Surprises!

Location: Gladden Spit - Belize

Day 8
by Wayne & Karen Brown


Once again we sped out to Gladden Spit for another fun and exciting day with Avadon Divers!

Sean, our divemaster, led us on an underwater tour in the deep blue Caribbean Sea in search for whale sharks. Jerome and Gieri, the other two divemasters, came along too. We swam for a while and then came upon a school of snappers. It was a huge school in very deep water. But some of them were close to us at about 60 feet below the surface.

Then, slowly emerging from the depths was the submarine sized shape of a whale shark! It was far below us. We watched it as it swimmed right under us! And what was surprising, the snappers were following the shark! We just watched it as it slowly swam out of sight, into the blue.

During the lunch break, at our usual stop in the calm, shallow water, we went snorkeling. And guess what joined us in the water? We were surprised to see the four manatees that we saw on Day 4! They were back to see us. They swam around us, and they swam back and forth near our dive boat. They didn't stop to munch on the turtle grass. They were very busy swimming around. It was definitely one large female and three smaller males.

Our scuba dive after lunch is usually when we have the best encounters with whale sharks. This afternoon's dive was a surprise because we did not see any whale sharks. But an even bigger surprise were the three Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins. We had seen dolphins on the surface both before and after our dives at Gladden Spit. They come for an easy lunch. Instead of swimming around trying catch one of the thousands of schooling snapper, they let the fishermen do all the work! There are fishermen here hook-and-line fishing for the snapper. When a fishermen catches a snapper and hauls it up from the deep the dolphin will come over and grab it right off their hook!

Since the dolphin don't have to work at catching their food they have plenty of time to play around. About half-way through our dive three Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphins swam right over to our little group of divers and looked right at us! They swam around for maybe 30 seconds and then they were gone in a flash. I guess we just don't swim fast enough to be fun for them to stick around.

Wow! Whales sharks, manatees, and dolphins in the same day. How can it get much better than that?! We can't wait to find out what surprises are waiting for us tomorrow when we go back to Gladden Spit!

Best fishes,
Wayne & Karen Brown

 
TODAY'S DATA

Gladden Spit, Belize

Position: 16º 39' N / 87º 58' W
Air Temp: 91ºF
Weather: light breeze, sunny with scattered clouds and calm seas.
Water Temp: 84ºF

After swimming through the schooling snappesr, the snappers follow the whale shark as their new leader of the school.

The female manatee and three smaller males greeted us during our lunch break inside the shallow reef.

The three Atantic bottle-nosed dolphins swam by to check us out on our second dive.

 
 

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