I've finished my Divemaster yesterday, so today I thought I'd take it easy and do some relaxing reef dives in the afternoon. I figured it would be a good opportunity to practice using my camera and film some fish, especially since I didn't have many chances to take pictures or video while I was working on my Divemaster.
The first dive we did was North North Dryrocks, which has become one of my favorite reefs in the area. Visibility was a little poor, but I got plenty of good practice in with my camera, and hopefully a few keepers. After the first dive we decided to hit up Key Largo Dryrocks, better known as Christ of the Abyss. An 8.5 foot tall bronze statue of Jesus Christ was placed in about 25 feet of water near the reef in 1965 by the Underwater Society of America. It's one of the better known local "land"marks so I took some video of it, and then tagged along with Jen, one of the other divemasters towards a lesser known patch reef nearby.
After a few minutes of slowly finning over the sand towards the reef, we passed over a few coral heads and came across a nurse shark in the sand. By this time, my camera battery was nearly dead, but I did manage to capture a few minutes of footage of the shark. Once I get my hands on my new hard drive I'll be able to post some video. Jen thought she recognized the shark as Babycakes, a nurse shark that's normally found 4 miles from Christ of the Abyss on a wreck called the City of Washington. It certainly seemed like he recognized Jen. Once he realized he was being watched he rose up off the sand and swam around us, disappearing behind the coral from time to time, but never straying too far. He was probably between 5 and 6 feet long, and very beautiful. It was probably one of the largest sharks I've seen in the wild, definitely a memorable experience.
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