Home > Fit City > Archives > scuba category
scuba
November 2, 2011
I'm scuba diving in Saba/St. Kitts
In case you’ve been looking for me this week, I’m far, far away, scuba diving in Saba and St. Kitts with Explorer Ventures, a live-aboard dive boat.
I love to dive. That’s me in the photo above.
I got certified 14 years ago, and since then I’ve scoped out the underwater action in Belize, Honduras, Mexico, the Cayman Islands, Hawaii, the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, the Flower Gardens and the Galapagos Islands.
My favorite moments? Watching more than 200 hammerhead sharks school overhead in the Galapagos. Seeing a dozen manta rays, with wingspans more than 12 feet across, feed on plankton at night off of Kona. Diving with seals, dolphins, spotted eagle rays and free-swimming eels across the Caribbean. Prowling after lobsters and crabs, and wishing I could eat them for dinner. Swimming with prickly-looking puffer fish. And spying on teeny tiny critters like sea-faring worms, crabs and fish.
That big fish to the right? It’s a grouper, and I snapped its picture in the Cayman Islands a couple of years ago.
If you’ve posted a message on this blog and it hasn’t appeared online, please be patient. I approve the comments manually and won’t be able to approve them until I return.
In the meantime, what’s your favorite place to scuba dive?
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: scuba
July 15, 2011
Off to dive the Flower Gardens
When I think of the Gulf of Mexico, I think of brownish-green water — not the crystal clear Caribbean blue that I love to scuba dive in.
But it turns out that the Gulf has some terrific diving. I’m headed there now to check it out.
The Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary is located 110 miles off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana. The 55-square-mile sanctuary is an eight-hour boat ride from Freeport.
I’ll be writing about it for the travel pages of our paper in a few weeks. Stay posted…
Permalink | | Categories: scuba
May 17, 2010
Back from scuba diving the Galapagos
I’m back from the Galapagos Islands, where I spent a week scuba diving aboard the Galapagos Aggressor II.
The highlight? Diving with schools of 200 or more hammerhead sharks at Darwin’s Arch, an unpopulated island about 60 miles north of the main archipelago.
Diving in the Galapagos Islands is challenging. The currents are notoriously swift, the water is cold and the salinity content is high. But the same things that make the diving hard, make the payoff big. Sharks like cold water and strong currents — that’s what brings in the nutrients that smaller fish feed on.
We tugged on 7 mm wetsuits, hoods and gloves, climbed into a dingy, motored to a spot just in front of the iconic stone arch and rolled backward into the ocean. (That’s me in the dingy above.)
At first, we saw just dark shadows. Those shadows swam closer, though, and we soon realized they were streams of 5- or 6-foot sharks. (My husband Chris snapped the shark shot above.)
And they just kept swimming past, huge schools of the powerful, gorgeous (and sort of spooky looking) sharks.
We also saw silky sharks, white-tip sharks and Galapagos sharks, but it was those huge schools of hammerheads that I’ll never forget.
Look for a travel story in coming months. And I’ll post photos on my Facebook page soon.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: scuba
May 10, 2010
Scuba diving in the Galapagos Islands
I hope the above scene is what I’m looking at right now, as you read this blog post.
I’m scuba diving in the Galapagos Islands for a week, staying on a small live-aboard dive boat that carries about a dozen passengers.
We’ll take a few land excursions, including at least one to the Charles Darwin Research Station, but most of our time will be spent scuba diving.
I’ve got about 200 dives under my belt. I’ve been diving everywhere from the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Hawaii to Roatan, Honduras, and Cozumel, Mexico.
Chances are good that we’ll see schooling hammerhead sharks, manta rays and eagle rays this time out. There’s also a possibility we’ll see something that’s been on my checklist since I started diving about 12 years ago — a whale shark.
On land, we’ll be looking for blue-footed boobys and marine iguanas, plus those finches that Darwin made so famous. And seals and tortoises, of course.
I’ll write about the trip for the travel section of the Austin American-Statesman when I return.
In the meantime, please excuse the lack of postings. I’m on vacation!
Who has been to the Galapagos? What did you see?
Permalink | | Categories: scuba
January 8, 2010
To boldly wear ... a Star Trek wetsuit!
Attention fellow scuba divers. Who among you wants to boldly go where no man has gone before?
And no, I’m not talking about 400 meters.
Check out these Star Trek-inspired wetsuits.
No, they’re not Leonard Nimoy’s costume castoffs. They’re real wetsuits, made to be worn in the water.
They come in “Command Yellow,” “Science Blue” and “Engineering Red.” (Although we’d suggest avoiding the red one, if you know what I mean, Trekkies.)
I scuba dive at least once a year, and have been fantasizing all day about plunging into the great blue abyss alongside my three best diving buddies while wearing one of these outfits.
Imagine the reaction we’d get if we all suited out in one of these!
Sigh, such respect doesn’t come cheap. The 7 mm suit, complete with rank braids, costs about $470. The suits are also available in 3 and 5 mm varieties.
Money is no object? Buy ‘em here.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: scuba
October 5, 2009
Scuba diving the Cayman Islands
I took off my shoes Sept. 26 and didn’t put them on again until the day before yesterday.
That’s what happens on live-aboard scuba trips — along with a lot of underwater time. I spent last week chasing sea turtles, exploring sunken ships, looking for sharks, checking out gigantic lobsters and plunging into the ocean after dark during a scuba diving trip aboard the Cayman Aggressor IV.
It was just me and Chris, my sister Angie and her husband John, and five other passengers on board the boat, which floats between dive sites. There’s no time for anything but diving, sleeping and eating. Pure bliss!
We dove four or five times a day, mostly around Little Cayman. Highlights? An octopus changing colors as it moved along the coral during a night dive. A 3-foot grouper that liked being scratched under the chin. Stingrays galore! Tiny, ruffled worms called lettuce nudibranchs. Spotted drums, trumpetfish, eagle rays, puffers, moray eels, sailfin blennies, pipefish, neon gobies, scrawled filefish, honeycomb cowfish, channel crabs …
I’ve got nearly 200 dives under my weight belt and can’t get enough. I’ll be writing about this trip soon. And I’ve already got the next one planned — diving the Galapagos Islands next May!
Who out there’s a diver? What’s your favorite place to scuba dive?
I took the photo above (of a friendly grouper) off of Little Cayman Island.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: scuba
October 3, 2009
I'm under the sea
If you’ve been trying to reach me to no avail, it’s because I’ve been exploring the underwater environs around the Cayman Islands for an upcoming travel article.
We’re on a live-aboard boat, floating between dive sites. On the agenda? Four dives a day. I haven’t had shoes on my feet for days.
I love to scuba dive! How about you? What’s the best diving you’ve ever done?
I’ll tell you all about my latest trip when I get back.
(That’s me, above, diving in Kona last year. We saw lots of manta rays there.)
