Our day started like any typical day, waking up and going straight to breakfast. We then continued our scuba diving adventure to Hepp’s Pipeline.
The name, Hepp’s Pipeline, comes from the half pipe shape. The coral fingers curve upward and creates two connected walls. The deepest that this pipe reached was about 74 feet, which make the half pipe huge. The first fish that I saw was a trumpetfish, which was easy to identify due to their shape. The fish is very long in length and skinny, looking like a trumpet. The fish was hard to spot due to it being camouflage. The dive master previously stated that the trumpet fish will turn to camouflage when hiding from predators. What made the search for this harder, was that the fish was hiding in between coral. This is typical behavior for a trumpet fish, due to them living and feeding on their prey in coral reefs. The second fish that I saw was a Black Durgon. The closer I got to the fish, the more fascinated I got. This fish is one of my favorite creatures that I have seen on the trip. The color of this is like a midnight black with two baby blue stripes. The colors mix together very well and look really cool. The way that the fish swims is also very fascinating. The fish has two fins, one on the top and one on the bottom of the body. The fish sway at an opposite direction in a very majestic manner. Overall, this dive was very enjoying, but does not beat the second dive.
The second dive takes place on a location by the name of Spanish Bay Reef. This name is given by the resort that was destroyed due to a hurricane that passed through the Cayman Islands. The hurricanes name is Hurricane Ivan, which passed in the year 2004 to the Spanish Bay Resort. The hotel did not have the right insurance, which meant that this place could not be built again. This dive had several coral heads and and a shallow wall, which is around 30 feet deep. When descending, I saw some French Grunt. These were very common throughout this whole dive, so it was very easy to spot this fish. At first, I was not able to identify this fish, but once I did my research, I knew instantly. The French Grunt is yellow and white stripes, which is very easy to remember. The second creature that I saw was a Caribbean Spiny Lobster. This animal seems extremely intimidating, but all it did was just stare at us and stay in its cave. This is not a typical lobster that everyone thinks about, in fact, it does not have any claws. It only has two huge antenas and legs. When staring at the lobster, one antenna was pointed towards the sky, and the other one was pointed directly at me. I was scared at first, but when the lobster did not do anything for a while, I did not pay much attention to it. After a 45 minute dive, we stored our gear and went back to the resort.
After lunch, we got back on the boat, and set off to Stingray City. At first, I was not sure about jumping into an area with a dozen Stingray, but I eventually gave in and hopped in. In the first couple minutes, a Southern Atlantic Stingray came swimming at me and all I thought about was the barb hitting me straight in the face. Of course, it did not and let me touch/pet it. It was a lot smoother than I thought, it felt like slimy leather. I touched all sizes, from a baby which is about the size of frisbee, to the size of a coffee table. This was definitely one of my favorite activities from the trip so far.
