Dive #99 - Rich Torkington's Dive Log

These schoolmasters are great!
Videograph by Rich Torkington in TCI 2002

Dive Journal: The mid-morning dive takes us to a new site called Powerhouse, so named due to the Salt Cay energy plant on shore near this mooring site.

This is a GREAT site – we love it. Just over the reef wall edge there are sleepy schools of HUNDREDS of fish. Isolated packs of french grunts, sailors choice, caesar grunts, bluestripe grunts, and schoolmasters. Parrotfish, tangs, goatfish, and chromis are mixed in everywhere. The fish seem to travel in waves through little highways in the reef wall, a flowing carpet effect. I am a total sucker for these schools – it makes easy wonderful video and I simply find the scene enchanting. It reminds me of the dense schools of fish off El Cardonal in the southern Baja (see Dive 61).

I especially like a school of schoolmasters here – a chummy collection of dopey-looking fish (with faces that remind me of The Incredible Mr. Limpet) who like to stay with their bodies polarized. They hover like a little cherub choir slightly swaying in the surge. Wonderful!

There is one of my old friends here, a grey angelfish, and also another porcupinefish. There is also a good sized lobster underneath a shelf, but nearly impossible to get video.

“Welcome to Salt Cay!”