Pioneering New Dive Sites

Wow, what a week, where to start. The week began by me driving to the airport to get the guests, driving again was fun!! I soon picked up that the group (9 people) where all from a group called Seacology, a non-profit foundation who develop projects for islands around the work, check it out www.Seacology.org.

This charter has been an exploratory trip of the islands of the southern Bahamas and most of the dive sites did not have names or had even been dived previous to our arrival!! This was a cool because we had to name the dive sites as we went along, possibly the only time I’ll get to explore places other people have never been before which is pretty special. Most of the islands where uninhabited and so naturally we jumped in the dingy and went exploring between dives. The diving was varied but my main aim was to spot an oceanic white tip but no luck this week, however we are now running this charter for the next three weeks so there is still a chance. Oceanic White tip sharks are endangered, they also have the worst reputation for attacks, they truly are the masters of the ocean. We dive an island called conception which is where im going to concentrate my search. Conception is a small uninhabited island that’s sits just on the edge of the Atlantic ocean and there is no other land until Africa from its shore line.

The other portion of our trip has been installing new mooring pins for us to use on our return to the dive sites. We all took it in turns to be on the drill team and it’s a fun, exiting and different side to being a diver. We drilled using a hydraulic drill then set the pins and finally setting them in place with either cement or epoxy depending on the type of mooring. An education for me but fun, something different, keeping it varied again.

When we arrived at San Salvador the Seacology group departed for land to attend an opening ceremony. The group had funded an new conservation centre for the iguanas that are indigenous to the Bahamas. All seemed to go well for them and they returned to the boat for another dive. No rest for us it just gave us an opportunity to get some routine maintenance done on the boat.

All in all its been a good week, I can not believe its been a month. We now spend three weeks out of George Town, Great Exzuma, Bahamas. It’s a change of pace and hopefully it will be fun, exploring new dive sites and looking out for the elusive Oceanic White Tip Shark.