{"id":1020,"date":"2009-09-20T15:47:37","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T20:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/?p=1020"},"modified":"2009-09-20T15:53:54","modified_gmt":"2009-09-20T20:53:54","slug":"advanced-open-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/?p=1020","title":{"rendered":"Advanced Open Water"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently completed the Advanced Open Water diving certification.\u00a0 It’s basically the second step after the Open water certification.<\/p>\n

The class was a blast ; it’s basically reading a book and doing 5 supervised dives. Each dive has a different objective.\u00a0 We did the following : Deep (100ft), wreck (saw the wreck of the Oro Verde), Night (dove after sunset …), Navigation (swimming around with a compass) and observation (swimming around and looking at stuff). I highly recommend this class to anyone considering it.\u00a0 I also met some great people and now have some new dive buddies.<\/p>\n

During one of the dives, someone spotted a Lionfish and it was captured.\u00a0\u00a0 In a nutshell, Lionfish are an invasive species and they are infesting reefs all over the Caribbean.\u00a0 It is widely believed that a ten years ago or so, a handful of these fish were accidentally released into Biscayne Bay in Miami and have since reproduced and migrated all the way to Cayman. Apparently, the lionfish are a huge problem in the Bahamas.<\/p>\n

The problem is that they are indigenous to the pacific and have few Atlantic\/Caribbean\u00a0 predators. Also, they are voracious eaters ; they eat three times their weight daily!\u00a0 Thus, a campaign in ongoing to cull them.\u00a0 Although eradication is impossible, minimizing the spread is the key.<\/p>\n

Here is a baby that was caught while on one of the certification dives.<\/p>\n

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\"img_7692\"<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, these fish are spectacular!<\/p>\n

Here are some pictures taken by a dive buddy (thanks Dean) on a dive we did this week-end.<\/p>\n

A friendly turtle.<\/p>\n

\"7230_1054123891736_1784992124_120666_5980059_n\"<\/p>\n

A small but mean looking Morey Eel.\u00a0 Great colors in this picture.<\/p>\n

\"7230_1054123771733_1784992124_120663_7129927_n\"<\/p>\n

Finally, here is a very interesting article that was published in the local paper about the Lionfish problem.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.caymannetnews.com\/news-9444–1-1—.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently completed the Advanced Open Water diving certification.\u00a0 It’s basically the second step after the Open water certification. The class was a blast ; it’s basically reading a book and doing 5 supervised dives. Each dive has a different objective.\u00a0 We did the following : Deep (100ft), wreck (saw the wreck of the Oro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-in-cayman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1020"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1031,"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020\/revisions\/1031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/micho.org\/cayblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}