Diving at the Dogs (A Gary Blog)

I have been holding out for a night dive, but unfortunately they needed 5 people to make it happen.  So I went for a dive today at the Dogs instead.

This morning, after a bit or a rush to get ready, I arrived at the Bitter End Yacht Club at 8am, bang on time.  We headed out to the Dogs, where our two dives were to be.

Our first dive was at the Gardens.  You begin by swimming out over, you guessed it, a garden of Coral.  Soon you reach the sand bottom, and a little further the wreck of a small 12 seater plane.  The plane had apparently crashed on the runway at Beef Island, Tortola and had just been left to sit.  The authorities decided that a crashed plane on the side of the runway was not such a good look for the airport (funny that), so stripped it out and sunk it for an interesting dive site.

centipede thingy

hmm.. a bit small, will give him a few years

The dive instructor told us that our second dive site, Bronco Billy, was Jacques Cousteau's favourite of the BVI.  It gets its name from the swim through (underwater archway), which surges back and forth with the swell, just like a bucking bronco.  The dive was a really pretty dive.  There was a lot of canyons full of coral and interesting fish.  I even saw an Octopus.  The dive actually reminded me a lot of the Poor Knights off Tutukaka, New Zealand.  I was about as warm as I would have been diving at the Knights too, but then I had traded my 5ml wetsuit and hood for a rash top!

Trumpet fish - they just blend into their surroundings and play "twig"

Octopussy

Lobster - translates in Maori to "Dinner".  This guy would not stand a chance in NZ.

An interesting aside, spear guns are not permitted in the BVI however, the instructors here have been granted a license to use spear guns to kill Lion Fish.  Lion Fish are extremely beautiful and we were lucky enough to see some on our Trip to Tahiti a few years back.  Some time in the 1990's a Lion Fish was released into Florida waters.  Rumor has it, it either came from the South Florida Aquarium that was destroyed in a hurricane, or from some fish enthusiast's tank when he got sick of cleaning it.  The Lion Fish soon spread throughout the Caribbean.  The Lion Fish on the Caribbean reefs have no natural predators, unlike in the Pacific, and can reduce the amount of juvenile fish on a reef by 75% in 5 weeks (see The Atlantic.com website).  So the instructors, therefore, are killing off the Lion Fish to preserve the reefs.

We are heading into the resort for dinner tonight.  We are avoiding the expensive restaurant and opting for a pub meal instead. 

Tomorrow we are planning to head to Charlotte Amilie in the US Virgin Islands, but will see how we go.  No doubt we will have something interesting for you about going through customs.  I expect the trip will be a bit quicker  than my last international boat trip from the West island to the North island (AUS-NZ) given that USVI is (literally) within swimming distance.