One welcome practice on this boat is that whenever we are diving, an emergency cylinder is hung off the end of the boat at 5m with two regulators attached.
The reason for this is that if you were running low on air (which in itself would be a cardinal sin), you would still be able to do your decompression stop if you could get to the line. It would also be possible for someone to bring the tank down to you if you had to do a decompression stop at depth and were getting low on air. It also marks our boat quite distinctively from under the water, something which is useful when there are a number of boats moored above you.
Dive 3 Habil Ali St John’s
After a 12 hour overnight trip south, we get to St Johns which roughly straddles the Tropic of Cancer. This is to be a four dive day with the first dive at around 7 am so it is a 6.30 am wakeup, immediate briefing and into the water before breakfast.
The plan is for a Rib drop-off with negative buoyancy, down to 30m+ and then reef on the left, fin back to the boat. The reef is mainly hard and soft corals, some large fan coral and is often the home to various sharks
At 30m, the wall shows mainly small corals. However, this time at depth there are
few big fish other than a Moray hiding in a crevice. Higher up (around 15m) are numerous shoals of Antheas
the first serious shoal of the trip
which chooses to hang vertically against the reef wall
and then numerous varieties of coral
which helpfully stay still whilst having their picture taken
which is different to fish who normally turn away just as you have pressed the button
or get too close to the lens for a full shot.
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