After finding Angel City covered with sand, we scrapped our original plan and decided to dive somewhere that had been protected from the reversal. This meant getting into the nook in the center of the island, so we decided to check out Bachelor Beach. We were a little hesitant, because it’s such a crowded site, as it’s right next to several dive shops and thus often used for introductory dives. And we were totally wrong, because we barely saw anyone and we had an absolutely fantastic dive. We started out heading north, to where the coral restoration project has a small coral garden.
As we started to descend the reef wall, we started to see cool things, like this scrawled filefish, and an unusual daytime slipper lobster.
The coral density isn’t as high as at some other sites, and yet there were still plenty of fish around.
Such as, for example, this big Culebra snapper. (And neighboring foureye butterfly fish, left).
And these blue tangs, which came through in huge quantities. And right, goatfish, not quite as abundant.
Jazz also found this adorable crab. And on our way out of the water, there were squid!
But the star of the show was this guy: a big green moray, at least a meter long, who swam around the reef hunting, seemingly unconcerned about our presence. Seeing these things swim, you definitely understand where dragon legends come from. Somewhere between majestic and terrifying. We have a bunch of video of this guy; we’re hoping we can manage to put together a highlights video of our dives here. Fingers crossed.
