Day 8 on Statia - Lost Anchors, Anchor Point and Chien Tong Night Dive

A day late, but hey Tuesday was a busy day with three dives including a night dive.

So I started the day on Tuesday with some trepidation about the night dive, I'd only done one before and that was a shallow shore dive into a bay where lights from the shore made navigation easy. Tonight I was going to dive a wreck way out to sea at about 22m max!

I had originally planned to do a single dive on Tuesday morning, but my first dive was cut short after 28 minutes as my buddy had run out of air after chasing his camera that he had lost when jumping in!

Lost Anchors is a relatively new dive site, so there's no line to descend, making this a bit more tricky as you need to descend to 25m 'in the blue'. Originally named 'Lost Anchor' there are now around four anchors on this site, hence the re-naming.

It's a beautiful site, lots of crevices for big lobsters, and even a nurse shark I managed to snap while it was sleeping.

Nurse shark having a morning nap

Also spotted a huge barracuda, and unfortunately a lion fish, a beautiful yet destructive invader to the Caribbean. Unfortunately, my skills with the GoPro were not yet good enough for me to get good shots of any moving life, I just wasn't getting close enough and the GoPro is a very wide angle lens.

Still practising my slow breathing technique, I was surprised when we were told to re-surface just after I had reached half a tank, at that stage I had no idea about the drama on the surface with the camera and the wasted air of both my buddy and divemaster (who had to swim out to rescue him from the current that was taking him further from the reef at the surface). So I sat on the boat for half an hour waiting for the rest of the divers, who all surfaced excited about the 'closest encounter with three reef shark so far'. I wasn't happy so decided to do a second morning dive.

Boat selfie with the Quill (on the right)

The next dive at Anchor point (my second visit there) more that made up for it! Two close encounters with reef sharks (possibly the same one both times) and catching sight of a red-lipped blenny as well as finally getting some footage of those elusive yellowhead jawfish. I was getting closer with my photography too, and getting better results. Luckily I've fallen in love with sponges - pretty good inspiration for ceramic shapes, colours and textures and they don't move very fast!

A beautiful sea sponge

Back home for a quick lunch and then off to the dive shop again to take my nitrox exam. Passed! Result! Then a quick re-cap of night dive procedures before the briefing for the dive - the wreck of the Chien Tong - a Taiwanese fishing boat. Also known as 'Turtle Hotel' because hawksbill and green turtles go there to sleep at night.

At this point I should re-iterate how amazing the service was from Scubaqua. They manage to get the balance of a professional service with a real warmth and friendliness that really makes a difference to your dive experience. So when I mentioned I was a little anxious about the night dive, Vincent was happy to go through the night dive procedure with me, and paired me up with a buddy was was able to watch out for me.

I have to say that five minutes into the dive, all my anxiousness has dissolved. Night diving the Chien Tong is unlike anything I have ever experienced before. As well as enormous grouper, barracuda and all the opened corals, the wreck has many turtles either arriving to find a place to sleep for the night, roaming the ship to find a suitable spot or already sleeping. And they seem to be not bothered by human presence, they swim so close (one clipped my mask with its flipper as it swam over my back) which meant for some good footage. A couple of stills are shown below as well as a movie of the over-friendly turtle.

Green(?) turtle looking for a spot to sleep

Hawksbill turtle heading towards the Chien Tong

Another amazing experience here on Statia! Exhausted and happy I crashed when I finally got home around 9pm. I need all my energy for tomorrow as I have to be up at 6am to go hike up to 'Boven'.