Coco View, Roatan trip report

[Matt S.]

The trip report is very simple.

1. Get up early, eat breakfast.
2. Get on a boat if you like, for 2 dives.
3. Eat lunch.
4. Get on the boat again.
5. In between, do as much shore diving as you wish (night diving too)
6. All nitrox all the time!

The resort staff made it easy to not worry about, well, anything. Except my missing luggage, but fortunately Delta sorted that out in a couple of days and the resort handled tracking the issue for me.

Water temps were about 85F. Visibility was at worst ~40 ft and often twice that. Even tropical diving is still work so we only did 3 dives/day. Somehow, we missed the DC3 wreck near the shore. None of the guides mentioned it and I didn't even read about it til I got home!

I did see a lot of coral skeletons unfortunately... some spots on the reef were in bad shape. Most of it looked great, but I saw one particular kind of coral skeleton all over the place. (It looked like Euphyllia spp. but I don't think that exact genus lives in those waters.)

The only bad thing that happened is one HID dive light did not survive the trip to the island, despite being packed in a carry-on.

We found the other vacation divers to be, well, vacation divers. No one who lived near cold water diving did diving at home. Wussies.

Some pics:

http://wrongcrowd.com/gallery/ccv2009

(I really wanted a new camera before the trip, but I just could not make a decision so I took my ancient Canon S70, in the Canon housing with no external strobe. I get the best I can out of my little camera, but I have to NOT LOOK at the photo sharing threads at Wetpixel...)

[MrsDiverBob]

Wow, awesome pictures Matt!! Love the octo! How many night dives did you guys end up doing? We only did one, but wish we had done a few more!

We need to get together soon and swap stories and pictures!! :occasion5:

[Matt S.]

We only did one too, the special boat trip. On the other days we were just too pooped to go out on a shore dive at night but now I am really regretting that.

[Jenbowes]

We only did one too, the special boat trip. On the other days we were just too pooped to go out on a shore dive at night but now I am really regretting that.

Well, we also had one late afternoon into night dive from shore on the first or second day. That was the first octo we saw ... well, technically, you saw, then I scared under a rock. Hence, that photo didn't turn out well. Oops.

It was a delightfully faboo trip, even though it was my light that bought the farm. Poor light! Hopefully it can be mended!

My favorite was the slipper lobster! It reminded me of something from a sci-fi movie or a video game! AWESOME! http://wrongcrowd.com/gallery/ccv2009/c ... er_lobster