Dive Report - 7th August

[lottie]

Time : 14:29
TBT : 44 mins
Location : Coral Gardens dive site in St Lucia.

Coral Gardens is described as
"The unusual sargassum trigger fish can be spotted in the deeper areas with the odd barracuda. In the shallows you can swim through dense sea plumes forests. These forests are great hideaways for the juvenile offsprings of the reef"

It's been raining virtually non-stop all day (it even woke me up at 6AM!!)

There was only 5 of us diving, plus the DM (Terry). After diving in, it was so nice being back under the water again. Due to the weather, there was quite a strong current. For whatever reason, I drifted away from the rest of the group and the DM was trying to beckon me back, but even though i was kicking my fins like anything, I wasn't moving - in the end, he had to come and get me and pull me back to the group

Saw a few fish that I haven't seen before, so i'll have to look them up and try and see if i can find out what they are. Saw loads of Sargeant Majors, Yellow stripped snapper, smooth trunkfish, four-eye butterfly fish, juventile spotted drum, bluehead wrasse, puffer fish, yellow trumpetfish, blue chromis and a few christmas tree worms

Plus, I finally saw the elusive turtle - think it was a leatherback. Okay, so it was 15 feet away and the viz was about 20/22 feet, but I still saw a turtle and that was definitely the highlight of the dive

As i haven't dived in quite a while, I had a few buoyancy issues, but i'm sure i'll get them sorted out once I do a couple more dives and do my AOW in a couple of weeks time.
I also think i need to get some new fins - i'll probably go for the strap ones - i've got full-foot fins at the mo (cheapish ones from my LDS) as i keep getting cramp (or it becomes more visible) when I do my safety stop at 15ft.

I'm booked to do another dive on Friday to the Pinnacles Dive Site
Here's a link showing the dive sites on the island
http://www.caribdiveguide.com/st_lucia.htm


Lottie has had her diving fix and is well and truly happy