Sunday, April 18, 2010

Rebreather Week over Easter Holidays in Grenada

This Rebreather week were all evolution and inspiration divers - where are the others? Weather and sea conditions played along; nice calm seas allowed us to dive all the Atlantic wrecks. We started off with a 3 hour warm up dive along the Grenada Marine Park Wall. Stopping for Photo Ops at the Car Pile and Bucaneer wreck. The next day it was down to the stern of Bianca C - yes the reef shark passed by again - followed by dives at wrecks, wrecks wrecks - Hema 1, King Mitch, San Juan, Bianca C bow and mid ship, Shakem and a dive at Lighthouse Reef.
Our next rebreather weeks are set for mid June, 3 weeks in August, mid October and mid November. Hope to see you here for one of these days!


Diving King Mitch on Rebreather


Long time waiting - finally weather and sea allow for Gerlinde to dive King Mitch - the famous Atlantic wreck on Rebreather! I am looking forward to it in anticipation; how will the family of eagle rays react on these "yellow back turtles"? What will the resident hawksbill think of these strange looking creatures? Sure they don't make bubbles and are not noisy as these other humans visiting, but they are not to mate with or?
The sea is still choppy but we can cope and within a few minutes Bugsy gets us to the side. A few open circuit divers go first, we follow. The current is probably two knots, I am holding on to the descent line and hope it eases a bit on the ground. Well it does not, but what a show! We just sit inside the deck looking out like an U-boot commander on the tower and enjoying the show - hundreds of barracudas cruising, eagle rays just playing in the current, nurse sharks piling up on the ground to rest and the resident turtles - 3 - are just annoyed by these yellow creatures! Once the open circuit divers are on their back up, the wild life comes closer and you see how they use the wreck as a playground if no diver disturbs the peace.
The current eases a bit, so we try to get closer to that pile of nurse sharks. Unfortunately they are nervous and start swimming in circles around the wreck. After our computer shows us 15 minutes deco, we decide it is time for us too to get back to the surface. We shoot up our marker buoy - about 10 large barracudas shooting with it trying to catch it - we should have filmed it!
On our ascent an eagle ray shortly checks us out, than we hang at the safety stop contemplating this great dive.