We were successful although conditions were impacted by the approaching hurricane. Weather was good, waves were a bit high, but nothing difficult. Visibility was down and as I’ve mentioned before, when you’ve been diving for a while, in these cases, you look closer for the small stuff. Big stuff does sometimes come right up to you, but mostly you see it from a distance and turn in that direction. The exceptions are eels and octopus as they aren’t out in the open anyway. Not a single eel on either dive and I haven’t seen an octopus in ages. We did the two smaller shallow wrecks and there were lots of the “regulars” I enjoy. In fact, I saw a juvenile queen angel, then realized there was another one; the smallest one I have ever seen. Still brightly colored and cute as could be. There were several rock beauties on the second dive and in what was a surprise, there was a rock beauty and a queen angel in the same spot. Don’t know if Hubby’s photo will come out. I hope so as it will make a nice piece. On the second dive, there were four large barracuda and that made for a good shot, too.

We did go see the yellow-headed jaw fish on the second dive before we went over to the wreck. Oh, both of these are genuine wrecks, so it’s really more “wreckage” as there’s very little that looks like a vessel any longer. On the Hannah Bell though, when Hurricane Irma came through a few years ago, the cannon off in the sand was uncovered. Not a huge cannon, but hey it is a cannon. Oh, in coming back from the second dive, there were like two dozen jellyfish. I like seeing them and this type is pretty easy to avoid. Their sting isn’t strong; a bit uncomfortable though.

What did make the day a bit special was there weren’t many people on the boat and most were actually from Horizon Divers. The regular crew of two required, two instructors with only a few students between them, and one of the others training for his Captain’s license. It was very “family-like”. If I had known there would be so few, I would have brought cookies or cupcakes.

Scrawled File Fish on Reef

Chromis are seen on most of the local reefs.