Swimming with Gentle Devils

(June 29, 2023)

Yesterday after a day of work and for me filling out more job applications, we made our way down to the Wharf for our weekly Thursday dive. We pulled on our wetsuits and walked down through the misty rain to the boat to test our tanks and our equipment before going into the water.

We took the boat out to a spot called Red Rock, which was just off of Long Ledge (which was the first dive spot we went to when we began diving on the island). The rock supposedly glows red as the sun sets because of the type of stone it is. As we approached there were many little black crabs scuttling around the shore line, and some jumped into the water as we approached.

This dive was not as deep as some of the previous dives we have done, only reaching to about 16 meters. We made our way along the sandy bottom and around clusters of stone reefs where little fish swam in and out and black and white sea lilies grow- these are feathery underwater plants which grow out of the gaps in the stone around the island, and which the fish love to hide in.

We made our way around a shelf of stone which was a space where many fish were swimming around, and we came to a protected open cove among three cliff faces rising up towards the sky. We paused here for a moment, and out of one of the gaps between the rising rocks came three devil rays.

They swam towards us in a little group, gently gliding through the water. They stayed and swam around us for a while, going in circles above and around us, and playing in our bubbles from our regulators. After about 15 minutes they swam off and we made our way back to the boat and then back to shore.

Heres a video Scott took of them swimming over us: