I was worried.

I had just came back from Saba in the Dutch West Indies with rather mixed feelings. The island itself was gorgeous but the underwater experience had been extremelly disapointing. Add to that an angry wife because of a crappy room in an average hotel and that put a lot of pressure when it came to find a destination for the holidays.

Since there was not too much attraction in freezing our ass in Europe, I proposed Long Island Bahamas. I don't really recall why. Maybe it was because of Dean's Blue hole, the deepest salt water sinkhole in the world, maybe it was because of the shark feedings that had been introduced there first in the 70's or maybe it was just because I was in luck. I should have played the lottery, damnit.

So we left LA on the red-eye to Atlanta, avoided the snow downpour and made our way to Nassau, Bahamas where a quick taxi trip took us to the Executive Flight Support FBO (Fixed Base Operation) where our pilot was waiting for us. There, no full-body scans, heavy petting or forbidden liquids. It's fly like it were 1950 again! Red carpet, leather armchairs in the waiting room, chit chat with the pilot and you walk to the twin engine propeller plane. Sweet.

The ride to Long Island was rather smooth. We flew at around 5,500ft, above the ceiling as it was rather cloudy. We caught glimpse of the beautiful Exumas on the way and also of a small island that you can rent for $350,000 a week for you and 17 other lucky guests.

We landed on Long Island after a 45 minute ride. The island inherited its name for its 80 miles long and two to three miles at its widest point, making it a really long island! There's only one main road on the island which is scarcely inhabited. There's no real city or even villages, a population of 5,000 or so lives in settlements which is not as bad as it sounds, mostly a couple of houses on the side of the road and a church (they have a LOT of churches on this island).  

We were greeted at our hotel, the  Stella Maris Resort, by a smiling lady who gave us 2 coupons for a free rum punch and no room key. There is no criminality on Long Island and keys just get in the way. Cool. And rum punch is good. Deadly.

Contrary to Saba where we had to sleep in a little shack with cemetery view, our room at the Stella Maris had a large balcony opening to a wide view of the Atlantic Ocean. As we had a corner room, we also had a garden view on our side window.

On its East coast Long Island is exposed to the wrath of the Atlantic which was particularly wrathy the day we arrive. No beach diving for me thank you. I tend to chicken out when waves reach 15ft...

Note to self: in Winter, the Bahamas can get cold. Bring warm cloth.

The year before we had stayed in Nassau for Christmas and I did not recall the air being so cold nor the wind being so strong. But this year, they were! Hopefully I had packed a sweater at the last minute just in case... No need to say it came handy!  

The West coast of Long Island is more peaceful as the Caribbean is not as raging as the Atlantic. The wind still blew pretty hard the next day when we went for our first dive. The DM, Robert, had been diving this area for more than 30 years and knew the site pretty well. I like it when a DM shows you stuff underwater instead of just leisurely swimming around in large circles around the boat.  

Second note to self: in Winter, the water in the Bahamas can be freaking cold. Remember to bring adequate exposure protection (as they call a wetsuit in the PADI books).    

I should have looked more closely at the pictures Stuart Cove took of me diving with sharks the year before. I would have probably noticed that in addition to my 3mm, I was wearing my 7mm hooded shorty as well... Holy hell, the water was cold. Not California cold, but still, I was all shivering after one hour of barely moving underwater. Plus the strong wind back on the boat and the cloudy skies did not really help me warming me up in between dives. Maybe next time I'll bring my drysuit... Just kidding. Sort of. Maybe not.  

Anyway, on the first dive we went to "Flamingo Tongue reef". If you've never been able to take an in-focus picture of one of these weird underwater gastropods, this spot is the perfect place to practice. They were everywhere! I counted up to four on the same small piece of gorgonian coral. Something you need to know about flamingo tongues before you collect one for your shell display is that the bright colors on the shell are from the slug itself, not the shell which is plain white. The animal actually extends itself outside of the shell. Wikipedia reports that the population has been dwindling down due to collection. That's stupid to collect anything live anyway.  

That was the first time I took my brand new Canon G12 in "warm" water, on a boat. For the trip I had packed the diffuser in a protective case as contrary to my Powershot A85 case, the diffuser is not part of the housing and can easily be broken if the case falls or if a big gigantic DSLR housing bashed into it in a bucket. That sucks. What sucked even more is that of course I forgot to install it before I jumped in the water to check out the flamingo tongues. Oddly enough I only noticed it after half an hour underwater... No need to say that all my pictures on this dive came out rather weird. Check my flash tutorial and do what I say, not what I just did...  

I was however relieved. Contrary to Saba where we saw NO fish at all, the reefs around Long Island were swarming with life. Lots of grunts, jacks, barracudas, eels, rays, scorpion fish and of course the nasty invasive pterois radiata also known as Lion Fish. The DM whacked the *@#! out of one on our first dive which kind of surprised my dive buddy. Too bad, they make some cool shots. But no worries, there's plenty of them still alive as the photos below show...    

I made ten dives around Long Island. As it was the dead season, we did not go to Conception Island as we had hoped for and we could not do the shark feeding dive which rather pissed me off as I had explicitly asked for and apparently paid for it. We went however on the 90ft wreck of the Cumberbach which teamed with life and made interesting bichrome pictures. See the dedicated gallery here. Most of the dives were very shallow between 10 and 45ft and all except one called "trumpet fish reef" were very interesting.

We had the visit of a couple of sharks at "Turtle Head" and "Barracuda Heads". One of them checked me out pretty close. Twice. I guess I looked juicy freezing my ass in my 3mil. Good shots though.  Contrary to Saba, it was easy to spot huge spiny lobsters despite being on the menu every night. I could not find any nudibranchs though.

On some of the dives I played with the settings of my G12. With a visibility in the 100ft and shallow depths, shooting P in AWB gives you the big blue (but not blur). However, with a patch of sand as a reference, manual white balance brought vibrant colors to all my shots. On the last dive, on a site called "Sea Gardens" where depth ranges from 15 to 10ft (it's like snorkeling, except you can breathe) I shot lions close-ups with no flash! And they came out great.  

I also tried to shoot a few videos. At the same spot, flybys came out great. Now I can do manual white balance whereas I couldn't with my TopDawg and my Sony video camera. HOWEVER, contrary to my Sony which autofocuses in real time, my G12 does not. On one of the dives, I was doing my safety stop when I noticed a ray down below. I start shooting and zoomed in. The beginning of the clip is in focus, sharp and clear, but as soon as I started to zoom, it looks terrible. That sucks. Big time. Actually that makes the whole video function totally useless. Too bad. Note that this feature (or lack thereof) is not limited to the point and shoot line. Even my Canon T2i DSLR suffers from the same shortcomings. From what I've been able to gather only the new Nikons offer real-time focusing. Time for a change of heart? Probably not. I'll stick with Canon for a while. I don't want to re-buy all my lenses.

As in Saba or any clear water spots, Shutter Priority at 1/125s with forced flash and AWB works pretty well for close ups. As the visibility is very good, P mode and manual white balance seems to be optimal.

The package I had put together also included diving Dean's Blue Hole, the deepest salt water blue hole in the world. Most divers are familiar with the Blue Hole in Belize. Well, let me tell you something: Belize's blue hole is like a kids wadding pool compared to Dean's Blue Hole. With a depth of 663ft (202m), Dean's Blue Hole beats Belize's 412ft (126m) sinkhole by a good 251ft. It seems there are deeper sinkholes in the world but they are located inland and are probably of fresh water.

Diving the Blue Hole is kind of cool in itself. There's not much to see in there, it's just for the experience,  a different type of dive.  

Dean's Blue Hole is a famous location for free diving. Competitions are held there on a regular basis. On the outside, it's a pristine site with white sand beaches, clear shallow water and a dramatic contrast with the blue hole. Inside the hole, things unfortunately change. It's far from pristine. It seems the hole acts as a giant magnet for trash. A lot of plastic pieces of junk are stuck in the rock, paper floats everywhere. That's kind of sad. A recent survey of the Mediterranean showed that a unbelievably huge amount of microplastic is present in the water. Although it's a rather closed ecosphere compared to the Caribbean or the Atlantic, it still does not presage anything good for the rest of our oceans. Think about it next time your plastic cup flies out of the dive boat... Maybe it'll end up in Dean's Blue Hole.  

Shooting in the blue hole was close to impossible. I had rigged my flashlight to my housing using a flash arm I had handy. Even with that, it was pretty darn difficult to focus on anything. I managed to snap a few shots of red banded shrimps but nothing much more. For wide angle shots of the hole, I couldn't get enough light to shoot in any mode. Even in manual, there was not enough light to correctly expose anything. I even tried 3,200 ISO but that turned out pretty ugly. As we slowly ascent from 80ft to 40ft, I was able to snap a couple of shots that turned out not too bad. Some of them can be seen in the gallery mentionned earlier.  Notice the diver carrying a laundry basket? Odd? Right. That's the kind of trash you find in the hole.  

So all in all, pretty good diving along the coast, unusual in the blue hole. Not that warm water to dive in and rather chilly outside temperature calls for appropriate gear and a mere 3mil is NOT appropriate at all!  

A few words of caution however: make sure before you go that there's enough divers on the island as the resort will group divers with snorkellers on the same boat if there's too little participants to justify two boats. That greatly limits the dive sites. Since snorkellers have the tendancy to be scared shitless of sharks the resort won't choose a location where encounters are likely. That also limits the interest of the sites. Also they won't run the shark feeding dive with only a few participants. That kind of sucks too. Same goes with the wall at Conception Island.  

To conclude, even if the diving is rather good and very enjoyable, the destination is not for hard core diving only, unless you come with your own group. On the Comberbach dive for example we were added to a group of divers that had come over on a weekend aboard their corporate jet. No comment. But if you're into deserted white sand beaches that feel like you're walking on baby powder and pristine blue waters, if you want to relax sipping the deadliest rum punch ever, if you want to explore weird caves populated by cute little bats or just want to dive a little, then Long Island Bahamas is definitively worth the trip and the Stella Maris resort is a very nice place to stay.                                                                                      

Here are a few panoramic shots topside, this time taken with the T21i and assembled using Autostitch as usual.

Dean's Blue Hole

Dean's Blue Hole from the beach

Caves near Clarence Town