Little Cayman Trip Report – 23-26.Jan.2010

[bbianchi]

As its far too long and media rich to post here, I linked to my blog post of my trip report below.

BrandonBianchi.com Blog Archiv Little Cayman Trip Report – 23-26.Jan.2010 (http://www.brandonbianchi.com/?p=220)

For the cheating links:
Video: Diving Little Cayman - Jan 2010 HD on Vimeo (http://www.vimeo.com/9151212)
Photos: Picasa Web Albums - Brandon - Little Cayman... (http://picasaweb.google.com/bbianchi/LittleCayman2010)

Hope you all enjoy!

[bbianchi]

No comments?? :(

[bracscued]

Lovely pics! I hope those lionfish were captured!!! We saw 2 last year on the Brac. Managed to catch one. What was the name of the house you rented?

[bbianchi]

Sadly we were not permitted to catch them. From what I was told there is a class that not only teaches safety when dealing with them, but also how to corner and catch them. We were doing what we could to mark and or report the sightings to local dive operations so they could retrieve them at a later time.

[micboucher]

Great report and pics Brandon! Makes my withdrawals even worse. ;)

[Becca_007]

I don't like going off site when everything could easily be copy/pasted into a thread but I finally went and looked.

I'm jealous about the grouper. Our diving started on January 31st and the only thing the grouper were interested in were other grouper! I guess it was cool to see such large schools (one was counted at 38) go swimming by though. Is the small chimney you mentioned near Randy's Gazebo? The opening to that thing was quite daunting. I will check out the video when I have proper bandwidth again. The significant other is currently uploading his own videos of our trip.

[bbianchi]

Yea the chimney was at Randy's Gazebo. From what I was told about this time every year the Grouper get ready to spawn... you were probably seeing them heading out to the spawning grounds. We saw several schools of them also.

Sorry its posted on my blog, its made it easier to update little things as I think of them. Also I dont know how to imbed vimeo videos here....

[fisheater]

I was there in January last year (and missed running into Bruce) when the grouper were getting ready for their spawn.

One of them was VERY interested in me, swimming fast towards me as soon as I in the area and kept swimming into and around me.

I wrote "I must be ready to spawn" on my wetnotes and my dive buddy laughed so hard, so lost her reg.

[Anti-Hero]

Cool report! Thanks for sharing.

[mikeguerrero]

Brandon,

You look very comfortable in the water and your pictures are very nice, some of them have spectacular vivid color.

I also like some of the pics they took of you in blue water, there appears to be zero particulates floating around and viz looks awesome.

What was your max dept, how about temps? Were you using a 3mm?

One particular pic really interested me, I didn't know that the Royal Gramma stays within close proximity to the Morey eel, I wonder if they have a symbiotic relationship with them?

In captivity I have not seem them exhibit this type of behavior.

Thanks for sharing...

Now get back into cold water before you make me want to fly back to Boynton beach Florida to visit my mom and dive... :)

MG

[Becca_007]

Okay. Got to see the video. Very cool turtle footage around the 5 minute mark and at 11 minutes... grr! I had read all about how friendly the grouper were and was looking forward to some interaction. Our boat crew headed out in the evenings with the research group that did an entire presentation on the spawning habits. We missed the presentation because we were on a night dive and it looks like we missed our human/grouper interaction by 5 days. Maybe next time :).

[shawrg]

I enjoyed your trip report, pictures & videos. Thanks for the post!

[bbianchi]

Thanks everyone, it was a trip of a life time!

[bbianchi]

Brandon,

You look very comfortable in the water and your pictures are very nice, some of them have spectacular vivid color.

I also like some of the pics they took of you in blue water, there appears to be zero particulates floating around and viz looks awesome.

What was your max dept, how about temps? Were you using a 3mm?

One particular pic really interested me, I didn't know that the Royal Gramma stays within close proximity to the Morey eel, I wonder if they have a symbiotic relationship with them?

In captivity I have not seem them exhibit this type of behavior.

Thanks for sharing...

Now get back into cold water before you make me want to fly back to Boynton beach Florida to visit my mom and dive... :)

MG


Amazing vis, probably 100 to 150+ feet.

Max depth I hit was 109fsw with the water consistently being 81F. My longest dive of the trip was 93 minutes which was nice.. and even being down that long the 3mm was more than enough protection.

There were Royal Gramma everywhere, but I didn't really notice anything that made them seem symbiotic with the eels... I could be wrong.

Ive tried to dive every weekend since I got back, but the conditions have been so bad here I always end up getting to the dive site and canceling the dives.

[bbianchi]

Finally got the alternate audio version to upload, overly difficult. Same video, one song... more... relaxing and my original video before the wife wanted more up beat songs ;).

Little Cayman Diving - HD - 2010 on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/9750078)