Adam’s blog day 7

Our first dive was at a new (to us) dive site, called Doolittle’s, that had the wall common to the area, but also had three free standing pinnacles. On dropping over the wall, I dropped straight onto some patrolling Caribbean reef sharks (Carcharhinus perezi). The wall was very pretty, with lots of barrel sponges and smaller fish life.

I spent some time trying to model for Alex, but I find keeping my legs absolutely straight really unnatural!

Alex testing his housing’s buoyancy on the safety stop.

Second dive (the Club Med boats do a two tank morning dive) was on Pinnacle Reef, again a straightforward dive along the wall. Alex was shooting fish on cleaning stations, having not been able to find the fingerprint cyphoma that we had been told were around. Once again, the reef was vey pretty with clear blue water and lots of life.

The last member of our happy band arrived while we were enjoying our lunch and surface interval at Club Med. Emmy Award winning filmmaker Cristian Dimitrius has been travelling around the various venues that comprise the Bahamas Underwater Photo Week, with us being his fourth and last island for the week. Well they save the best till last I’m told…

No sooner had he got here that he was shooting! One of Christian’s signatures is that he dives in a camo freediving wetsuit “to blend in with the local environment”.

He was so well camouflaged that we lost sight of him lying on the dive boat floor..

We dived Grouper Gully that we had dived earlier in the week. Christian was keen to get some footage of Alex “in action” and the friendly Nassau groupers (Epinephelus striatus) at the site were an ideal subject for this.

While all that was going on, I made myself scarce so as not to “photobomb” what they were doing and amused myself shooting some beautiful coral heads on the reef.

I also managed to get a few shots of Christian during his safely stop.

Most of this week has been a very sober affair, with Alex and I concentrating largely on our work. The arrival of Christian has meant that we re-discovered that the package kindly supplied to us by Club Med includes free drinks!

So we sat in the sun and caught up on our emails with a beer!

Tomorrow is our last day of diving, and we are looking forward to three more great dives. I have had a request for technical info about the equipment used by the shooters on the shoot, and I will post these later.

After our day’s diving Jay Johnson, our excellent local fixer, took us for a guided tour of the island. We showed us some San Salvador Iguanas (Cyclura rileyi rileyi) which are unique to the area, and then we went on to the Dixon Hill light, which was built in 1887 and still runs on kerosene to this day.

On the way back we passed an area of water that had a load of interesting bird life.

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