San Carlos
One of the best things about working on Roi-Namur was that once a year I got to take a one-month vacation. Typically I would stop in Honolulu for a couple of days to get use to civilization again. It is quite an adjustment to go from an island of about one hundred people where nothing moves faster than maybe 20 mph to a bustling city the size of Honolulu. I would see more people in one city block than Kwaj and Roi put together. I would always stay at the Ohana on Lewers St. (spelling?). It was close to the beach and there always seemed to be a lot of activity going on. There was also a breakfast place I like to go to close by. They had pancakes with cocoanut syrup on it that was very delicious. The rest of the time I would usually spend in Seattle with my children. I was always careful to return to the Marshall Islands in enough time so that I would not have to pay US income taxes. That was another benefit to living there.
Something I could have done was to visit San Carlos, Mexico on my vacation time but I didn’t. Instead I went there last weekend with my company’s dive club. It was sensational. I suppose the diving is comparable to Roi-Namur in the same way that the New England Patriots are comparable to the Buffalo Bills. Both play in the AFC east and have QBs but that is about where the comparison ends. But really, all things considered the diving is very good at San Carlos just not as good as Roi. Roi has much better visibility for one thing plus lots and lots of sharks. We drove there Friday and made it onto the boat by the 1:30 sailing time. After listening to the obligatory jokes by Gary the owner of the dive boats, we headed out to a local site called San Antonio. I had the good fortune of being paired up with a great guy named Brian for my dives. He had an incredible ability to find stuff under water. The first dive he found a sea horse, which was the first I had seen in the wild. I would guesstimate that it was about 10 inches long. He held it out on his finger and it curled its tail around him.
Figure 1 Brian and the Sea Horse
He also found countless moray eels, a few octopus, and lobsters. There were many other large schools of fish including yellow fin tuna. While carefully looking at a moray eel I got nipped by a damsel fish (I think that is what it was). It did not hurt but it did surprise me especially since I was focused on the eel and its gaping mouth. We bragged too much during our surface interval and a bunch of the other divers wanted to follow us for the second dive. We still found quite a bit. The water was a very pleasant 84 degrees. My only complaint was that the vis was only about 40 or 50 feet I’d guess.
Figure 2 A big School of fish (if you can identify them please leave a comment)
The second day we went to seal island named that because of the sea lions who live there who look similar to seals if you don’t know the difference. Our boat developed a problem with the rudder on the way out so our crew made a side trip to a port where they efficiently fixed it. We were soon on our way again. At Seal Island we saw sea lions. Brian had his head in a cave when I spotted the first 3 on our first dive. They came up really close to me, which is a little freaky at first because of their size.
Figure 3 A Sea Lion
I tried to get Brian’s attention by clanging a rock against my tank (I left my knife on the boat). That didn’t work so I got the bright idea to throw the rock at him. Have you ever tried that under water? It only made my sore shoulder sorer. I missed Brian by quite a bit. For our 2 dives there we saw pretty much more of what we saw the first day minus the seahorses and octopus. One of the most interesting sites was a parrotfish that had a large v-shaped bite out of its back. The bite was too large to be have made by my friend Cathner (who was probably back on Ebeye anyway) so we figured it was bitten by a sea lion. Brian grabbed its tail and it swam away. I was surprised it could move at all with that large of a bite. The funny thing (funny as in curious – the parrot fish was not laughing) was that there were tiny fish taking bites out of the back of the poor parrotfish as it swam away. The parrotfish are widely known as the Glenn’s of the ocean as they appear to have IBS. Someone on the boat said that they had heard that parrotfish produce 20 % of all the sand in the ocean I guess from their frequent discharges. Maybe one of my alert readers can check up on that for me and let me know if that is true. I believe it. Our boat crew of Jesus and Augustine took great care of us. I will say I never got pampered like that on Roi or anywhere else. They put your BC on the tank for you and help you get in and out of the ocean. For lunch they prepare delicious fish tacos and serve you platters of melons and other snacks. I enjoyed this trip as much as any I have ever taken and am deeply grateful to the dive club officers for their hard work, to all the folks at Gary’s diving, and to the great crew of divers I had the pleasure of meeting.
Figure 4 A Moray Eel