Dive #124 - Rich Torkington's Dive Log

Up close and personal with a peacock flounder
Videograph by Rich Torkington in the Bahamas 2002

Dive Journal: DAY 3 IN THE BAHAMAS continued: Our second dive is nearby at a site Troy calls the Fish Bowl. Troy is again swarmed with yellowtail snappers. On the sand flats beneath the boat there is a pretty collection of yellow goatfish, always a good video subject. Troy finds an arrow crab, and has fun picking it up, letting it climbing around on him, and he even pretends to eat it.

This is a shallow dive and we find the visibility improved somewhat, although still lacking sun today. Troy spends some time looking for George, the resident barracuda, but no luck. He takes us into a neat little blind cave, first Troy, then Cedric, and then I follow them in, too. In the back of the cave, a “window” opens up on top allowing light in and a view of the surge-y surface. Cedric seems to get a little freaked out in the cave and kicks up the bottom before Troy calms him down.

As we swim around a big coral patch, I am thoroughly amused to see a remora leave the side of a big grouper and start a rapid swim towards Linda. The remora finds her right fin waving up and down in the water, and manages to suck onto the fin surface near her foot. I’m sure Linda would rather not know about this, so I continue to shoot some video to show her later, laughing the whole time. [Linda is not a fan of remoras – see dive #121.] She is greatly surprised by the video later that night.

There’s a pretty peacock flounder in the waters near the boat, so I annoy him a while with my camera and get some cool shots of his swiveling eyes and his blue spots that dramatically change color when he moves around.

After the diving, we head back to the house for the remainder of the day. The four of us spend hours on the beach and Johnny loves body surfing in the waves. Linda and I snorkel again on the reef off Nippers – visibility is still pretty poor due to surf chop, and it’s pretty surge-y, too, but the reef is pretty.