Dolphins and a Fish Dive

This morning, the dive festival event was a Fish ID dive. Last night, a presentation was given covering the basic families of fish that can be found on a reef. Today, we went out and took notes on some fish we saw so we could identify ones we were unfamiliar with when we got back to the shop. 

We went to a dive site on the north side of Utila called Blackish Point. On the ride out, we spotted a small pod of Spinner Dolphins!!! A poll was quickly taken and it was decided that the dive would be delayed long enough that those who wanted could snorkel with the dolphins. Robyn and I definitely wanted to. There were about five dolphins and they hung around for about 15 minutes. Jumping in the water with dolphins is exciting. You may not be able to see them all the time, but you can easily hear the clicks and whistles they send out to communicate and navigate. 



Blackish Point is my favorite Utila dive site, so far, and it's perfect for a drift dive. When you enter the water, the reef is sitting about 40 feet below you. Then, there's a short drop off to a sandy corridor at around 65 feet that follows the coral wall. As you swim along the wall, there are all sorts of indentations and holes that you can swim into looking for more creatures. It's also the only spot on the island where you can see Midnight Parrotfish--a large (the one we saw was easily 2 feet long), blue parrotfish. We also saw a lot of surgeon fish, jacks, wrasse, and damsel fish.

Certainly makes up for sleeping through our dive yesterday. By far, one of the most exciting dives I've had here on Utila!