96 Hour Liberty Trip - Dolphin Excursions Liveaboard pt. 4

Day 3 – 3/28/12

I slept better the second night than the first, but I still managed to only sleep until about 6:00 AM. The morning started off the same as the previous morning, Ethiopian coffee, crumbly snack cake and the Deli heading towards ‘The Crack’.

This time, the site was marked prior to getting in the water and we submerged straight to the crack. Again, starting about 100 feet, we swam above, in and through the crack. It was a good dive but I have no photos. I have a lot of video that I took during the trip that I have yet to edit. Eventually, I’ll edit it, post it and you can see ‘The Crack’.

Next was breakfast and a cruise through Lake Ghoubet to Star Bay. The next dive was ‘Star Point’. After a couple hours of rest we jumped into the skiffs and headed to the site. This site was full of fish and colorful coral.

After ‘Star Point’, we took a short jump across Lake Ghoubet back to ‘Red Virgin’. We had one last dive there and explored yet another section of the reef that we had yet to see. It was another great dive. We finished up and the Deli headed through the entrance to Lake Ghoubet, back to the Bay of Tadjoura. The next stop was unnamed and we’ll call it ‘Christine’s Glasses’.

After painting a terrible picture, the realization that two people were doing a night dive became apparent and my buddy and I loaded up into the skiff. This site was packed with Elkhorn Coral (or some type of horn coral). Resting in the branches were plenty of sleeping parrotfish, angelfish and plenty of other fishes. The highlight of the evening was not the ton of blue spotted rays. It was not the crazy looking fish that I’ll have to identify later nor was it the lurking barracuda that hugged the edge of our flashlights. Nope, it was the filefish. Not only was the filefish nice enough to let me capture a great video of it taking anice long poop, but it was kind enough to let me pet it. I soon discovered that filefish have somewhat of a temper. Rather you say it was anger, malicious intent, or just simple self-defense; as soon as I grabbed it around the ‘shoulders’, it returned it's capture with a super hard headbutt/bite to the forehead. Maybe it was pissed about the candid video shot earlier. For more than a week, the top of my forehead would bear the proof of why you do not mess with fish.

After the dive, we enjoyed our last dinner onboard and followed it up with drinks, cigars and fishing. Several small fish were caught and then the dry spell hit. It didn’t seem to matter what we did, we couldn’t catch anything. After a while, everyone disappeared and that was when the monster struck. I instantly knew this was a nice fish. Once it reached the surface, I crossed my fingers that the line wouldn’t break while I desperately reached for the 6’ leader. Once I had the leader, I knew the fish was mine. This was a beauty of a Red Snapper and the crew would surely enjoy this. After a fish like that, it was time to call it a night.