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From another thread, an oft repeated mis-conception that the "drop-off" dives at CCV are the same dive, over and over and over....
First, a little nomenclature, it isn't "all" the Front Yard:
(Some may take issue with bits of the above, but after 35+ trips there since 1985, and at my age, I could care less
)
To frame the question: CCV does 4 boat dives doing two departures (0830 and 1400) daily. The first dive of each is at a moored site, the second dive, you select a drop off point at either wall (your choice) or just to be plopped on top of the Wreck of the Prince Albert (my favorite choice)
Here is a graphic representation of those choices for Dives #2 and #4 of a CCV Day:
A key part of the explanation as to why "each dive is different" lies in understanding the geography and how the Sun tracks:
Like I said, I prefer to be dropped right kerplop on top of the wreck, a very shallow (1.5hr BT) exploration and familiarization of where you will be most comfortable NIGHT DIVING. She sits nosed into 35fsw and rudder at 65fsw. She is intact, upright and tops out in 22fsw. Pix? see Prince Albert Wreck Of Roatan Photos by Doc_Adelman | Photobucket
Oh gosh, look- a wreck- good thing we found it! We can follow it's anchor chain back to our room.
It's just to the right of the blue boat.
Most people select one of the two walls, and then, when they see the Prince Albert Wreck, the turn dead North, follow the ship's anchor chain (the BLUE • shown below) back into CCV's Front Yard and to their rooms.
There are some alternative re-entries.
(that "Side Door" in purple? It's shallow, sharp coral, all that stuff. Perfect buoyancy required at high tide, no wave action... don't just go charging in. The large sandy chute that precedes it to the South is always quite a good place to have a look-see, esp at night in 10fsw)
In that I see CCV as having the pre-eminent shore dive on Roatan (out of the very few that exist and are accessible), here are some interesting places that most divers never really get to gawk at:
Now, here's the hard part...
Coco View is for advanced divers!
What does that mean?
"Advanced Diving" has no one definition other than: "Different stuff than I am used to".
Sure, countless divers have gotten their first C-Card there, so you know there's no currents and there are nice shallow sandy bottoms in the "Front Yard's Pool" that is used for the confined water portion. What makes it advanced?
The beginner divers have a blast at CCV. Experienced divers with a lot of logged dive call the place "home". The dichotomy occurs for the intermediate diver, those with possibly 30 to 75 dives (altho numbers of logged dives really is not a sure indicator).
As we get past the stage of "whoo-hoo, I'm divin'!", we start to see common bigger critters like Lobsters and Parrot Fish (as long as they are in the realm of a breadbox size, kind of an archaic reference there)
As evidence: Seems that everyone has a digital camera these days. Look at the first 370 pics that most everybody shoots underwater: Squirrel fish (112 images), Orange tube sponges (37 images), Coral (14 images) and your dive buddy (the rest of the 2 meg memory card are too blurry to tell or are "accidental" pictures of somebody's "niece":gorgeous:in that bikini-shaped postage stamp thing)
Many divers who are in this category (and understand that vast majority of divers are in that category) really enjoy seeing things... and they can only really see so much at this stage. Wrecks are super cool, reef and wall shapes are always memorable. This category is not so taken by all the critters that a wreck might attract (fish love structure) or understand that varying depths along a wall provide widely varied types of corals and niche environments for the stuff beyond Squirrel Fish.
This area is a very small localized band of a reef structure that is absolutely unique in the Caribbean. Nowhere else can you find a Southern exposure wall structure that is so shallow. The tops are in 3 to 30fsw, the drop straight down to sand at 100'. Because the South side is on the "storm lee", sheltered from the battering- the reef shape is otherwise unremarkable- straight up and down, few fissures, cracks or easy to see and impressive shapes.
At this medium stage in dive experience, most folks are still very enthralled with shapes, the critters hidden there in plain sight are largely un-seen. We are so busy diving, we can not see. This is the single best explanation for infatuation with any wreck (tattered into shreds or not) and less than world class dive sites (yet fan favorites on Roatan) like Mary's Place and The Odyssey wreck.
How I "fix this" with people on my dive trips?
I slow them down. No, slower than that. The greatest problem in the "drop off" dives is that divers see one major goal: get back to CocoView with air in their tank. Not a bad plan, but most of them stand up and walk-out with 1500psi or more in their tank. What's with that?
It's called basic survival drive overpowering common sense (and math). Many drop off divers behave as if it were a race. I stay very shallow (because I am old, and because that's where the cool stuff is) and stretch these drop off dives into 1.5 hr affairs. I get into "stand-up shallow" water at 900psi and then I spend another 1/2 hr sucking it down to nothing. I never stand up on the CCV Shore Exit, not at that wooden platform table in 5' of water some 150' off the beach. I SCUBA all the way in until I run out of water.
These drop-off dives can be done at varying depths. The aspect from 60fsw is entirely different than that of 40fsw.
Und zo...
This "same old" drop off dive is presented to you 10 times during any given week. The dive staff will drop you anywhere, but the default is Newmans in the AM and CoCoView Wall in the PM due to Sunlight. That would mean that you would get the same old repetitive dive 5x in a week. Like I said, I prefer taking new visitors right to the wreck, getting them super-familiar with it so that night diving (each and every night) becomes less of a scary (what if I get lost?) proposition.
Otherwise, the people who have never been to CCV continue to repeat the odd line, "the same old repetitive dive".
This can not, however, explain why the photographers (everyone from DeLoach/Humann to Frink) love the CCV Drop Off Dives.
Likely, they're just stuck in a rut.
And, oh by the way...
In within the realm of a CCV Shore Dive environs, I have seen Batfish, Frogfish, Garden Eels (right there but most don't notice), a 10' Atlantic Manta (right over the PA Wreck), Hammerheads (along CCV wall), Porpise (along Newmans) and a bunch of other stuff including one of them Whale Shark things.
But, then again, a whole lot of people complain about the lack of fish life.
Same old stuff.
First, a little nomenclature, it isn't "all" the Front Yard:
(Some may take issue with bits of the above, but after 35+ trips there since 1985, and at my age, I could care less
)To frame the question: CCV does 4 boat dives doing two departures (0830 and 1400) daily. The first dive of each is at a moored site, the second dive, you select a drop off point at either wall (your choice) or just to be plopped on top of the Wreck of the Prince Albert (my favorite choice)
Here is a graphic representation of those choices for Dives #2 and #4 of a CCV Day:
A key part of the explanation as to why "each dive is different" lies in understanding the geography and how the Sun tracks:
Like I said, I prefer to be dropped right kerplop on top of the wreck, a very shallow (1.5hr BT) exploration and familiarization of where you will be most comfortable NIGHT DIVING. She sits nosed into 35fsw and rudder at 65fsw. She is intact, upright and tops out in 22fsw. Pix? see Prince Albert Wreck Of Roatan Photos by Doc_Adelman | Photobucket
Oh gosh, look- a wreck- good thing we found it! We can follow it's anchor chain back to our room.
It's just to the right of the blue boat.
Most people select one of the two walls, and then, when they see the Prince Albert Wreck, the turn dead North, follow the ship's anchor chain (the BLUE • shown below) back into CCV's Front Yard and to their rooms.
There are some alternative re-entries.
(that "Side Door" in purple? It's shallow, sharp coral, all that stuff. Perfect buoyancy required at high tide, no wave action... don't just go charging in. The large sandy chute that precedes it to the South is always quite a good place to have a look-see, esp at night in 10fsw)
In that I see CCV as having the pre-eminent shore dive on Roatan (out of the very few that exist and are accessible), here are some interesting places that most divers never really get to gawk at:
Now, here's the hard part...
Coco View is for advanced divers!
What does that mean?
"Advanced Diving" has no one definition other than: "Different stuff than I am used to".
Sure, countless divers have gotten their first C-Card there, so you know there's no currents and there are nice shallow sandy bottoms in the "Front Yard's Pool" that is used for the confined water portion. What makes it advanced?
The beginner divers have a blast at CCV. Experienced divers with a lot of logged dive call the place "home". The dichotomy occurs for the intermediate diver, those with possibly 30 to 75 dives (altho numbers of logged dives really is not a sure indicator).
As we get past the stage of "whoo-hoo, I'm divin'!", we start to see common bigger critters like Lobsters and Parrot Fish (as long as they are in the realm of a breadbox size, kind of an archaic reference there)
As evidence: Seems that everyone has a digital camera these days. Look at the first 370 pics that most everybody shoots underwater: Squirrel fish (112 images), Orange tube sponges (37 images), Coral (14 images) and your dive buddy (the rest of the 2 meg memory card are too blurry to tell or are "accidental" pictures of somebody's "niece":gorgeous:in that bikini-shaped postage stamp thing)
Many divers who are in this category (and understand that vast majority of divers are in that category) really enjoy seeing things... and they can only really see so much at this stage. Wrecks are super cool, reef and wall shapes are always memorable. This category is not so taken by all the critters that a wreck might attract (fish love structure) or understand that varying depths along a wall provide widely varied types of corals and niche environments for the stuff beyond Squirrel Fish.
This area is a very small localized band of a reef structure that is absolutely unique in the Caribbean. Nowhere else can you find a Southern exposure wall structure that is so shallow. The tops are in 3 to 30fsw, the drop straight down to sand at 100'. Because the South side is on the "storm lee", sheltered from the battering- the reef shape is otherwise unremarkable- straight up and down, few fissures, cracks or easy to see and impressive shapes.
At this medium stage in dive experience, most folks are still very enthralled with shapes, the critters hidden there in plain sight are largely un-seen. We are so busy diving, we can not see. This is the single best explanation for infatuation with any wreck (tattered into shreds or not) and less than world class dive sites (yet fan favorites on Roatan) like Mary's Place and The Odyssey wreck.
How I "fix this" with people on my dive trips?
I slow them down. No, slower than that. The greatest problem in the "drop off" dives is that divers see one major goal: get back to CocoView with air in their tank. Not a bad plan, but most of them stand up and walk-out with 1500psi or more in their tank. What's with that?
It's called basic survival drive overpowering common sense (and math). Many drop off divers behave as if it were a race. I stay very shallow (because I am old, and because that's where the cool stuff is) and stretch these drop off dives into 1.5 hr affairs. I get into "stand-up shallow" water at 900psi and then I spend another 1/2 hr sucking it down to nothing. I never stand up on the CCV Shore Exit, not at that wooden platform table in 5' of water some 150' off the beach. I SCUBA all the way in until I run out of water.
These drop-off dives can be done at varying depths. The aspect from 60fsw is entirely different than that of 40fsw.
Und zo...
This "same old" drop off dive is presented to you 10 times during any given week. The dive staff will drop you anywhere, but the default is Newmans in the AM and CoCoView Wall in the PM due to Sunlight. That would mean that you would get the same old repetitive dive 5x in a week. Like I said, I prefer taking new visitors right to the wreck, getting them super-familiar with it so that night diving (each and every night) becomes less of a scary (what if I get lost?) proposition.
Otherwise, the people who have never been to CCV continue to repeat the odd line, "the same old repetitive dive".
This can not, however, explain why the photographers (everyone from DeLoach/Humann to Frink) love the CCV Drop Off Dives.
Likely, they're just stuck in a rut.
And, oh by the way...
In within the realm of a CCV Shore Dive environs, I have seen Batfish, Frogfish, Garden Eels (right there but most don't notice), a 10' Atlantic Manta (right over the PA Wreck), Hammerheads (along CCV wall), Porpise (along Newmans) and a bunch of other stuff including one of them Whale Shark things.
But, then again, a whole lot of people complain about the lack of fish life.
Same old stuff.
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