On Fri, 29 Sep 2000 21:57:12 -0500, John Nitrox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Greetings NEDs,
>
>
>        If you're living on the east coast of the Western Hemisphere,

Where is THAT?  :-)

there's some
>under utilized, excellent diving close at hand.  Flamingo Divers and Caicos
>Adventures both take the one hour trip from Provo to the uninhabited
>islands of West Caicos and French Cay for the excellent wall diving there.

Only an HOUR to French Cay?  I must be of those jet-propelled ski-boats.
The ONLY way to dive the Turks & Caicos islands is on one of the two
liveaboards, where the majority of the dives are MINUTES away from where
the boats are moored in West Caicos.

The French Cay was more or less a latest discovery (as a regular dive site
for the liveaboards, especially for the land-based operators) about five
years ago.  Since then, I've dived there in '96, '98, and '99.  I had
posted about some of the sites and dives there.


>my bottom times on these life filled walls.  For big stuff, we had CRSs and
>eagle rays on almost every dive with a squadron of 13 eagle rays on our day
>off French Cay

In addition, in a couple of the summer months, your favorite NURSE sharks
(40 to 50 at a time) have orgies in the shallows (waist deep) there,
and divers go ON SHORE to wade out to see these nurse sharks because
it's too shallow to dive at those depths. :)

>Overall, the most unusual thing I saw (aside from
>the sharks and eagle rays) were large numbers of Nassau groupers which have
>been in short supply at most Floridian and Caribbean sites for the last
>couple of decades.

Nah!  Haven't been diving that long, but as long as I've been diving,
my cousins thrive in large numbers in the Caribbean sites.  You've just
haven't dived enough Caribbean locations.  You don't find them in Coz
much though.  As for Florida :-)  I've dived all three KEYS and had
sworn NEVER to go back there again (in 1991), and never had.  :-)

>Good viz., easy diving, a hang bar at 15' with a
>hookah, all in all I couldn't complain until the last day when I lost a
>spare mask and snorkel.

I am sure Strike will bite on that bait.

>DPTNST,
>
>
>John

DPTFT,

-- Bob.