The Main Event in Carriacou

Tyrrel Bay, Grenada

Carriacou, the middle-sized island of the nation of Grenada, is yet another beautiful island.  Precipitous hills, beautiful coastline, and green again after the Grenadines.  And very friendly people who didn't attempt to hustle us.

As an aside, the hustling factor has been evident, more or less, since Dominica with the exception of Martinique.  Many times the service offered is greatly appreciated, we accept and we enjoy the encounter.  Most "boys" are just trying to make a living and immediately stop the hustle if we say no.  But on occasion, no does not do the trick.  At one bay, we were chased down the beach each time  we went ashore over a couple of days and the guy was definitely angry when we refused a service that we did not want.  That put us off and we left the next day which is too bad for the other enterprising entrepreneurs on the island.  This experience is definitely the exception but it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.

In any case, when we reached Carriacou, as with the rest of Grenada, a flotilla of small boats did not come out to greet us and attempt to guide us to an anchorage.  We were on our own and enjoyed the change.

Although we did the usual hiking, swimming, exploring in Carriacou, the main event and highlight was learning to dive.  We took our open water course with Lumbadive in Tyrrel Bay.  Richard and Diane were passionate about the coral and fish, patient with my brief episode of claustrophobia and obviously enjoyed life and their second career.  They are Canadian and were in business in a big way. They decided to throw it all in and open a dive shop in Carriacou.  And a great job they do.

I have always wanted to dive.  We plan to dive in Bonaire, apparently among the best sites in the world.  And diving in Carriacou had been recommended.  On our first day in the bay, we met another Canadian couple who decided to join us which added another social dimension to the experience.  It was great! even though our evenings, after beer and dinner with Anny and Carl, were full of reading and tests in preparation for a serious - sort of - final exam.

The initial confined water part of the course was in about 12 feet of water on the beach with fish, coral, and lobster traps to entertain after completing our compulsory underwater exercises - removing water from our mask, taking mask off, going to the surface without air, having our air turned off and sharing with our partner, taking all equipment off underwater and putting it on again and more. All a bit intimidating at first, at least for me.  At one point I found breathing strenuous and got a bit short of breath on the second set of exercises - I felt I had to surface which is a no-no when on a true dive.  So...I was a bit nervous when the first real dive took place.

Preparing for our first dive.  We rolled backward off the boat rail.  I'm the little one in the back,  a shrinking violet.

Back roll compete - it was fun.  Now ready for descent.

Made it to the bottom, feeling weightless.  One of the tricks is to find just the right amount of air to inflate the BCD (backpack that holds air and all the other equipment) so you can hover without moving in the water.

Peter feeling just fine.  

One of the exercises was to take the mask off and then put it back on, clear the water and give the okay sign.  Not so bad once you figure out you can keep breathing and water doesn't go up your nose.

The diving team of four newbies.

After a back roll out of the boat and a swim to the line, we went down, stopping often to blow through our nose to equalize pressure in our ears.  Incredibly, it worked!  Peter and I had both been a bit sceptical.  We were the first pair down to a sandy spot on the bottom from which a high coral wall climbed.  It was incredible and beautiful and so distracted me that I forgot all about being short of breath.  From then on it was a zen, meditative experience.  You can hear your own breathing, a bit like yoga.  You're weightless and moving slowly, gliding over and around the bottom contours and looking up through a huge school of fish to the sun shining through the surface. So cool!

A ray buried in the sand waiting for prey to unsuspectingly swim by.

He's looking at you.  Richard stroked the top of the ray's head for a second or two before he picked up and scooted away into the depths.  So amazing!

Beautiful, healthy coral.  After all the dead white coral we've seen, this was especially wonderful.  The large tubes are sponges.

Over the next few days, we completed four dives going down to 85 feet - although that's a secret, we were supposed to only go to 60.

A trunk fish.  Their are lots of these strange looking triangular fish ranging from tiny to about a foot long.

An eel looking ferocious.  The open and close their mouths all the time to breath, not to bite.

We saw plenty of HUGE schools of fish.  They often surrounded us.

We couldn't stop there.  We completed our LionFish certificate by going on two lion fish hunts.  One with spear gun - I didn't shoot, only tried to spot the fish - and one with nets - really kitchen colanders.  You go after the guy from the front and he backs into the other one which is held behind him.  Then, presto, you've caught your lion fish...in theory.  I caught one but several got away.  Peter was more successful.

This is a lion fish, head down.  They are very exotic looking, either black and white or red and black.  Many fins look like feathers but many of the fins are tipped with poison.  Hence, they have no predators although eels are apparently learning to attack them from the belly.  They are a bit slow - you can get right up to them before them move - I guess they are used to being king of the coral reef.

Diane and several other locals clip off the fins when preparing the lion fish for dinner and make pretty amazing looking jewellery.  I didn't purchase as the thought of wearing a fish fin around my neck did not appeal.

I know it sounds cruel but these fish are invasive.  They got into the Caribbean Sea when an aquarium broke in Florida during a hurricane - or so the story goes.  They are now eating all the fish around the reefs and destroying an already jeopardized ecosystem.  All islands now encourage snorkelers and divers to kill and eat lion fish.

Finally, we did two dives for our Marinebiology certificate.  Algae is covering some of the coral in Carriacou.  White spined urchins, with smaller spines, are thought to eat the algae and clear the reef.  We collected hundreds of urchins in one location - their was an eel beside one that I went for, that urchin was saved.  And dumped the urchins around a reef that we had previously mapped and marked.  Great fun and felt good to be giving back to the community in some way.

We harvested pails and pails of white spined urchins.  

Getting ready for the drop.  We had marked the sites on a dive the previous day.

Peter removing the mark from the drop destination as the urchins rained down from the boat above.

We harvested in pails and toted them from the bottom to the top.

The urchins landed on the reef where we had noted a lot of algae.

Raining urchins.

And again.  It was very cool.

So now we are divers with three certificates. We saw octopus, barracuda, shark, healthy coral reefs and all kinds of colourful fish.   A perfect way to idle away some of hurricane season.  We will definitely dive in Bonaire and Belize next season.

Diane decorated the graduates toes with the diving flag.  We all passed!