Dive #574

Notes

The same strong winds as yesterday were blowing, at a general speed of around 25 km/h with gusts up to 55 km/h. Due to the conditions, the Coast Guard had put a ban on boats leaving port. The tide was high and the wind had stirred up a swell, so we entered the water at the boat ramp to the north of the dive shops. We surface-swam towards the east for around 200–300 m before descending onto a sand-and-seagrass bottom at a depth of about 3 m. Visibility was initially very limited in the shallows due to the amount of swell kicking up sand and other debris in the water column. We continued heading into deeper water, and at around 5 m we looked up to see a huge ball of sardines grouped together in the water above us. Once we reached the reef wall, we turned to the right and followed it to the southwest. The dive was very slow and relaxed — we saw a few eels, lionfish, angelfish, and the occasional group of sardines darting around in the water near the reef. At around the 30-minute mark, we heard loud explosions from fishermen dynamite fishing, but thankfully not too close. We turned the dive at this point and followed the reef back to the northeast. Maybe 5–10 minutes after turning, we saw a green sea snake around 1.5 m under the dive master, which led to some surprise. The snake was fairly unfazed and happily swam off to the south in the direction we had come from. We did our safety stop near the usual place amongst the broken reef and sand, at 5 m depth above the wall, before surfacing and surface-swimming back to the boat ramp to exit where we entered.