Trip Report My hasty T&C Aggressor trip report May 12-19 2018

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darook

Contributor
Messages
809
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Location
Northwestern Wisconsin
# of dives
200 - 499
Wind, more wind and yet, more wind. Those were the conditions all last week on the T&C. Wind aside, the trip was really fun. This was my fourth Aggressor charter and they are consistently fun. Typical Aggressor in that the boat is a bit tired, the heads a bit small and the beds a couple inches too short. But also typical Aggressor with delicious well prepared food, super helpful crew, terrific briefings, a focus on safety and a lot of fun.

For a very comprehensive review see this report. For my own opinion see below:

Diving. Viz was fine to great all week, lots of fish, no real current other than the wind driven surface current. Nitrox is a requirement IMHO. There is no shallow bottom to check out so you are always accumulating nitrogen until you ascend towards your safety stop. Depths under the boat were 40' at the shallowest and typically 50' plus. My NDL was regularly getting into the single digits on my Aqualung computer. Other folks were diving more aggressive algorithms and were rewarded with skin hits.

Diving from the boat was fine. They have a hangbar at 22' and a hooka down to about 25'. Since we had crazy wind all week the boat was swinging broadly and the rides on the hang bar were fast! It would rise to about 12' if there were a few folks on it. You would spot the boat and ascend to it's swing zone and do your SS while waiting for it's return. It seemed to be on a three minute cycle. I was doing very slow ascents and long stops to suck the enriched O2 at the lower PPs. I am a big believer in the final ascent to the surface being achingly slow as it is the largest gradient. That was easy to do with their lines and ladders set up. They were great with my monster camera too. One on board you were battered by the wind but that was alleviated by the hot shower on the stern and the towel handed to you immediately as you ascended the ladder to the dive deck.

Reef health. Fish life is good. Lots of Nassau Groupers, Coneys, Black Durgon, Burrfish, Reef Sharks, Eels of all types, and Jacks. Lots of Jacks. The early afternoon dives were the least fishy but the morning and later afternoon dives were very fishy. The coral is healthy but not dense. There are lots of old dead coral heads with a patch of new coral growing on it. The plate coral did get very dense at about 80' on down. I definitely preferred the sites at West Caicos to Northwest Point though there were lots of similarities between them. The day boats primarily stayed at Northwest Point though a couple did make their way to West Caicos. Those folks had a long day!

Travel to the T&C is easy. Entering the country through immigration is trivial. Leaving the country means more time at the airport and ample opportunity to understand how badly the airport sucks. It is way too small for the number of people that move through there on a Saturday. Waiting to get out of the airport to board the plane was sweltering. Once on the tarmac it was immediately cooler which is ironic in that destination. Great news for those of us for whom Atlanta is a necessary transit point. Immigration is greatly improved and they have TSA Pre Check. Normally, it was a long line at security to get back in for your connecting flight. Yesterday there was none. My only delay was caused by an agent who didn't recognize what a drone looks like in your bag.

I will get a link to pics and video added to the thread once I am done editing them all. I did find myself primarily shooting macro for stills as it was a great place for it.

Final thoughts. Would I recommend it? Very much! This type of diving will improve your skills, you will see lots of cool fish and have a bunch of fun. Will I return for this itinerary? Probably not. There are other places I want to see. I do return to Cozumel and Bonaire but those destinations are a cut above this one for my preferences. I do plan to do Tiger Beach again on the Aggressor again as that is an amazing trip.
 
My NDL was regularly getting into the single digits on my Aqualung computer. Other folks were diving more aggressive algorithms and were rewarded with skin hits.

Out of interest, which algorithms are you referencing? A number of deco algorithms might be more liberal than PZ+. I have successfully been diving one of them since 2002, >1,200 dives, including T&C
 
Since you referenced heavy winds and you didn't mention French Cay, I assume you didn't make it there? I certainly second the thoughts concerning deep average depth dives there as well as extended SS and/or very slow final ascents from SS. I've also seen a few DCS incidents on that itinerary. It can be sneaky and it's worth paying extra attention. Glad you had a nice trip and thanks for the report. :)
 
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Glad you had a good trip! I'm glad I went (last week of April); would've liked to hit French Cay, but I've been blessed with excellent itineraries on my other 2 Aggressor trips, and sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate.

Did you see any tarpon? I didn't see a single tarpon all week my trip; big, dusky jacks with a slight purplish cast (I believe I heard them called Black Jacks) accompanied us on night dives instead, not unlike the tarpon I recall from Bonaire.

Did you do one of Robert Smith's UV-light fluorescence night dives? I didn't, but others spoke well of it.

Richard.
 
Out of interest, which algorithms are you referencing? A number of deco algorithms might be more liberal than PZ+. I have successfully been diving one of them since 2002, >1,200 dives, including T&C
My dive buddy had a new Aqualung computer that was much fancier than my i300 and he said it was set to medium. I assume mine is set to conservative which is still more liberal than my old Suunto. Anyway, we dove similar profiles and did all of the dives. He always had significantly more NDL than me. He ended up with a rash on his belly. I don't know what the other person was using for a computer that got a skin hit but he was always well below me when I started ascending to get some NDL back. I am assuming it was more liberal than mine. His wife dove similar profiles to him and didn't have an issue. As happens so often happens different people get different results.
 
Since you referenced heavy winds and you didn't mention French Cay, I assume you didn't make it there? I certainly second the thoughts concerning deep average depth dives there as well as extended SS and/or very slow final ascents from SS. I've also seen a few DCS incidents on that itinerary. It can be sneaky and it's worth paying extra attention. Glad you had a nice trip and thanks for the report. :)
We did not go to French Cay and apparently would not have even if the wind allowed as it was really damaged by Irma. It sounds like it will be a while before it is dived much again.
 
Glad you had a good trip! I'm glad I went (last week of April); would've liked to hit French Cay, but I've been blessed with excellent itineraries on my other 2 Aggressor trips, and sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate.

Did you see any tarpon? I didn't see a single tarpon all week my trip; big, dusky jacks with a slight purplish cast (I believe I heard them called Black Jacks) accompanied us on night dives instead, not unlike the tarpon I recall from Bonaire.

Did you do one of Robert Smith's UV-light fluorescence night dives? I didn't, but others spoke well of it.

Richard.
We did not see a tarpon either but lots of those black jacks which I guess are close relatives to the horse eyed jacks. Those jacks were all over us on the night dives. It was not a problem at all, they were just leveraging our lights. The blood worms got annoying at night but it was fun to put your light next to a coral head and watch them get nuked by the polyps! We had sea wasps on one night dive but the boat swing took us away from them prior to ascent.

We did not do any UV dives and no one mentioned them so maybe they were not available. Amanda and Rob were off of the boat for training so we had Christy captaining. She is the primary captain on the Bahamas Aggressor. Hoping to see here again at Tiger Beach next Summer.
 
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We did not see a tarpon either but lots of those black jacks which I guess are close relatives to the horse eyed jacks. Those jacks were all over us on the night dives. It was not a problem at all, they were just leveraging our lights. The blood worms got annoying at night but it was fun to put your light next to a coral head and watch them get nuked by the polyps! We had sea wasps on one night dive but the boat swing took us away from them prior to ascent.

We did not do any UV dives and no one mentioned them so maybe they were not available. Amanda and Rob were off of the boat for training so we had Christy captaining. She is the primary captain on the Bahamas Aggressor. Hoping to see here again at Tiger Beach next Summer.

Thanks for the great report @darook! I definitely remember seeing tarpons in the T&Cs, especially on night dives, but it has been 4 or 5 years since we were last there. Maybe not as many tarpons as we are used to seeing in Bonaire or the Caymans, but it was not unusual to encounter tarpons and barracudas in the T&Cs.

I have a strong memory of swimming down a coral tunnel while heading out toward the wall on a night dive and seeing a large, dark, shape coming straight at me! I thought that it was a shark but then my light caught the shiny reflection of a very large tarpon.

Deep sea fishing and bone fishing are popular sports in the T&Cs, I hope that the tarpon population hasn't been dwindling due to fishing activities.

Or maybe the strong presence of sharks reduces the numbers of other big predators, due to competition for food? I haven't been to the Bahamas recently but they've always had a reputation for sharks, are tarpons also common there? I don't remember.
 
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You mention skin bends as well as a hot shower on the stern. We’re people doing the hot shower immediately after their dives?
 
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