Dive #96 - Rich Torkington's Dive Log

Pretty grunts called “sailors choice,” probably due to edibility
Videograph by Rich Torkington in TCI 2002

Dive Journal: It rained last night, for the second time in the past week. This is a somewhat infrequent occurrence on the small desert island called Salt Cay. Unfortunately, it brings out lots of mosquitoes. These mosquitoes are tiny little guys who land and bite stealthily, but are easy to squash if detected.

Today is moving day for us, and we’ve spent last night packing up all our stuff. Seems another party, divemasters vacationing from Providenciales, are moving into our cute little Hyacinth cottage. Ollie shows up about 8:40am and we help load all our luggage into the truck. In the process, we are all eaten nicely by mosquitoes.

We dump our stuff in front of the Tradewinds rooms, and then golf-cart over to the dock for the morning dive while the rooms are being cleaned. We are diving Kelly’s Follies again since we really enjoyed the last dive here. I want Linda to see this site. John had some mild ear pain this morning and elects to sit out at the apartment.

One of the first great sites is a lovely school of sailors choice grunts. I just can’t seem to get enough of big lazy schools of densely packed fish – always a video attraction. There is also a curled-up spotted moray eel in a coral head. I also finally get a little bit of video of a juvenile rock beauty, who I’ve found are quite difficult to photograph due to their skittishness.

Near the end of the dive, a nice tiger grouper is hanging out upsidedown among some coral pillars, seeking a mouth cleaning.

A nice girl named Linda from Manhatten dove with us this dive, wearing no wetsuit to our amazement. Brr-r. When divemaster Michael returns from the dive site and drifts in to the dock area, he announces, “Welcome to Salt Cay!” just in case you weren’t sure.