Night Dive off Tower 17

Mia Cillers emailed me last week about earning her Advanced Open Water certification this weekend. I explained the course and warned her that the weather would really impact our ability to complete the course in only two days, but otherwise encouraged her to come diving. She called this morning while I was diving with Luis and I called her back and arranged to meet this afternoon, get gear and make at least one night dive. It was cold enough that one dive was all we wanted to do.

The wind had died during the late afternoon and we entered calm seas just in front of the lifeguard tower. We swam more or less East, but did not encounter either the rock-with-a-head or the Fish Camp Rocks. We did stumble upon the Little Coral Knoll. The highlight was finding a large Hawksbill Sea Turtle wedged between a couple of large rocks. She was perfectly content to have me shoot the flash. She was safe between the rocks.

We continued on to the Eastern Edge of the reef and went to the sand at 34 feet. I keep hoping to find another Snake Eel poking up through the sand, but not tonight. We did find some larger shrimp on the sand as we made our way back to the beach.

These photos were taken with a 10 MP Intova point and shoot with an automatic flash. I did not take the Canon 5d out this evening since it was the first time I've been diving with Mia in a while.