A day to dive.....

Wow, what a day to spend underwater...  Sunday I decided to give diving at Gordon's rocks another chance, since I was surprisingly underwhelmed my first time there.  The surge had been extremely strong, the visibility was poor, and we didn't see the hammerheads very well...  Ahhh, but this time was different!!!

On our first dive at North Seymour, after about 5 mins below the surface, we watch a group of eagle rays glide lazily past over a bed of garden eels.  For those of you unfamiliar with garden eels, they are a small eel that lives in the sand, with only their heads sticking out, they venture out only slightly to collect food in the area, while leaving the lower half of their body in the sand.  When predators pass overhead, they retract into their sandy tunnel.  They are quite cute, because they look like a bed of grass from a distance.  After, we saw a small group of hammerheards glide past, but their presence was fleeting.  Next, we watched a giant black marbled ray eating something out of the sand, and when it was finished, it simply glided between the circle of land-lubber onlookers on its way out...

After spotting a few small white-tips sharks doozing in a cavern, I managed to get a beautiful picture of a boxfish who practically posed fo rmy photo!  Thanks dude!  And then, to make things better, our group of hammerheads decided to come back for another pass.  For such an odd looking creature, they are still the picture of grace and  beauty....

Ahhh, OK, time to come up for air!!  A modest snack of bread with jam and "squeaky cheese" (the local type of cheese...  seriously, it squeaks when you chew it) was just the thing I needed to warm up.  A 7mm wetsuit and I was still a bit chilled down there!

And with a new tank on my back (which somehow came off underwater and had to be put back on....  tsk tsk, I should change my tanks myself!), we were off to see Gordon's Rocks.  After dropping down to 80 ft, we saw several marine turtles in the area, who seemed totally indifferent to our presence.  A 8 ft galapagos shark in the diastance cought everyone's attention, and when we turned around to head back in the direction of our dive plan....  WHAM!  We ran into a wall.....  of barracuda. 

As we swam closer, the school of barracuda slowly enveloped all 8 divers, our views of each other were obscured by a shimmering cloud of silvery sides, and like a plane coming out of the clouds, eventually all 8 divers emerged out of the other side of the school of barracuda.  And yes...  more hammerhead sharks came past us.  A group of about 10 indivduals swan in our vicinity for several minutes, most were about 6 ft long, but there was one big fellow in the group who was about 8ft....  whoosh.  So cool!

I met some other Canadians on the dive, and the chap from Canmore put it quite well....  "It's the underwater equivalent of going out for a hike, seeing a bunch of bears, some wolves, deer, elk and caribou...  oh yeah, and a massive flock of birds....."  well put Brian.  :)