Diving on the Cayman Aggressor IV

Sailfin Blenny - Bloody Bay Wall, Little Cayman
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We spent Saturday morning by the pool and made our way to the Aggressor in the early afternoon. We were greeted by Shaunnah and were able to board around 2pm . We got our stuff down into the cabin and found we had ample room for everything as they took our bags back to the office to ensure we had room. Michael asked Tom where he could pick up a couple of Red Bulls for the week and Tom graciously offered to pick some up on one of his airport runs. Michael was putting his camera housing together and I met with Mike M. to see what camera I’d be using for the week as I was renting it from them. We also had the opportunity to meet our fellow classmates and start getting to know each other.

Diver on the Russian Frigate - Cayman Brac
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By 5:30pm we got our boat briefing from Capt Sam and met our wonderful crew. We had the wonderful Shaunnah, Graham, Tom, Denise and Yanis for the week. After the briefing, we all went up top for a fabulous BBQ by Chef Yanis. By 7:30pm the last person arrived and we were underway.

Sunday

Sunday morning we were at our first dive site, The Doc Polson. This was to be our checkout dive. Mike & Mike stressed that one of the most important things to get right was our buoyancy. I’ve always erred on the side of too heavy as when we dive in New Jersey I like to be a bit heavier. I decided to do this dive with 2 pounds less than what I had used at Sunset House and Turtle Reef. It turned out perfect. We only did 40-45 minutes of bottom time here. Once we were all up we were off to Sting Ray City.

Hogfish - Grand Cayman
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Jim Church School of Underwater Digital Photography

After the first dive we had our first class. Most of us were taking the class so we had quite a few folks packed in the parlor. This first class was very basic and went over fundamentals of underwater photography. As I’ve never really taken pictures before outside of a disposable point and shoot, this was all new to me. They covered the materials in a way that everyone could understand. Class was always held between the first and second dive. Mike & Mike were always on hand if you had any questions and a lot of times they would come up to you underwater and see if everything was OK. Mike M would even model for you or in some cases, taught us to model for our other divers. In the evening both Mikes were in the parlor to review our shots and help us with Photoshop. I don’t want to give too much away but if you are new to underwater photography or you’ve been doing it for a while and you aren’t happy with what you’ve been taking, this is the class for you. There were some people who were on this trip who were repeat students. Now, I can’t say every picture I took was perfect, but even in some of the ones I deleted; I managed to have good enough exposure so my water was always blue. To me, this was a pretty big accomplishment.

And back to the diving… Sting Ray City

This was to be my 200th dive. I couldn’t think of a better place. I sat with Mike M and we went over the camera. It was a Coolpix 5000 in a Light and Motion housing. It was compact and pretty easy to use. As to the depth, we’d not be using strobes here, so I went sans strobe. The camera had a wide angle attachment that put on. I had done Sting Ray City years ago while on a cruise before I was a diver. It was actually that trip that made me more determined than ever to get my certification. But I digress… We all put on a couple extra pounds to keep us on the bottom and we splashed in the 12 feet of water and waited. It didn’t take long for many sting ray to show up. It was a regular feeding frenzy! Graham was doing the feeding and he gave me a piece of squid. I had one stingray try and suck my slate off my arm. He wouldn’t give up so I finally gave him the damn squid!

Our last dive of the day was Babylon. Babylon is a pinnacle that comes up from the depths to about 50ft. It’s a very pretty dive site. We saw grey angelfish, queen triggerfish, rock beauties and a turtle. On the safety stop under the boat I saw one of the biggest yellow headed jawfish I’ve ever seen.

I’ll take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the Cayman Aggressor. True to their motto – Eat, Sleep, and Dive… we did just that – Eat, Sleep, and Dive! I can honestly say, I don’t think anyone was ever hungry on this trip. We woke up for breakfast (eggs, pancakes, stuff like that). When we came up from the first dive, there were snacks (cinnamon buns, muffins etc). After the next dive was lunch. You get the idea – Dive, snack, dive, dinner, dive snack… SLEEP! The boys included smoking cigars and solving the worlds problems… but sleep was just fine for me! With the exception of Sunday, we were offered 5 dives a day. Because of the crossing to Little Cayman and the length of our first class, we only had 3 dives on day 1. Otherwise, we’d have 2 morning dives, 2 afternoon dives and a night dive. On Thursday night, we were crossing back to Grand Cayman so we were offered a 5:30am dive instead of the night dive.

Anyway… on Sunday night, in HUGE 2-3 foot seas (just kidding) we made our way over to Little Cayman.

Monday

Our first dives in Little Cayman!!! I’ve always heard how great the Bloody Bay Wall is and I finally got to see it for my own eyes! Our first two dives were on Great Wall. The shallowest part was right under the boat and dropped to 3000 feet. It was absolutely amazing here. In all the nooks and crannies on the wall, there were plenty of eels, lobsters and squirrelfish. For the novice photographer, squirrelfish make great subjects. I don’t know if it’s because they are smart or stupid, but you can rattle off a whole bunch of stops, changing your strobe angle, F-stop, shutter speed… and they won’t move! It was here we saw the first of many cleaning stations. Among the clientele were a couple of grouper and a porcupinefish. First time I’ve seen a porcupinefish that didn’t high-tale it out of there when he saw divers.

On the second dive we went back to the same cleaning station. This time there was another grouper and an angelfish both with cleaner wrasses and shrimp! We did see a turtle swimming off the wall but he was a little too far out to pursue. In the shallows we saw a Spanish hogfish, butterflyfish, two flamingo’s tongues and a fireworm on a seafan.

Our afternoon and evening dives were at the Meadows. Also part of the Bloody Bay Wall you can get some serious depth here, but a lot of the really neat stuff is in the shallows. On the first dive we saw a huge school of jacks swimming off the wall. A white spotted filefish was darting in and out of the reef. In the anemones were diamond blennies. I’d never seen these before but these were cool little critters.

On the second dive we saw a reef shark as we descended to the reef. Of course as soon as he saw us, he was out of there! In the sand flat we saw another stingray and jack couple as well as a really big eagle ray. Again, many diamond blennies, gray angelfish, Spanish hogfish and good ole hogfish.

On the night dive, I found my HID light to be a bit of overkill for this type of diving. But its what I brought. I became a hunting partner for the jacks as they would go after the little fish that my light attracted. Always glad to be of help! After reading a critter book prior to the dive, I noticed all the spaghetti worms and medusa worms out on the reef. Its amazing what comes alive at night. Unfortunately night brings out the sea wasps and we saw a few when we were ready to surface so we purged our octo’s as we surfaced and had no issues. We always got a hot towel and a back rub upon surfacing, but it was even more appreciated after the night dive! Bonus after this dive, Denise was there with hot chocolate!!!

Tuesday

We spent the morning over at Cayman Brac to dive the 356 – The Russian Frigate. We’ve got wreck diving in our blood so this mornings dives were heaven!!! We got the whole history of the Frigate and even got to see a documentary the night before of Jean Michel Cousteau going down with the Frigate. The wreck as a real wreck look and feel as a storm has broken it apart mid-ship. The engines are now out in the sand. This area was prime hunting ground for that stingray/Jack duo. By this time, it wasn’t a thrill to see that anymore. On the stern section there was a big ole grouper.

For the second dive, Michael and I dove with Tom for a guided tour of the inside. He knows this boat. He took us thru the wheel house, down a corridor and out the open end. Then we went into the engine room on the stern and into the communications center. All the control panels and consoles were marked in Russian. It was very cool. The grouper was still at the stern and while we were there we took our obligatory “big guns” pictures.

During lunch we motored back over the Little Cayman and to Marilyn’s Cut.