Smmcdonald
Bahamas
-
Nº66
Date: 2016-03-28 - 08:20
-
Max Depth: 23.9m Duration: 24mins
Dive Location
- Temp: Surf 27°C Bottom 25°C
- Dive type : Reef
- Water: Salt
Specific gear used
- Weights: 4.5 kg
Recent Divers in exumas
Recent Pictures in exumas
Link to this spot:
- Spot:
- Country:
- Area:
- Body of water:
Dive Profile
- 1. Air
- 10L Aluminium 193 → 57 bar
- Average depth: 13.9m
Data provided by EOL.org
Species Identified
Share on Social Networks
- Facebook:
personalize your shared text as well as its destination (wall, page...) or send as a private message to a friend
- Twitter: Tweet personalize your tweet
- Google Plus:
Direct link to this dive
- Long link:
- Short link:
We are participating today in the startup contest Techcrunch Disrupt. Support Diveboard by voting for us!
Jen got to dive with us today! Her toe feels better and she was determined to jump in. One of our dive buddies let her borrow a dive sock, and I think that helped a lot.
This was a short dive, but deep for a reef. We made our way down to the line where we saw a large lion fish in a hole near the mooring. They are beautiful fish, just too bad they are so invasive and destructive to the native reef habitat.
A few yards from the mooring line, the reef shelf dropped away to a sandy bottom with scattered reef "mounds". There we were greeted with schools of blue chromis and large Bermuda chubs. We swam as a large group exploring the mounds of reefs along the bottom where I noticed quite a bit of sponge-like growth on most of the coral. Yellow-green in color, it seemed to engulf most everything.
Other notable fish species included a large blue parrotfish and a queen angel. It's likely this reef was once very beautiful, but the growth of that sponge-like algae (?) dampened the color and there seemed to be an absence of marine life that we had experienced yesterday. I'm not sure if the algae is a cause or an effect, but I would bet the latter. Truth is, I'm not sure what the stuff is. I can't find much online about it, but looking at earlier videos (2015), looked like there wasn't much of the stuff there, although the reef appeared to be bleached in spots.
All-in-all a good dive, and the first deep dive we've done so far, but a reminder of how fragile these ecosystems are and how quickly they can be affected.