Shacks/Caverns/Finally My First Lobster and it's Big!

Last week and Last night we dove Shacks. The site may also be known by other names like the cavern or caves.Wow! What great dives! You start by swimming out not nearly as far as we have been. Then you descend before you get past the breaking waves. The waves break on the reef and you can't swim over or walk over the outer reef so you have to swim under it! There are a bunch of passages or caves that run under the reef. They may run 50 to 150 feet long. It requires going up and down and up and down, from 5 feet to 30 feet deep some times. It can bother the ears. If the waves are big enough they run over the reef and it creates a current that pushes you through the passages and out to sea! Getting back to shore can be tricky some times. Even last night the waves weren't too big and in some of the passages (we explored many of them) the water was hard to swim against. It requires grabbing the rocks and pulling yourself along. Outside the reefs edge is where all the life is. We saw lots of eagle rays, turtles, lobster, etc. On last nights' dive I caught my first lobster! No one told me they scream and vibrate when you hold them! It felt like I was being shocked! It didn't help that the lobster was huge. I had a hard time fighting it and getting it in the bag. They don't call them spiny lobsters for nothing. I have lots of cuts in my thumb and I was wearing gloves.

The carapace measured 5 3/4 inches! Our dive was 85 minutes long and David, Raul, and Katrina still had 1000#'s left in their tanks. I didn't have nearly as much.

The business end of a lobster. I have seen pictures of someone who had their finger pinched off when the lobster bit him. Science fiction can't come close to mother nature.

Take 466 at KM 117.1 on HW2. Follow it until it becomes 4466. Then make a right turn. I think the Google image is correct.