Adam’s blog day 6

Our complicated schedule became simpler today as we sadly said good bye to Riding Rock’s dive operations (thanks Captain Bruce) and went over to dive with Club Med. Our “fixer” from the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Jay Johnson, took us over to Club Med, where we met with JP, the manager of the dive center on the resort.

We set out on the Club Med boat, Torpedo Ray, a large purpose designed dive boat. Our first dive took us out to Telegraph Pole Wall, which we had dived yesterday. After a 35 minute steam, we geared up and dropped into the water.

On our previous visit, we had found a large school of grunts, which Alex has been shooting with his wide-angle set up. Today, he was shooting macro and was able to capture cleaning behavior in the school.

Alex also shot some macro of a triplefin (Enneanectes altivelis), and lots of other subjects.

Our second dive was on Bull Run, a mere 5 or so minutes from the Club Med jetty.

Once again, this featured some schools of grunts, and a few Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus perezi) were cruising the wall too. There was a series of fissures in the hardpan floor, which Alex decided to explore!

There were also lots of barrel sponges and soft corals.

In order to be very modern, he also shot some selfies! What the image doesn’t show is that I managed to get something on the inside of my mask and it was fogging up repeatedly throughout the dive-that is why I look a bit myopic…

The Club Med boats have a safety stop bar, although I am not sure that they are designed to be used like a swing…

Wednesday is the changeover day at Club Med, so they do not run an afternoon dive. JP kindly organised for us to join a snorkelling boat which was headed out to a shallow wreck at North Cay. This had lots of interesting structures around and plentiful life. Alex climbed into one of the boilers in order to capture this picture of me:

When he was emerging from his new “home”, he decided to mimic the roughhead blenny (Acanthemblemaria aspera) that he shot yesterday.

What with it being a snorkelling boat, it seemed apt to also include some snorkellers in the frame:

Lionfish (Peterois volitans) are a bit of a complicated issue in the Caribbean, as the local species are struggling to find an effective antidote to these superbly efficient predators. There is no doubt however that they make for wonderful photographic subjects.

1. Introduction.
2. Adam’s blog day 5
3. Abi on Deep Water Cay
4. Adam’s blog day 6
5. Abi at Green Turtle Cay
6. Abi at Green Turtle Cay day 2
7. Adam’s blog day 7
8. Adam’s blog day 8