surface. And a big school of various fish, including jacks, also near the surface at the end. There were tons of fish streaming by on the bottom all through the dive, but it wasn’t until I came up shallower near the end that I saw these big schools in the water column.

For the night dive, we dove the house reef. But we got into the boat, which took us just a little bit to the right of the resort and dropped us in, with the plan being that we would swim back and exit from the beach. With people to take our tanks out of the water for us of course :P. It was a pretty productive dive from the nudibranchs standpoint. I once again managed to find a bunch of hydroid nudis! On one hydroid bush, I found 5 slugs of 3 different kinds. The longer I looked, the more I saw. I guess the highlight of the dive (even though I was very impressed with my nudi finding skills) was a bobtail squid! It was in the shallows very close to the resort, as we were wrapping up the dive. It was not really in the mood to swim around for us and show off its bobtail… it kept sinking into the sand. But still, an uncooperative bobtail squid is better than none :P

When we surfaced, there were dive staff in the water waiting for us to take our rigs off so they could carry them out for us. This seemed a bit lame to me, but I went along with it. I did insist on carrying my own fins. Rob was not playing along though and just walked out of the water in his rig. Which then made me feel a bit lame for not doing the same. But not that lame. It’s vacation after all ;)

My evening cocktail tonight was a Mai tai. It was very sweet, even for a Mai tai. And very alcoholic. Whew.

Anilao 2024: Day 5

Well this morning as we approached the dive shop to get into our suits, the coast guard guys were already there, so that was a good sign. Rob had been told to pack wide angle, because we were going to go to some specific site (since it was our boat mates’ last day of diving). But it looked like a storm was brewing and the wind was definitely picking up in the morning, so at the last minute we changed plans and Rob switched to macro. We went to Dari Laut, a wreck that we went to last time. It consists mostly of a steel grid structure that was corals and encrusting life all over it. Further down the slope there is part of the hull, which isn’t quite as interestingly encrusted. The spot is about 25 minutes away, across the channel and in the little channel between Maricaban and Caban islands. It was pretty sporty on the ride over, but the dive site was in a protected spot.

A lot of the good finds on the dive, which were mostly tiny nudibranchs, were found in the rubble area outside of the super structure, between it and the hull. On the structure itself, I think the highlights were two frogfish. One was yellow and brown and was sitting right on top of part of the superstructure, in a not particularly well hidden spot. But yet well hidden at the same time, since he blended in with everything pretty well. I’m sure there were lots more that we didn’t see! The one other notable find on the dive was an electric clam. I was excited to see this, since it was the other thing I told Rob the day before that I still wanted to see. Oh one last thing on this dive… another sea snake! It just kind of swam by at the beginning of the dive.

When we surfaced, the conditions had laid down a lot. We moved down to the next site, which was just past Olympic Point, and hung out there for the surface interval. The site had a slope with patches of coral. There were plenty of critters but nothing particularly notable. I guess most notable was that I managed to find some small slugs all by myself :)

For the afternoon dive, we switched boats (but still had Joemar as our guide) since between both boats, we were only 5 people. We went to Mainit West, the spot at the point super close to the resort, so that Rob could get more Pygmy seahorse pics. This time I believe there was only one seahorse found on that gorgonian. I think Rob spent like 15 minutes with it. This was the highlight of the dive. Other than that, we saw the usual assortment of slugs and such, but nothing particularly notable. We did find a surprising number of hairy crabs in those bulbous anemones.

For the night dive, it was just me and Rob (and Joemar). We went to a sandy slope site around the point, in front of the resort where we took the boat from when we arrived. Joemar said we’d look for nudis and probably find more Shauns the sheep for Rob. So I was prepared for an amazing(ly boring) dive watching Rob take pictures of little green leaves. It turned out to be quite a bit more exciting though. There were some Shaun the sheep sightings, but in addition, we found tons of tiny slugs, including quite a few that I found myself on hydroids. Mmmm, tiny slugs on hydroids, my favorite. But definitely the best find of all was a tiny baby frogfish. It was bright yellow and less than an inch long. When Joemar first showed it to us, I could tell it was a tiny adorable fish but it took me a moment to see its webbed paws and realize what I was looking at. So cute! Other than that, we saw the usual assortment of neat little crabs, shrimps, and fish.

Tonight I learned from my mistakes and had a mango colada.

Anilao 2024: Day 4

Rob decided to shoot wide angle today and asked that we go to some wide angle sites, given how nice the one we went to yesterday was.  We were a bit delayed to leave due to waiting for someone from the coast guard to come and clear us to leave. I’m not sure what the deal is, but for some reason, this was required every morning.  There was no clear explanation for this except that it was something new that must be done everyday. So some dude in military fatigues showed up, looked at some papers and the boats and then we could go.  Once that was finally done, we also went to a very far away site, the furthest we’d been yet, so it was a late start once we got in the water. 

There was some explanation about current and depending on the current, we’d go here or there, which didn’t make a lot of sense, but basically we dropped into an area with what I’d describe as a bunch of coral pinnaclets, and a drop off, and some current that made it not that desirable to go to some areas of the site. There were zillions of anthias in the water clustered around various coral heads, plus lots of other tropical fish. Lots of blue triggerfish. The occasional trumpetfish. And I saw one barracuda swoop through and harass the other fish.  Not a lot happened on the dive, since I was basically just drifting around in the aquarium. Initially tried to pose for some pics,but the anthias seemed super shy, which was frustrating Rob, so I figured the more bubbles, the shyer they’d be, so I wandered off. 

I did make one good find on the dive. Very good, I think. I was drifting along as previously described and I saw a sea snake slithering over the top of a coral ridge!  It was black and white striped. I of course thought this was super exciting.  Rob was not too far, but just out of light sight along range, staring through his camera. So I swam a little towards him, turned my light up to high power, and vigorously signaled him. It was the “either I’m dying or there’s a GPO” signal. And he gave me a “hold” sign without even looking over at me. Eye roll, eye roll, eye roll.  By the time he came over and I swam him back to the spot… no sea snake. I had a fit and yelled at Rob. Then I managed to convey what he had missed. Luckily a couple minutes later I found it a couple coral heads away.  So we watched and followed it for a while. 

We moved over to another pretty close site and anchored there for our surface interval. There was a catastrophic failure of the hot water thermos, so we had to settle for cold water and oreos to snack on.  It was super flat and super nice out today. 

When we first dropped in on this site, I found it pretty unimpressive. It did not seems to have nearly as many fish as the previous site.  There was a slope with corals, but it just wasn’t nearly as pretty.  Before we got moving, Joemar got our attention to show us a sea snake!  We watched it for a while, and it hung out for pictures. Then it headed to the surface. We continued on to a drop off, which was actually pretty nice.  I guess the spot we dropped on just wasn’t the best. There were some big gorgonian things hanging on the side that were worth posing next to. But the best finds of the dive were frogfish. Big frogfish. There were four that we found, and boy were they big. Two of them actually swam around a bit for us which was kind of awkward. I think it’s about what I’d look like trying to swim in my gear without my fins on. 

There was also a neat overhang on the wall, kind of a little cave, which was super colorful inside and had quite a few fish in there, including some kinds of fish that I didn’t see outside. After that, we came up the wall and Rob managed to find a coral head with a bunch of anthias that seemed not that skittish.  He sent me up to 10 feet to pose as a silhouette for a long while. By then it was pretty much time to call the dive. Joemar put a bag up and we waited for the boat to come and pick us up. 

For our afternoon dive, we went to a spot just down from the hotel to the right. It had patches of coral/rubble on the sand.  The highlight of the dive was a flamboyant cuttlefish!  Just before the dive, as we were walking to the boat, Rob was talking about other critters to “request” and I mentioned flamboyant cuttlefish. I didn’t even put in my request and I got one!  Aside from that, Joemar found plenty of nudis, including a lot of the purple aeolids with peach rhinophores. There were so many of those that even I found a few. Joemar also found some of the nudibranchs that look like flesh colored soft corals… which I’ve been looking for every time I see a small patch of the soft coral that could instead be a slug. Oh and last but not least, there was a HUGE sea snake. I guess maybe they aren’t so uncommon after all!

For the night dive we went to twin rocks, where we did our first dive of the trip. It wasn’t super productive but there were some good finds… a mantis shrimp with eggs, which was the first of the trip.  Five cuttlefish, ranging from really small to pretty average sized. Of course the really small one was the first one that we found. They were all quite skittish and not well behaved photo subjects :(. And right before the end of the dive, Joemar pointed out a big crab wearing clothing.  I’m not sure what it was that he had on its back, it was probably a piece of a palm fronds or something, but it was a sheet of something fibrous that kind of looked like a burlap sack. I’m not sure if it was stuck to the crab intentionally (like a decorator crab) or not, but I wasn’t going to try to undress the crab. 

I had a mudslide before dinner. It was on the specials list, and I wanted something creamy. And I’m a sucker for drink specials. It was no mango colada.