We woke before sunrise to the sound of rain, leading us to believe the underwater visibility might have deteriorated. But, the west side of Anthony’s Key looked good. The rain had trickled to a stop and the sea was not too roughed up by the wind. So, we made our way to Bailey’s Key at 6:15 AM for data collection and observations. The underwater visibility had improved. Of course, the current and wind had increased. I was able to observe Elli and Gizmo, Kami with Poli (see below), and Tilly with Gracie and Trixie (our featured photo).
And, Rocky and Tank decided I could be a great toy, which truncated my session by half the time. We were still able to record some good video, though today turned out to be weird on many levels. 1) the quiet nature of the session, except for Rocky and Tank. 2) the front-facing GoPro decided to warp the images (see below). At first, I thought the housing leaked but it did not! Still, the images were rather psychedelic! It went off and on and I can find nothing wrong, so we’ll use it as the back-facing GoPro tomorrow. 3) my watch rather abruptly went back in time to 1 January 2000! And refused to budge from that date for a couple hours. It’s reset now, but maybe we went through a time warp (see images below)?! 🤔
Even though Roatan is well south of the eye of Hurricane Milton, we are still getting the southern fringe of this storm. I pulled a screengrab from Windy and the blue arrow points to Roatan.
Today, it’s been mostly wind – and the chop is all due to wind, no swell and … well, it’s windy! The wind should lessen here by tomorrow afternoon as Milton moves NNE. We’re sending positive thoughts from here for all the folks in Milton’s path in Florida and the surrounding areas.
Don and Will joined the rest of the AKR divers to visit reefs on the south side of Roatan today, including a stop at Mary’s Place. Bill will join them tomorrow morning for more in-water action.
We’ll plan to collect data in the morning assuming the weather, sea conditions, and dolphins all cooperate.
Until then,
Cheers
Kathleen, Bill, Don & Will – DCP’s 2024 October Ecotour Crew