Nekton Pilot

With my gear still damp from the SingleDivers SE Florida gathering we boarded Aug. 28th. The topic of conversation among the 28 divers was of course “where is hurricane Frances going”.
Sunday morning we cleared Bahamas customs at West End Grand Bahama and then went diving at Indian Cay, a nice reef but not a lot of life. We moved on to Scoto’s Reef, again a nice reef with caves and swim thru’s but the ripping current swept most of fish life and some of the divers away. The Captain moves the Pilot again, this time to the Sugar Wreck, with the exception of a lot of machinery this is a flattened wreck but covered with tons of schooling fish plus the usual cast of tropicals hiding among the wreck and best of all, only a moderate current. We do a 63 min. dive and then need to get out for dinner, after sunset we are back in for another 52 min.
Monday morning finds us heading south to avoid Hurricane Frances. At Bimini we dive the Thumbnail, I could spend a few days on this site but we only get two dives. It’s an 80’ deep plateau with vertical walls on three sides dropping to 130’. The walls are covered in fans, black coral and tube sponges, below us I see a Permit being cleaned and Southern Rays on the sand. The top of the plateau is a patch reef with huge barrel sponges, lots of macro stuff and Herbie the octopus.
We move again to Hawksbill, which is a patch reef and home to Rays, Eels, turtles to tunicates and everything in between, we do the usual before and after dinner dives.
Tuesday morning during breakfast we are told that Frances is headed for the NW Bahamas so we are going to Cay Sal Bank, which is about 40 miles north of Cuba.
We do two dives on Last Chance Reef at Orange Cay; again this is a patch reef at 61’ with a lot of small stuff. The Nektons support vessel ties up with us and transfers 1000 gallons of fuel for the extended itinerary. During lunch we move to the Playground, a shallow horseshoe shaped ledge with a patch reef in the middle. Lot’s of small stuff here except on the night dive for here lives the biggest Loggerhead I have ever seen.
Wednesday morning we are at the Big Hole a.k.a. Shark Hole for 2 dives. This is a 400’ deep blue hole but on the sand patch just inside the rim it’s Jawfish city, these guys come farther out of their holes than any other place I’ve seen so the photogs were totally ignoring the Caribbean reef sharks around them, well not totally!
During lunch the Pilot made a short move to Silversides, this is a smaller diameter blue hole that gets it’s name from a swim thru at 80’that’s filled with Silversides, the briefing neglected to mention that a reef shark sometimes follows the diver through. You should have seen the eyes of the divers waiting to enter when the shark exited! Like most blue holes the life is around the rim and the upper 30’ of the wall is covered in Fairy Basslets. We do 2 day dives and a night dive here, nothing like having a shark visible at the edge of your light to make a night dive more exciting. For some reason squid don’t like the focus light on the Olympus 5050, as soon as I depressed the shutter they were gone.
It was decided that with the size of Hurricane Frances Cay Sal Bank might not be safe or diveable either and all 3 Nekton boats headed for Key West Florida, we were entertained on the way by a pod of about 20 dolphins playing on the bows.
The Nekton organization went out of it’s way trying to get people other flights out but with it being Labor Day weekend and large evacuations going on that was impossible, the guest were offloaded into hotels in KW, feed and driven to Duval St., some well past the length of the cruise till they could get flights out and then driven to whatever airport. We have been told we will be getting a credit for the missed days of diving.

Exiting the Silversides swim thru

Wow! Sounds like a pretty good trip despite the hurricane! Going to go back for more sometime?

This is why the Big Hole is also called Shark Hole!

Found this little guy on Last Chance reef. And Marvel I'll probably use the credit for the Belize itinerary.

Flamingo slow dancing at the Playground

Beautiful pics, Ray!

Those are awesome! Thanks for sharing. I especially like the first one!

Some hitch hikers on the way to Key West

Great report, great pics! Sounds like Capt. Ephey took great care of y'all and tried to make the best of the weather situation until they had to come in for safety. Not bad if you get a credit towards a future trip - you should definitely do the Belize itin. I did the Central Belize itinerary in May right before they moved the boat to the Bahamas for the summer. It was a blast. The crew was wonderful (Matt, Donna, Rob, Mendi, Brett, Franklin, John, Bob, and Ephey were on at the time) and the the dives were spectacular. I love it when you can start your dive on a wall and finish on the shallow reef - best of both I say!

Thanks for sharing - brought back great memories for me!

Ray - Glad you had a good trip although the itinery changed. Many of the same sights I on the Cay Sal Bank tirp. Playground was one of my favorites - probably the best night dive I've had.

I have a really stupid question, but I'm new at this underwater camera thing. Why is the shark picture green and not blue? The water looks blue in the rest of the pictures.

Well Sophia, I'm kind of new to the digital stuff and still trying to figure out the Olympus 5050. I've heard but haven't tried yet that setting the white balance using a slate underwater will improve the colors but ALL of the shots over the turtle grass have a green cast. I'd post one of the Southern Stingrays to show you but they aren't on this computer yet.
The best colors are when you get close and the flash lights them up or your shallow and shooting up to get the blue.

I just got back from using my 5060 for the first time. The flash didn't go off all the time, and I got a lot of blue pictures. That's why I was wondering about the green.

All of my pictures of Jawfish and Octopus are green, I guess between it being shallow, well lit and the white sand the flash didn't feel it was needed. I still need to learn how to force it and I have yet to get the macro to work u/w. The picture of the shrimp was not in macro mode, I just got lucky!