50 Dives!!

This weekend I had the pleasure of escaping from reality for a bit to carve pumpkins under water, do a night dive in the Molinere statue garden, and complete dives 49 and 50!

To celebrate Halloween and be super silly, Eco Dive arranged to get a couple of pumpkins from Grenville, and then we took them out to the marine park to carve for fun. Poor weather and busy schedules prevented us from getting them done before Halloween, but I think Saturday worked just fine too. After all, every day of the year looks the same here weather-wise, it's not like it feels different now that it's November. Grenada also doesn't celebrate Halloween, so there's no stark notification that the holiday has come and past. Anyhow, we (Christie) had the foresight to cut the top off the pumpkins before we left for the marine park. Not really sure how we would have gotten them to the bottom if we hadn't preemptively opened up the huge air bubble inside! Grenada pumpkins don't quite match American pumpkins - they are funny shapes, colors, and really really thick! One of the pumpkins must have been at least 5 inches thick!

We sank the pumpkins in about 20 ft of water and got to work. It ended up taking an hour to get them to look how we wanted. Eventually the fish figured out something was up and came over to investigate the pickings. A school of sergeant majors was particularly interested in snacking on floating pumpkin bits! They were pretty entertaining to watch! The award for most entertaining actually goes to a crab in a hole. I (of course) had my camera and was slowly looking around when I saw movement in a hole in the sand. Not wanting to scare him so that I could get a picture, I crept over and while I watched, he voluntarily crawled out quite far claws ready! I happened to have a wedge of pumpkin in my hand and curiosity got the better of me. I poked the piece of pumpkin at one of his outstretched claws and he immediately clamped on and sped off down his hole. Problem? The wedge was too big to fit! I gently grasped the pumpkin piece and gave it a tug, but he was intent on keeping it! He did eventually let go of the pumpkin chunk, but when offered another smaller piece, repeated the same exercise!! He'd come out, grab a piece, race back down, repeat! It was hysterically funny! Christie swears he's got two cups of pumpkin stashed somewhere in his lair and I believe it! He just kept taking pieces! Silly crab! We are currently trying to figure out what kind of crab he is.

When we finished our pumpkins, we left them with glowsticks inside at the base of the new circle of children to be discovered on our night dive. Awesome! A blowfish and a bat awaited the Halloween night dive group!

Next up was of course the Halloween night dive! One of my friends has a Halloween birthday and really wanted to dive the statues at night as a "scary" theme type of deal. The dive was originally set for last Monday night, but Grenada weather has been super crummy and miserable lately so it had to be postponed. It meant we got to have pumpkins in the garden though and the weather was lovely so it all worked out for the best. It turned out to be a gorgeous dive with tons of life and critters! Many octopi, eels, slugs, a squid, sleeping fish, awake fish, a zillion starfish (I love watching brittle star legs shrivel and shrink back into the cracks and crevices as you shine a torch on them), and much more! I was pretty pleased to see the squid and took a ton of pictures in hopes one or two would come out well (still searching for the perfect shot but these weren't half bad). It was a great dive and we enjoyed every minute!

This morning I went back to the marine park for two more dives to hit my 50 mark! I can't believe I've done that many already! It hasn't even been a full 8 months yet! Both dives were lovely although the water was a little chilly! Yes, wimp here, I think 83F in a full 3mm wetsuit is cold. Feel free to poke fun. We were greeted by two sea turtles (separately) on our second dive and the largest barracuda I have ever seen (he must have been 4ft or longer!). Lots of little critters seen and a bunch of lionfish culled!

My original goal was 50 dives by May, so now I have to make new goals. Where to go from here, hmmm!