June 1, 2008 - The "United Caribbean" and "The Sanctuary" Reef

Hello everyone.

Sunday, June 1st finds the Video Dude heading out for an afternoon dive aboard Parrot Island Scuba's "Fish Food", accompanied again by Scuba Goddess Terri and this time joined by Dive Diva Heather. Terri and I planned to do some wreck penetrations today and visit some areas of the ship we hadn't seen before. Heather loves the wrecks because of all the shells she can find, so that was her plan for the day. Also on the boat were friends (and former dive club members) John and Kathy, who were planning on doing some underwater photography. A perfectly fabulous afternoon for diving as the seas were flat, sun was bright and water was in the low 80s.

Captain Mikey gets us out to the "United Caribbean" with his usual skill and Divemaster Chris jumps in to tie off to the wreck. Chris reports excellent conditions down below and we get geared up and jump in. We head straight down as quickly as possible in order to give Terri and I enough time for our planned penetrations and we meet at the wreck. We take a brief tour around the outside of the wreck before deciding on an entry point to try out. We did several of these entry points and got to see some new areas (at least they were new to me!). It really was a lot of fun and we paid close attention to every detail both on the wreck and in our procedures.

We still had a little time left, so we swam over to the "Rubble Pile" to check out the fish life over there. There are three rubble piles between the "United Caribbean" and the "Sea Emperor", which usually makes it easy to navigate between the wrecks on the same dive. After a few minutes, we have to head back for the ascent line and head back up to the boat. After getting back on board, we discover Heather has found a treasure trove of shells and everyone takes a peek at what she found.

After our surface interval, Captain Mikey drops us off on "The Sanctuary" reef. That was cool because we had just done it the night before, and now we get to see it during the day! An awesome reef night or day, we drifted along the bottom edge of the ledge looking for the smaller critters and shells. We saw Yellowhead Jawfish, Blennies, Arrow Crabs, Banded Shrimps, a school of Squid, a Snook, Blue Angelfish, Rock Beauties, and so much more. Another nice relaxing dive with over an hour bottom time!

What a weekend of diving in Paradise this has been! Good friends and excellent dive buddies make it all that much more fun! Let's do it again real soon!

The Video Dude