April Leonard
- April Leonard's trip Utila 2019
We saw a yellow sting ray shortly after we jumped in. We say many arrow crabs, some banded coral shrimp, and flamingo tongues. The visibility wasn't great and there were a lot of particulates in the water. There were purple tunicates on a lot of soft coral and basket stars.
There was a lot of black coral at this dive site. We swam through a cavern which was fun. We didn't see a lot of exciting life on this dive. Again, the visibility wasn't the best and a lot of particulates in the water (plankton = whale sharks?). We did see something at the end - cold be a flatworm of some sort or could be some coral.
With this dive, Justin and I started diving on our own. We saw a big green moray eel, some banded coral shrimp, cleaning shrimp, and a grouper at a cleaning station. There were a lot of jelly fish around the safety stop.
This was a really beautiful dive and probably my favorite of this Roatan/Utila trip so far. The coral was very healthy - there was black coral, big pillar coral, elkhorn coral, and a lot of soft coral. We saw a drum, a cowfish, a trunkfish, and a tarpon. We found a swim-through part way through the dive. This was a great one!
This is Utila's wreck dive. It's smaller than the Aguila and Odyssey on Roatan but I enjoyed it more because it was fully intact. There was a lot of live on the wreck. We may do it later this week as a night dive.
This was a beautiful dive - it was a big sandy hole surrounded by reef. We saw a toad fish, star fish, a lot of finger coral, a cowfish, several peacock founders, conchs, banded coral shrimp, a big hermit crab, etc. We got our fingers cleaned by a cleaning shrimp. Towards the middle of the dive, we swam over to see Ron's wreck - a small sunken boat.
We did the wreck dive again at night. It was really cool - kind of eerie! We saw a green moray eel and a tube dwelling anemone. As we were ascending after the dive, we turned off our lights and saw some bioluminescence.
First dive for our self reliant course. We did a buoyancy check, switched to our secondary air source, and deployed our safety sausage. The reef structure here was very nice but not a lot of life.
Second dive for our self reliant course. We had to swim without our mask for 2 min, breath from our secondary air source for 30 sec, and deploy our sausage. A beautiful dive! We saw a molted lobster, a toadfish, a juvenile french angel, a pygmy file fish, conchs, a huge hermit crab and two spotted moray eels. I didn't have my camera because we were doing skills - I was sad to be without it!
This was Justin's check-out dive for self-reliant so I joined the rest of the fun divers. The visibility wasn't great. We saw a bunch of up-side-down jelly fish. Not a great dive - too many people around.
This was my self-reliant check-out dive. Diving alone was really cool! At the end, I saw what I thought might have been a flat worm on an earlier dive. This time I could tell it was some sort of corallimorph.
A great night dive! We saw a channel crab, lobsters, a crab carrying some coral across the sand, a conch eating, a toad fish, a small sting ray, a hermit crab, a flat black fish (sole?), a spotted moray, and banded coral shrimp. Justin wasn't feeling well so he didn't come on this dive.
The was a fun dive! I saw a mantis shrimp towards the top of the drop-off. Throughout most of the dive, we kept hearing toad fish but we never saw one. We saw a lionfish and a sting ray. Justin wasn't feeling well still so he didn't come out of the two dives today
This was a great final dive! There was a cave that we swam through and a swim-through at the safety stop. We saw a lot of lobsters. I saw a pygmy file fish.
We are participating today in the startup contest Techcrunch Disrupt. Support Diveboard by voting for us!
