Eat, Dive, Sleep, Repeat

The title of this post pretty accurately describes our time on the dive boat.  It was really fun, but we were exhausted by the end of the trip.  Diving is more tiring than you would think.  We got up Saturday, ate first breakfast which was typically cereal, fruit, and yogurt and did our first dive at a site called Shark Reef.  We did this dive with a guide and saw unicorn fish, gray reef sharks, a large silvertip shark, and a dogtooth tuna.  I really enjoyed this dive and felt like I was swimming in an aquarium with all of the coral and the large number and variety of fish.  Our second dive (after second breakfast which was a large cooked breakfast) was also at Shark Reef and we saw three types of butterflyfish-big longnose, threadfin, and pyramid.  We also saw large plate coral.

Big Longnose Butterflyfish

"Sleeping" on the plate coral-look how big it is!

We would often have an hour or so between dives-just enough time to read a little, listen to a lecture on fish identification, or take a short nap.  A couple of times we thought of skipping a dive, but with only having three days of diving we wanted to get the most out of it.  Dive three was at Osprey Reef and called Southern Wall.  This was a beautiful wall dive.

Pyramid Butterflyfish

We had lunch and did our last two dives at Admirality Anchor.  This was a unique dive site with great mounds of coral and sandy channels.  We saw sharks again, a stingray, and a clown triggerfish on dive four. 


White Tip Reef Shark



Stingray

Clown Triggerfish

Schooling Fish under the boat

 Our fifth and final dive for the day was a night dive again.  We saw some flashlight fish which have an organ below their eyes that glows in the dark.  We also saw huge sea stars and a school of bumphead parrotfish.  We had dinner-carvery night with carved pork, lamb, roasted veggies, and apple crisp for dessert followed by bedtime.