Diving drought

October has been a terrible month for diving. In fact I haven't been in the water in a month! The last time I went diving a group of us went to the south of the island to dive The Wall off Guanica.

There are several dive operators who go out to the wall but our favorite is Island Scuba in Guanica. The Wall is about two-and-a-half miles off-shore. For 28 miles it wraps around the southwest corner of the island. Last time I checked there were 16 marked dive sites on The Wall. The top of the wall is at about 65 feet. From there it plunges to between 160' to over 200' depending on where you are on The Wall. For a number of reasons our "floor" was at 100 feet.

One of the great things about the site we dove is there are frequently sharks along The Wall. Two Caribbean reef sharks hung out with us along The Wall. Two more joined us at the top before we headed back to the boat. (See the video above.)

Scared? No! Fascinated? Absolutely! Caribbean reef sharks are not aggressive. They were mildly curious about us but that's it. And what amazing beautiful creatures! I will dive with them any day.

Other than that there hasn't been much diving. I used the phrase "diving drought" but the lack of diving has been in large part because it has been a rainy summer and fall, especially up in the mountains. All the rain - and the silt it washes into the ocean - plays havoc with visibility. ]

And then in early/mid-October, hurricanes Matthew and Nicole started bringing waves. Much of the time storms don't interfere too much with diving but both of the storms drove waves from the northwest. Swells with a "lot of west in them" screw up diving everywhere.

But they did bring surf - and that's a story for another day.