Dive #166 - Rich Torkington's Dive Log

Linda is planning to feed the fish with this lobster
Videograph by Rich Torkington in Bahamas 2003

Dive Journal: There won’t be any night dive tonight due to other planned activities, and so Linda and I decide we’d better suit up again for the 4th dive, here at a site called Lobster No Lobster. 42090012 Lobster No Lobster Reef 24 46.84 76 50.27

All week, we’ve been egging Johnny to select Search and Recovery as one of his Advanced elective dives, just because it is both fun and challenging. This notion is seconded by other divers, but John is resistant because the bookwork for it is longer than other electives. We’re pleased, then, to find out Johnny has finished all the prepwork and is now ready to do his Search and Recovery dive. Fluffy Mark (from Australia) will be his instructor.

Linda takes down the head and carapice of a lobster at this site, to see if we can have some fun feeding the fish. For the first half of the dive we try placing it on top of various coral heads to see what will emerge. Small clouds of fish swarm about, but in the end a big yellowtail snapper comes along and practically steals the whole meal.

We then enjoy a tour around this pretty site. We watch John’s training for a while, but we try not to get too close so he won’t feel self conscious. It’s another relaxing late afternoon dive. We look for lobster, but see none. The briefing also suggested to look for jawfish, but we didn’t see any of those either (and neither did any of the other divers). What’s up with that?

After dinner, all the divers assemble in the main saloon for the much-anticipated photo contest and video viewing. There are several categories, including best overall photo, best macro photo, best video clip, etc. The photos have been shot during the past week and developed right here onboard the AquaCat, shown as slides. Some of them are quite stunning, and we eventually vote on each one by loudness of applause.

This snapper enjoys the free meal
Videograph by Rich Torkington in Bahamas 2003

I then show 2 video clips, one of the grouper stealing the big chum chunk at Amberjack Reef, and another of an azure vase sponge with an arrow crab on it at Dog Rocks. Following this meager fare, Johnny is ready with his video.

Johnny has spent an afternoon preparing a hilarious video of Starburst candies, renamed as the AquaCat, the Sea Biscuit, and a pirate ship, that sail around his cabin bedsheets and engage in high adventure. He narrates the whole show, including the pirates’ theft of the AquaCat’s cookies and a mutiny by the divers onboard. The whole room is soon laughing out loud and he certainly steals the show.

We break for a delicious key lime pie, and Lars then rolls out his video. It’s a produced tape of footage from the whole week, good shots of everyone, great speed-up and slow-down effects, plenty of video above and below water, and good soundtracks. The video makes me grin from ear to ear – it is very well done. I can’t believe Lars has had time to prepare this while performing all his other duties as divemaster and crew member.

Hundreds of slides taken during the week are then placed out on the 2 light tables, all for sale at $5 each. I tell the family they can buy up to 20, and we quickly identify 15 or so worthy ones. We of course also order up a copy of Lars’ video.