Grand Cayman--Diving

Several dives over the past few days have not yielded many good pictures. In part that was due to some cloudiness and depths that were in the shadows. Bob doesn't use lights except for night diving. And then there is always the occasional camera malfunction. On one dive, the viewing screen would not come on. What a shame. We had a perfect rock/coral formation that looked like a buckeye.

Here are a few that came out nicely though. Turtles are always a fun thing to find underwater. While they are slow and cumbersome on land, they are very graceful and adept swimming underwater. They are also great free-divers. This one we saw was down about 80 feet but obviously headed up for a gulp of air. They feed on vegetation on the reefs. He was non-plussed and almost seemed to pose.

Bob posed me beside the pillar coral we found. The polyps of the coral are out during the day giving this beauty a velvety look. Pillar coral only grows 1/4 inch each year so this one has been around for quite a long time. I, on the other hand, seem to grow in circumference by at least that much in less than a year.

We often give the divemasters a hard time about the names of the dive sites. We accuse them of making them up. Each one always has a story. Dragon's Lair is named for the rocky formation you see in the picture. It was a bit hazy underwater but you can make out the open mouth of the dragon and if you look closely, there's some finger coral growing out of the mouth as if it were flames from a fire breathing dragon.

Another story is associated with naming The Fish Tank site. As it goes, a group of divers were giving the divemaster a hard time so on the next site, he claimed that National Geographic had built a huge aquarium underwater at the site to protect an area they wanted to study. He told the divers that since it was thick glass, it couldn't be seen underwater and they should dive with arms extended in front of them to avoid hitting their heads into the glass aquarium walls. Not until they got underwater did the divemaster realize they'd all taken him seriously. They swam with their arms extended the whole dive. No one bumped his head.

Other Grand Cayman Posts:
Hell Has a Zip Code
Caribbean Road Signs
Seahorse