Grand Cayman Day 5

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

We got up about 6:20 a.m. and had our breakfast and headed down to the east end to Ocean Frontiers for our three-tank safari trip. We boarded the boat and headed out about 8:30 a.m. We traveled for about an hour to reach our first dive site called Babylon. Our first dive was to about 100 feet. We did not see anything remarkable critter wise, but there were some very beautiful coral formations on the wall.

We all climbed back onto the boat for the trip to the second dive site, Sting Ray City. The water here was only about 12 feet deep. Everyone basically formed a giant circle around the dive master who had the bucket of squid. The dive master then made his way around to each person and fed the sting rays right in front of and around them so they could pet the sting rays and get pictures, etc. The feeding frenzy went on for about 40 minutes and then we all got back on the boat. I got lots of video of the sting rays and the other fish who were trying to collect some scraps. At one point I thought Eric had come over and touched me on the shoulder. I turned slowly to see what he wanted and was staring into a large red eye of a very large fish who was hiding behind my head. We sat there looking at each other for a few minutes. Most of the time we were down this large fish hung right around me. Eric said for a good portion of the time he was parked right underneath my butt.

After the Sting Ray City dive we headed toward land and had a very good lunch at Kaibo. After lunch we all climbed back aboard the boat and headed out for another hour plus trip to our final dive site, Snapper Hole. Eric and I decided to do our own thing on this dive so we could take our time taking pictures and video. We saw more fish and anywhere we have been before. I got lots of good video of schools and schools of fish. There were fish everywhere. Unfortunately, we did not see any sharks on any of our dives today, but just about the time we were ready to get out of the water on the last dive we saw the biggest turtle we have ever seen. Unfortunately, he/she was too far away to get any good pictures or video.

We then made the trip back to Ocean Frontiers from the third dive site, arriving about 4:30 p.m. It was a very full day, but a very enjoyable day of diving.