Shortly after giving up the Carcycle, our name made it to the top of the list for the Rust Bucket, and we found ourselves with once-per-week wheels. We rolled them south to Wannadive, to pick up nitrox tanks, and then on to Larry’s Lair. Someone had reported seeing a whale shark passing through further north, and while we figured it was probably long gone, we should hang out in the rough area, somewhere with deep water, in case we got lucky. (We did not get lucky in that way, but we were scuba diving, so we can’t really complain.)
Like many sites along this part of the coast, Larry’s Lair is a double-reef site. But the first reef descends to 100 feet, and the second isn’t visible from the first, so we didn’t feel the need to cross the sand channel.
The swim out to the first reef is some 500 feet, which helps explain how few people were there along with us. Since our arrival, tourism had picked up considerably, and it became rare for us to be the only car in the parking lot. As we made the swim, Jazz picked up a friend: this angelfish decided she was interesting and swam around her for a while. The moray was shocked at its audacity.
This was a good dive for fish. Here’s a big school of creole wrasse, which seem to have two modes: either they stream through like an orderly river, or they’re all going totally different directions in complete chaos.
It was also a good day for pairs, like these barracuda, butterflies, and schoolmaster snappers.
Or like these crevalle jacks, which were swimming back and forth, in formation, with purpose and resolve.
There were also some singletons, like this trumpetfish, jack, and moray.
Or like this creepy… siphonophore(?) which we very much did not touch. Or the graysby and sand tilefish on the right.
The coral formations were really excellent. We haven’t seen a ton of fan coral here, so that was neat. And up nearer to the shore, there’s a big patch of staghorn coral.
