Night Dive

North Shore, Cayman Brac, Cayman Islands

On our only night dive in the Caymans, we went to a boat ramp on the north side of Cayman Brack. The plan was to follow an underwater communications cable out to the reef.

Swimming in shallow water out the encrusted cable, we encountered this scorpion fish sitting in the sand. They are always well camoflaged with material from their surroundings.

This foureye butterfly fish was our first indication of different color patterns on the fish- like there was a night phase. This fish had darker bands on it sides.

This brilliant example of a squirrelfish gave us the impression that the night might be the squirrelfish's time to shine.

Another squirrelfish on the reef.

This tiger grouper followed the pattern we had seen in the fish behavior. He was down on the sand, and very passive. So it may be that they were all asleep until this crazy group of divers came along and shined bright lights on them.

We had seen a lot of blue tang, but never one banded like this one. It may be a night phase of the fish.

This coral crab was busy stuffing bits of something into its mouth and payed little attention to us. So this was at least one busy nocturnal creature.

This flounder got my vote for the best job of camoflaging itself. It was on the sand near the cable on our way back in. Mark motioned me over and kept pointing at the sand. It took several trys for him to get we to see it.