Christmas Eve in the Caribbean - after a hurricane. It's pretty subdued overall, especially compared to "normal" (there's that word again) to Puerto Rico.
While Elaine shivers and watches snow fall in Cleveland, I finally said, "Enough waiting" and dove Crashboat. This was my first time diving alone, solo. Visibility wasn't bad, about 40 feet.
It's even crazier seeing it from below than from the surface It is a new wreck dive. Bits of rebar stick out randomly, waiting to snag the unwary. Bent twisted ripped I-beams have sharp edges waiting to cut and snag. I wrote earlier about ow much sand washed from the beach. Underwater you can see six feet of the remaining pier legs exposed when the sand washed away.
(Note from NOW: You can see more photos from this dive on Flickr.)
The incredible power of the ocean that could do this is absolutely mind-boggling.
Life is already returning. Schools of sargent-major fish, goatfish, barjacks and the occasional juvenile trumpet fish testify to that. I watched a courting pair of white-spotted file fish do their little dance. The sargent-majors must be nesting, laying eggs, because I saw them chasing a file fish away from a particular spot. They do that when they are protecting eggs.
More than just getting to see what's down there close up, it just felt good to be in the water, to have salt water on my skin. I miss it.
On this Christmas Eve without electricity we may not have all the usual Christmas lights, but we do have this:
Mother Nature put on an incredible sky show today.
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