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Published: July 18th 2011
Life is an amazing thing. Naturally, it's easy to say so when you are stationed on one of the world's most beautiful islands. Yes, the past week has gone quite well indeed. Since I was waiting for my advisor to arrive in Roatan on Thursday, I was "forced" to spend the week fun diving with some of the best divers I have ever seen! The crew from Depth Perception in Tampa was here for a week and almost instantaneously adopted me into their fabulous family. It's easy to get spoiled with you're in the water with 5 divemasters and instructors. I have been in the water more than I ever would have imagined, sometimes doing 4 dives a day!
The reefs off the coast are simply amazing. Brilliant corals and sponges are teaming with tropical fish and invertebrates. The best news is that I have even seen six hawksbills in the past week, and 2 others were spotted by divers on the second boat. The little guys are around, now it's just a matter of tracking them down and wrasslin' them into a boat! However, I have loads of photos to sort through now, thanks to some great friends who hooked
me up while I was waiting for my camera housing to arrive.
As I mentioned, my advisor arrived on Thursday and came by Fantasy on Friday to give Christi and I our tagging training and drop off the remainder of my gear. Since my tagging practice was on a piece of cardboard with a flipper drawn on it (seriously.), I am still a little nervous about the real thing. It can't be much worse than PIT-tagging a manatee, though, right? Hopefully all of my limbs and joints can stay in tact this time.
Since Friday was a crazy night of celebration and goodbyes to the DP crew, Saturday was a little rough around the edges. The sunrise was quite impressive, though. :-) We'll get to that later. Since the wind has been blowing constantly since Friday, the waters were not exactly inviting to sleepy divers. We decided to test out my sonic tags and hydrophone in the bay in front of the shop instead. After some impressive handywork by the maintenance man (burning PVC for a perfect fitting hydrophone mount), and some additive headaches, I had the receiver set up and we decided to give it a shot. We slapped
some sonic transmitters on my "turtle" Christi and she went for a swim in the bay! I hope that her turtle-like behaviors were accurate, because I was able to track her for about 75 meters. Not what I was hoping for, but not bad for never having worked the machine! We had some issues with the radio tags as well, but I learned today that smacking them on a hard surface makes them start transmitting. Who knew?
Unfortunately, though I am pretty much trained up on a lot of this stuff, I STILL can't put the transmitters on because we haven'e found a captain/boat to use for the tracking. This may be difficult because on this side of the island people cater to wealthy tourists and charge entirely too much for boat chartering. Hopefully I can find someone willing to do the job, but it may be a challenge. On the bright side, though, I am meeting lots and lots of locals and new people who are full of great suggestions and contacts. I'm sure it will work out,but might take a bit longer. However, we have been cleared to bring an animal back here to at least start collecting
genetic, stable isotope, and gut content samples, as well as marking and flipper tagging them for at least local underwater identification. Christi and I are both getting pretty antsy to start doing some actual work, but I really love my lazy lifestyle.
So back to the fun stuff you really want to hear about... I had the best time with the FL gang. At least I have a semi-valid excuse for no blog updates. They were all such sweet people and lots of fun. I was able to go on 2 night dives with them, both from the front yard here, out to the DC-3 and shipwreck about 50 meters from the dock. I was a bit apprehensive for the first night dive, but was with 3 very competent divers and found myself absolutely mesmerized by the way the ocean comes to life at night. We did a swim through on the wreck and saw some huge grouper and sleepy, fluorescent reef fishes. On the way back I was thrilled to see my first octopus, with many more to come. Although eerie, it's a pretty cool feeling to gaze into the black unknown. I was instantly hooked!
Wednesday night I
was stoked to take an accelerated Nitrox certification class from one of the FL instructors and was diving Nirtox (a higher oxygen concentration air blend) by the next morning! Very cool and very lucky! Christi arrived on Thursday night and I went with the bus driver to meet her at the docks. Unfortunately, this meant missing the weekly boat night dive (and the first adult hawksbill), but did give me a chance to see a bit of French Harbour and Coxen Hole and see how the locals really live. I must admit, it felt a bit more like the Honduras I know and love. I am sad to admit this, but aside from a trip to get pizza in attempt to skip the monotonous buffet, it was my only time leaving Fantasy Island. I did, however, meet another Floridian who is originally from here (and is a cousin of the "FIR" mansion up on the hill for those of you who know what I'm talking about). He offered to take Christi and I to the West End for a little island tour this week. We will most definitely be getting in on that. Maybe we'll get lucky and get to
see the mansion, too. However, given my housing conditions, I stand by my choice to stay on this little paradise cay in the meantime.
Having Christi here is a great change, and couldn't have come with better timing. We had a great time on Friday, playing some games I hadn't played since college (use your imagination) and taking a moonlit swim in the bay. Of course, no moonlit swim would be complete without a few face flops off the platform by Noel, but it made for an entertaining evening/morning! The crew headed out the next morning, and I was pleasantly surprised by my ability to drag myself out of bed early enough to see them off. I'm still wandering around slightly lost without them, but the good news is that I am determined to make a little reunion happen when I'm back in the Fort in December. Jupiter, WBP, Sharktooth, Keys?? Suggestions welcome, and I'll even brave the "cold" water for y'all. :-)
Alright, since I am still not fully rested and recovered from the weekend my diatribe will have to end for the night. Wish you all could be here, it's just really tough to get a visitor into
an all-inclusive resort. I do know a boat with a bed available, but the owner is a wee bit (okay, a lot of bit) cooky. But hey, it might be worth it? Hope all is well and would love to hear from you soon!
Con mucho amor,
Noel
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Tracy
non-member comment
Paradise
Excellent recap. Out of all of my dives the past few dives with you on Roatan are the ones that will shine the brightest in my memory. I look forward to reading your future posts.