Diving in Big Corn Island
Trip Start
Dec 2007
1
16
30
Trip End
Feb 2008
Big Corn Island,
Nicaragua
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Wynn, the Norwegian chap and I decided we would head to Nautilus, the only dive shop in town and arrange some diving. Given our ability to chill out, we didn't reach the dive shop until noon and could only do one dive with a couple of American tourist.
Rodriguez was our dive master, he had only arrived from Columbia three days earlier and he did a great job as a dive master given the two Americans had just learned to dive.
We went out to a lovely coral reef and spent 60 minutes with a max depth of 50 feet but most of the dive at 40 feet. The coral was stunning and I don't know if i have ever seen so many different varieties of coral. All live and feeding. There wasn't much fish life but i did seem an eel and I did find Nemo.... a cute clown fish who seemed to want to bite my finger went i poked him!
On Christmas eve, we went to the dive shop to go snorkeling but again the wind was too strong and they weren't going out.
On Boxing Day we headed back to the Dive shop, me to go diving and Justine snorkeling but again the snorkeling was cancelled so Justine headed off for a day at the beach. I went out diving with an Aussie, an American, two canucks and 2 barceloneans.
Our dive master whose name I didn't know, wasn't very good and didn't give us a dive plan or bother to check anyone´s air during the dive and we dropped to 70 feet. After 20 minutes at 70, I came up to 60 feet and after 20 minutes at 60 feet I came up to 40 feet. The rest of the divers remained pretty deep and broke the PADI dive tables. Cam who was diving with a computer also came up earlier as his computer was telling him that he was approaching the need for decompression.
Again there wasn't much fish life and a lot of the coral was dead but we did see a very large eagle ray which hovered around us. No Nemo this time ;-(
When back at the shop, I checked the tables and pointed this out where a mad Frenchman who worked there said we didn't need to worry as the tables were ultra conservative. Not good advice for new divers. I would suggest that anyone diving on Big Corn Island should check their tables as the dive shop didn't.
As I was within the limits of the tables I did a second dive which was only at 50 feet for 45 minutes. The second dive was with Rodriguez and again he was very professional. We went to the same reef I had dived the first time and again I was entranced with the coral.
It was a shame that i didn't get to dive Blowing Rock but the coral reefs were spectacular.
I would suggest that anyone reading this who is thinking about diving on Big Corn Island should check their tables pre and post their dive as the dive shop didn't log anything about our dives and don't listen to the mad Frenchman.
