Yacht belonging to Microsoft's Paul Allen destroys 14,000 sq ft of protected coral reef in Caymans

[MuseRider]

14. Funny, I always wondered about your name!

Bloody Bay was something else to be sure! BIG pelagics, Tarpon and large Barracuda were cool and a few sharks but nothing remarkable about them as they are just everywhere.

There was a group of us, usually 8, who would arrange and go on trips every year. We had a blast and it was the highlight of my life. I too am most likely never going to dive again and honestly that makes me so very sad.

I have been all over the Caribbean, areas not totals of islands, with Tortola BVI being the best place on the planet in my opinion for many reasons, but mostly the diving. My only real incredible stories are about the grouper spawning we dove in off Guanaja, Honduras for 3 years with the International president of the Explorers Club. We happened on it, and him, by accident. I can't remember his name but I have pictures of us all on the boat that took us out there grinning under the Explorers flag. It was open ocean diving, way out past the reef and HARD diving (I like bathtub dives best) you got in and dropped as fast as you could because of the current and wave action on the top. You had to hold on to rocks at the bottom because your feet would flap behind you and you did not want to get caught in the current. It was dense, you had to part the grouper with one hand to see ahead of yourself. Of course the first thing you saw as you went to the bottom (it was only about 90 feet) were bull sharks and white tips cruising over the top of the spawning group. They were well fed so there were no worries but they were pretty good size and it was always a little creepy. It was an up and down and we had to float on the surface for the longest time while the boat found us all. I look back at that and wonder where my brains were but it was incredible. I then turned down the chance to go to the Blue Hole. We were in Belize on a little island. We got to the hole in the boat and I was tired so I just looked at it from the boat. Apparently it was not that great. We had done a deep dive in preparation a couple of days before, 135 feet and I found it dark and pretty colorless although the big fish were pretty cool. The other story is silly. I was attacked by 2 remoras in Tortola. My kids were down with us and we were with someone from the dive shop who wanted to go diving so we went as a group of 5. They tore up one of my hands, you could see the mark of a round, spiky scar for a while but it is gone now. They slammed me, knocked my mask almost all the way off. It was quite odd. Everyone else was just watching, lol. Mostly my diving was just mind blowing. I could find mind blowing in 20 feet as long as I could get down and stay down. Snorkeling is fun but it is NOT diving.

Truk!!! WOW!!! That was a place I always thought we would make it to. We did not. I bet that was incredible. One day you must tell me more about that. How incredible that must be.

My husband was bad at 90 feet, I had to watch him like a hawk or he would just go down more and more or swim off from the group. I bought him a dive computer when the first one's came out. He used to scare me to death.

Talk to me any time about diving. It makes me so sad to think I will never meet my friends, "above the reef" again. <----that was a slogan I learned taking a Zen diving course in Bonaire. We adapted it as our group motto.