Honey Badger Dive Team in the Bahamas Dec 2012

[DetectorGuy]

We got back from the Bahamas late Saturday night and I finally made time to drop some photos of the trip. I have been trying to convert about 40 GB of HD video for the last couple days. I am almost done with that and when I get them all stitched together I will start posting links to them here. I spent the first 8 days there with my wife and daughter doing family stuff, and the next 8 days diving like a mad man with Nate. We searched for the 36' Yellowfin for a couple days near the West end of Nassau harbor. There we covered a lot of area and did not find any sign of the 1/4 million dollar boat. Some of the search area was inside the navigational buoys of the shipping channel and the viz here in the channel was only 50'. After several drops here. we were fairly confident that the Yellowfin went over the wall into the abyss when hurricane Sandy came to town. The remainder of the trip was doing fun dives. I got in 18 dives and we hit 7 different wrecks. The Mahoney wreck was pretty shallow at 27' and pretty broke up but it had tons of fish on it. There was a 6' morray eel free swimming along side a good sized grouper on the wreck, So I dove that Mahoney wreck twice. Then I dove the Car Ferry wreck in about 65' of water. It was mostly intact but it had just a few fish on it. The next wreck was the Lighthouse wreck in about 45' deep water near the lighthouse. The stern was mostly intact but the rest was spread out. I saw my first ocean sunfish on this wreck. The next wreck was the Miranda wreck sitting about 55' deep. This boat was broke in two with both halves sitting upside down in a "T" configuration. One of the props was gone and the other one was bent up. There were a few fish on this wreck. The next wreck we hit was the Landing Craft wreck just offshore from Atholl Cay and this wreck was only 18' deep. There were a few fish on this shallow wreck. The next wrecks were two of the three mail boats sunk next to each other in 92' deep water. One of these was on its side and the other was upside down. After doing a little penetration on both of them we were too low on gas to check out the third one. We also did a few reef dives but highlight of the whole trip was diving the Lost Blue Hole about 10 miles off shore East of New Providence Island. We motored out and tied up to the mooring line. We dropped down into the blue hole fairly quickly and I stopped at about 135'. Nate continued deeper to about 170'. We swam the perimeter back up after doing a deep stop at about 80'. The Blue hole starts at 40' deep so we came out of the hole and goofed around the top of the hole for a bit. I shoo'd a nurse shark away and was taking video of all the fish. Nate was on the other side of a coral head when I saw a 6'-7' black tip reef shark swimming toward Nate. I barked into my regulator to get Nates attention but by then there were two sharks. I was excited but not really freaking out yet so I swam over one of the sharks to get better video. The shark turned up toward me and I took this as a clue to get the hell out of there. As I was retreating 4 more reef sharks came into sight. They were getting very agitated as they dropped their fins and humped up their backs. I motioned to nate that I was going up to the boat. When Nate got back up to the boats ladder he asked why I was taking off my fins. I told him 'so I can get back in the boat!' Then when we were both back in the boat, He asked me again why I got back in the boat. I told him 'Same reason you did Motha F'er!' It was a Samuel L. Jackson kinda moment and you really had to be there to see the humor. Nate wanted to tank up again and go back in but I told him I had enough adrenalin for one day. He tanked up and headed North from the boat and returned a minute and a half later after seeing a bull shark in the mix. Nate will need to tell you about that part as I was in the boat . Here are some of the still pics from the trip, and I will post the HD video on YouTube in the next few days.

[DetectorGuy]

Here are some pics from the Mail Boat wrecks:

[DetectorGuy]

Here are a few more from the mail boat wrecks and one of the Miranda wreck:

[DetectorGuy]

Here are a few from the Car Ferry Wreck:

[DetectorGuy]

Here are a few from the Mahoney Wreck:

[DetectorGuy]

Here are a couple pics of the Lighthouse Wreck:

[Shooter]

Nice job on the pics!  8)  Can't wait to see the video.....

Art told me about drinking juice packs underwater on safety stops, I had to try it! It worked so well, we made an underwater video for our host explore scuba.

[DetectorGuy]

As we speak I am converting the GoPro files into something I can edit, publishing part 1 of 2 parts of the Lost Blue hole Dive video, and dumping old files in the recycle bin to make room for the massive videos ;D ;D

[DetectorGuy]

Here are the HD video links to part 1 and part 2 of the Lost Blue Hole Dive. The top of the hole is at 40' below the surface and the bottom is at 200'+. I stopped at 135' and gave Nate the 'OK' signal with my light. Nate went to 170' or so. Part 2 is where all the action takes place with the sharks. At the end of the dive we jumped back in with just mask, fins, & snorkel to get more video and Nate got cut off from the boat by a big shark after slapping the water with his shiny fins.

Part one of the Lost Blue Hole Dive:

Part two of the Lost Blue Hole Dive:

[Shooter]

Nice job on the editing! Keeping it p.c. for the net.... ;D  I still like the unedited version, David Tucker!  :-X :-X :-X. Honey badger don't care!