Why drones were invented

Finally, a good reason for drones to exist. Check out this video epic footage below shot by Captain Dave Anderson of Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari in Dana Point, California.Taken with a drone from the air, it show a huge mega-pod of thousands of common dolphins stampeding off Dana Point, California, three gray whales migrating together down the coast off San Clemente, California, and heartwarming close-ups hovering over a newborn Humpback whale calf snuggling and playing with its mom as an escort whale stands guard nearby, filmed recently in Ma...

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All about the stonefish

A fascinating video looking at the stonefish, how the venom of it works and is delivered into another animal (or human). And of course how to milk the venom to help produce an anti-venom to help the 700-1000 people who are stung by the stonefish each ye...

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Where eagles dare

Overcast with a 12-14 knots wind and a bit lumpy at the surface. That's what the forecast predicted and that's exactly what we got as we steamed away from the docks. Captain Nige, Nat and Linda had the dirty job of keeping the reprobates in line as we headed up to Babylon for the first dive. We had the opportunity to spend a lot of time at depth today to make the most of the spectacular scenery.Babylon is not a difficult dive to navigate but as always you must keep a constant eye on your bottom time and SAC as it's all to easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by how easy the dive can be. Unless you've got the experience, always follow...

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This fish sucks!

The Northern Clingfish (gobiesox maeandricus) is one of the weirdest animals ever seen. It has a suction cup on its belly that can tightly hold onto anything, no matter how rough and irregular the surface is. The cup's grip is so strong that, if you had them on your hands, you would be able to climb a wet vertical rock wall�during a hurricane.The fish uses its suction cup to rip apart mollusks from the rocks to which they are attached�and it works even underwater! The cup uses a device that is similar in structure to the gecko: nano-filaments, tiny hairs that provide with the mechanism to attach to surfaces. But unlike the gecko,...

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Little bitty pretty one

Up at the crack of dawn and straight to Lighthouse Point before the weather moves in was the order of the day. As it stood, the viz was fair to middling at around 20 metres with a 4-5 knot Easterly wind at the surface and a reasonable Northerly current down below.As it was all macro work today, hunting up the little stuff was the priority scouting the hardpan and miniwall provided an absolute bounty of little fellas, with a couple of guest appearances of course. But lets start with some roughead blennies for your delight and delectation.But blennies weren't the only thing hiding in the hardpan today as we also found a nice little elysia crispata...

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Super predator Pt.2

The smart folks in white coats think they may have the answer to what ate the 3 metre great white from the previous blog entry.The scientists claim their new data matched all of the tracking information from the disappeared shark: The body temperature they registered was the same and the size of the cannibal great white shark�which they estimated to be 16 foot long and weigh over 2 tons�could easily pull off the same speed and trajectory captured in the tracking device.It makes sense: The only thing that could reasonably eat a shark is something that resembles a shark, only bigger. The bigger the shark, the bigger the bully. The studies...

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A new super predator?

We now have a new mystery, and one that�s quite exciting because it may lead to the discovery of a new super predator in the oceans around Australia.In order to better understand the movements of great white sharks along Australia�s coast line, cinematographer Dave Riggs was tasked with tagging a number of them. These tags hold information about movement patterns, depth, and temperature. So even if they become dislodged from a shark, they still hold valuable information. The video below details an incident where a tag from a 3-meter-long (9 feet) great white shark washed up on a beach. The data it held about the shark�s last known movements...

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All about the sponge

Everything you wanted to know about sponges but were too afraid to ask. They're not just for looking pretty in photographs, they are far more complex than we could have imagined. For example, did you know they are actually animals? and that they can hunt prey and spawn too?Check out this pretty interesting footage below for more sponge info. Fascinating stu...

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Another brick in the wall

Well it was that time to brave the elements and head East once again to jump of a perfectly good boat. Fortunately the wind was running ENE at around 10 knots so Captain Nige did us the honour of throwing us off at McCurley's Wall on the North side, which you can never get enough  as it really is part of the best section of wall on Grand Cayman.Regardless of how many times you do it and which direction you go, there's always such fantastic scenery with some epic sponges and colours both East and West, on top of the wall and at depth, take your pick!There was a mild Easterly current pushing against us but is was easy enough to drop down and...

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