Manatee Creek & the Caverns of Doom - Part 2 - 17/09/2015

So after the snorkel it was off to the Cavern of Doom. Just for clarity, I gave it that name.

Of the 6 of us on the boat just 4 of us were doing the dive. Me, Gill, a PADI AI from Newcastle via Northen Ireland and an American who I heard proudly declare had done 122 dives. The rest of us kept quiet about our experience, but someone once told me that there is always someone else with more dives than you. I chuckled. 

We dropped down into an area marked as a winter manatee sanctuary and slipped through a crack on the river bed in to a small murky cavern. The guide did his best to show us a whole host 'fascinating' features within the cavern, but once you've dived some of Mexico's cenotes you are a little bit spoilt.

I'd have loved to dive it by myself, but with five divers in total the cave was a little cramped. Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it. In addition, I was a little under insulated (a 5mm wetsuit would have been the bomb). As such, I most enjoyed the little hot spring feeding the cave, as did the small amount of life found within the cave.

We returned to the dive shop where I sat through an interesting talk about manatees and earnt the PADI Manatee Awareness Speciality - my souvenir for this trip. "It counts towards your PADI Master Scuba Diver Rating." I chuckled again, but at $35 it seemed like a fun take home from Florida. 

"Leave nothing but bubbles and take nothing but photographs, Manatee Awareness Specialities and patches saying "I snorkelled with manatees in Florida.""

Gill descends

Swimming crab

Manatee Creek & the Caverns of Doom - Part 1 - 17/09/2015

My wife plays Roller Derby, but I have very little interest in the sport. What it does do is take her to some fairly interesting locations. On this particular occasion it was taking her to Jacksonville, Florida - a mere 2 hours drive from Crystal River.

Crystal River is home to a year round population of manatees and a number of dive companies offer the chance to snorkel with these gentle giants. I plumped for American Pro Diving who for a few dollars more will take you down for a cavern dive after the manatee encounter. They do other trips too in the afternoon but sadly I had to get back up the road to Jacksonville for Gill.i.am's tournament.

Despite being told we may have to drift around for a few hours we before we found them, we were in the water with a large a male within 15 minutes. Then a large female. 

As our presence and natural manatee behaviour began to stir up the vis we went back to the boat and headed up river for another two minutes before encountering a mother and a calf. The little one was really curious, much like the young seals of the Farne Islands.

It was a great encounter.

Manatee

The Heart of the Matter - 10/09/2015

The Tinkers Heart

On a recent drive home from a dive site I listened to a radio show about the geographical and metaphorical hearts of Scotland. Much of the discussion that I listened to focused on The Tinkers Heart. in Argyll. I never even knew it existed and yet on many dive trips I'd driven within a few feet of it. So I had decided that on my next visit to the area I'd stop off and have a look. On this occasion, (the psycho that is) the Zookeeper was my buddy and she would be the lucky one to be made just a little more erudite by my curiosity.

As we whizzed along the road and right passed it. A quick reverse and there it was. Hundreds of years of Scottish tradition now fully restored and protected for hundreds more. It's simple, unimpressive but whimsically romantic given that hundreds of people have married on this spot over the centuries. Scotland is a great place to live.

Anyway onto the diving! Seal Reef, St Catherines was the venue and for once there was a seal, and not even in the water, but hauled out on the beach. I've never seen a seal out of the water except at the Farne Islands so it took my spectacle-less  eyes a few moments to realise what I was looking at. In that moment it looked up nodded and slunk back into the water and away.

We headed down encountering edible crabs, lobsters, loads of fish, and all in had a great little twilight dive. However, the water was cold - very cold. The summer is most definitely over despite the fair weather on the surface.

He just wouldn't stay still

Bloody Henry

Say hello to my little friend

Dude, switch out the lights!

The last light of day