Diving
Indigo Divers was booked with a morning charter for the entire week, so I got in 4 days of afternoon dives from Mon through Thurs. Friday afternoon was not possible because it would have been too close to our flight home on Saturday afternoon.
 1 Indigo Divers dock and the "Loo with a View of the Blue" |
 2 First dive of the trip at Little Tunnels dive site. Huge cuts and channels in the reef at 60-70 ft open out to the open blue and the wall that descends another several thousand feet into the abyss. |
 3 Purple club-tipped anemone at Little Tunnels dive site |
 4 School of White Margate Grunts |
 5 Gray Angelfish |
 6 View of the boat before descending down the bow line at Mitch Miller's Reef |
 7 Brittlestars draped inside a purple vase sponge at Mitch Miller's Reef. |
 8 Leopard Flatworm free-swimming to a new resting spot. Not the best picture, since every time I made any slight motion it disturbed the water column and shifted the critter out of focus. |
 9 Valleys of the Moon, or rather a giant head of brain coral at Mitch Miller's Reef |
 10 Schoolmaster Snapper and some grunts under a head of brain coral |
 11 Scrawled Filefish |
 12 Baby sea turtle at Mitch Miller's Reef |
 13 Baby turtle heading for the surface |
 14 Southern Stingray on the sandy bottom with a hitchhiker on board |
 15 Baby turtle at Dolphing Pt. Dropoff |
 16 |
 17 Same baby turtle was still hanging out at the mooring towards the end of the dive |
 18 Baby Turtle |
 19 Banded Coral Shrimp at the Thirteen Trees dive site |
 20 Banded Butterflyfish |
 21 Spotted Trunkfish at Thirteen Trees dive site |
 22 School of Bluestripe Grunts at Thirteen Trees |
 23 Mr. Giant Crabby Pants at Thirteen Trees dive site |
 24 Topography of the Big Dipper dive site |
 25 Lobstah's what's fah dinnah |
 26 French Angelfish at Big Dipper |
 27 Pair of Whitespotted Filefish at Big Dipper dive site |
 28 Stingray trying to find a spot to rest in the sand at Big Dipper dive site |
 29 Yep, that's me. Self portrait waiting to descend on the USS Kittiwake |
 30 Stern of the USS Kittiwake |
 31 Stern of the USS Kittiwake |
 32 USS Kittiwake prop and rudder |
 33 Bow of the Kittiiwake |
 34 Looking up towards the wheelhouse |
 35 Corkscrew Anemone tucked in right where the hull rests in the sand |
 36 Snapper cyclone around the upper rigging |
 37 Schools of grunts and snappers swarm the upper rigging |
 38 Video of the upper deck area and rigging of the USS Kittiwake in Grand Cayman with lots of horse-eye jacks, snapper, and grunts schooling around. |
 39 The Kittiwake wheelhouse |
 40 |
 41 Towards the end of the dive on the USS Kittiwake, I encountered this large Bearded Fireworm, several inches long, crawling around one of the bollards |
 42 Branching coral on the vertical wall at Orange Canyon |
 43 Porcupinefish at Orange Canyon |
 44 Trumpetfish doing its "I'm vertical and pretending to be a plant" disguise |
 45 A Giant Green Moray free swimming at the Orange Canyon dive site |
 46 Large French Angelfish at Lost Treasure dive site |
 47 Pair of Harlequin Bass which only reach a size of 2-3 inches |
 48 Pre-ceviche conch, with some visible brittlestars draping the sponge in the background |
 49 This pair of Porcupinefish seemed inseparable as they cruised the reef |
 50 Scrawled Filefish |
 51 Squirrelfish |
 52 Spotted Scorpionfish at Lost Treasure |