We had an absolute blast sailing aboard our 39' Beneteau Oceanis 393 from Roatan to the Cayos Cochinos Marine Park with our friends Sterling, Nicol, Russel and Rob from S/V Docsea! In Cayos we did an epic dive off the tip of Pelican Point that was a tremendous experience, full of more fish than we've seen in some time. When we came back to the West End of Roatan, we did some diving with our great friends over at Splash Inn. Our DM Cheyenne took us to Key Hole around the point of the island up near Flowers Bay and we had a fabulous first dive, but for the second one, our friend Sterling said he wanted to "see some turtles".
So Cheyenne took us to Verne's Dropoff, just right outside of Half-Moon Bay in the heart of West End and we did a drift dive back towards West Bay, passing over a couple of sites with some nice current propelling us forward. And Cheyenne didn't disappoint. We ended up seeing something like eight different turtles. Amazing!
Some Hawksbill, little ones like the one learning to feed above. Watch him miss the fish the first time but then nail it the second. These kinds of experiences are so precious.
This moment is priceless as well, the kind that make you remember why you fell in love with SCUBA diving in the first place, seeing amazing encounters underwater.
All of them amazing. Inspiring. Some eating the coral.
They are simply put gorgeous, splendid natural creatures.
It was such an honor to do this dive, to see these gentle creatures in their natural habitat.
I don't think we got great video of all of them, but Andrea did a pretty good job of getting some great moments with most of them. What a fantastic dive!
Here at City Dogs, we love turtles. We can’t get enough of them. So when we had this amazing dive the other day, it was just a complete, utter treasure. Many thanks to Cheyenne and the whole crew over at Splash Inn for doing a wonderful job showing all of us the most amazing side of SCUBA diving the MesoAmerican barrier reef on the island of Roatan in the Western Caribbean.
We go diving in West End so often we know some of the little hawksbills by sight, but we’ve never had a single dive where we ran into so many turtles. It was crystal clear and pretty flat and they were just coming out. It was a gorgeous sight. It’s a testament to the good work that the Roatan Marine Park is doing to protect the coral reef that brings so many to the Honduran island of Roatan. Without them, there would not be such a gorgeous reef full of turtles to just fill your heart and soul with joy. Seeing so many of them, living on the reef, eating coral and fish and sleeping and just being great, complex creatures, was an honor that we won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Of course, Sterling forgot his GoPro, so they didn’t get any footage of the tortuga explosion. Thankfully, we’ve got decent enough internet to (slowly) upload a fraction of the footage we obtained. Stay tuned for some videos of our recent SCUBA Diving in Cayos Cochinos. The site we went to was just lousy with fish, teeming with diverse marine life the likes of which we haven’t seen in some time. We didn’t see any turtles while diving though, just on the surface from our sail boats when we were tied up to the mooring at Cayo Mejor. And if you like what you see, think about booking a trip to coming sailing with us? After all, This is Sailing!