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We woke up and headed out to the dining room for an omelette breakfast, then prepared our gear for the first dive. We were moored at Coco Sea Mount, a site which is pretty much in the middle of the ocean. It's the tip of a mountain that was above water a few million years ago, but now the tops are about 40 feet below the surface. Rick spotted a large trumpet fish and followed it for a bit. We made our way over the top of the site, then on the far side we dropped down a bit an followed the right edge of the wall back to the mooring. Back aboard Rick went up on the top deck to catch some sun, while Randy relaxed in the shade. After an hour we were ready for our second dive at this site. This time we went around the left side of the 'mountain'. We saw lots of the same types of fish, as well as a large school of fish that were moving back and forth over the top of the site. We followed them for a bit and they didn't seem to mind. Getting back on the boat we noticed that the sea had gotten a bit choppy, so the captain decided to move the boat back to Roatan for the remainder of the day.
After lunch we arrived at Eel's Garden. This site had a large number of small eels that poke their head out of the sand looking for food. You can't get a good picture of them, however, since they pull back into their holes as soon as you get close. We swam along the wall and then through a swim through up to a shallow patch of sand. It was only about 20 feet deep, but had lots of life on either side of it. Heading back to the boat, we didn't even need to do a safety stop, since the last half of the dive had all been done at 15-20 feet. After an hour on the boat Randy woke Rick up from his nap for the second afternoon dive; he looked so cute sleeping, but Randy wanted to dive! Rick wanted to spend some more time on the other side of the sandy area, so we went directly there. The sun was starting to get low, so the light was a bit dimmer. Even so, there were lots of things swimming around. Randy found some cool tiny blue shrimp, and Rick even found a juvenile spotted drum swimming in circles amongst the coral. It turned out to be one of the best dives so far.
We had a tasty dinner around 6:30pm, then got the gear ready for the night dive. We were expecting great things since we had seen so much life earlier at this site. At around 7:30 we hopped in the water and started swimming to the sandy area. Unfortunately, everything seemed to be asleep! We caught glimpse of an octopus, but he was camera shy and crawled down into some coral. We did some more swimming around, and we almost ready to head in when we saw a 10 inch squid swimming by. It had bright blue spots and it's edges fluttered as it moved. We followed it for a bit, then it decided it had enough of us, so it "inked" and jetted away. Very cool!
Back on the boat one of the passengers, Scott, was playing with Photoshop on some pictures he had taken of the other passengers. He and Randy had talked earlier, and Randy had given him some pointers on using Photoshop that he was now putting to use removing gray hair from someone's mustache and hair. He asked Randy to help removing the mustache altogether. Everyone got a good laugh. We stayed and talked to everyone for a while, then before we knew it is was 10pm and time for bed!
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