April 30, 2000: Grand Bahama, Bahamas

A Bahamas 2000 dive

"Caves" - "Shark Junction"

Diving off of Grand Bahama:

• Directions from Tampa: It's only about 55 miles off of the coast of Florida. You can go by boat or by plane ... talk to a travel agent.
• Conditions on the day of my visit: Sunny. Warm with a nice breeze.
  
  
• Personal Notes: The first dive was the "Caves," formed by coral growing to either side of a crevasse and growing over it, forming a tight swim through. Depth on the dive reached 75 feet (EAD for EAN32 is 60 feet), and we were down for 40 minutes. Shamie led us on this dive, pausing on the way to the "Caves" to catch a filefish and let us pet it. Its skin felt like dry leather/sand paper.
  
  While waiting at the bottom of the mooring for the other divers, my sister and I saw a cleaning station (a small fish cleaning a grouper). As my sister and I waited, we also spotted a reef shark not too far away. He showed up again as everyone began their ascent.
  
  Rona did very well on her guiding us to "Shark Junction" (50 feet 48 minutes). We moored to a line some 30 yards away from the old recompression chamber that UNEXSO usually moors to for their shark feeding dives. Guiding us past some broken coral islands, Rona showed us the area, where some sharks swam by, close enough to attempt to get some good pictures of them. There was a field of grass worms, also known as brown garden eels. We also spotted a free flying stingray passing the site.
  
  During our ascent, an unattached and fairly large sharksucker (remora) visited us. When not attached to another fish, they are quite weird looking fish, especially from above.

Caves
This is a French Angelfish. Very big fish, not that afraid of us, so it was easy to get this shot.
Shark Junction
Shark Junction is primarily marked by a large recompression chamber that's been sunk. Rona mentioned later that it must have tipped over because it's laying on its side. Considering how rough it was (the wind would stir up the waves), it's likely a boat was moored to it earlier in the week and it took a big wave. Dunno who the guy in blue is, but judging by the mask and regulator, that's my sister on the left, and the pink fins are probably Rona's, who led us on this dive.
The grass worms, or Brown Garden Eels. Considering how skittish these little guys can be, it's amazing this shot came out as well as it did.
A couple of (probably) Striped Parrot fish. Along with the next picture, it's kind of funny because ...
It's like they rotated to make sure that I got good pictures of both of them.
In a way, Reef Sharks are spooky in that they look exactly like you expect your typical shark to look like. This is why "Shark Junction" is called what it is called; when you get fed regularly at the same spot for free, you'll probably hang out there quite a bit. Good thing divers don't taste good, and don't really look like food. This one is probably between five to six feet long.
The sharks really for the most part kept their distances. We didn't have food, and they seemed to know that.
Yes, there was more than one there at this time.
Not having seen one that large or unattached, I freaked a little when I saw this guy. This Sharksucker (or Remora) was nearly as big as some of the sharks that attended the feeding we dove three days later.
I wish he had come up a little higher so that I could get a better photo of him. One head on would have really been cool.