El Puertito Marine Reserve - Tenerife October 31, 2007
Posted by Mark Gilmour in : Dive Reports, Pictures, Scuba diving abroad , trackback
This dive was within a marine reserve project set up by David of Tenerife Divers to encourage marine life growth around the bay of El Puertito. A consequence of encouraging marine growth on the rocks is it provides food to other marine species, including a pair of green turtles. (Although perhaps some divers feeding them has also contributed) Our second dive of the day was to be a gentle bimble along the rocks making up the reserve and hope that one of the turtles comes along to say hi. We were not disappointed. I was first in and down the anchor line to the seabed at 6m. I secured the anchor on the rocks, took a mental note of the surroundings so we could find our way back and waited for Lisa and Rachel to meet me.
We then proceeded to make our way along where the rocky outcrop gave way to volcanic sand. Keeping a close eye on the blue water to the left of me we headed further along. About 5 minutes into the dive, we had our first turtle encounter. Ahead of me to my left a small Green turtle, about half a meter in size approached, I signalled Lisa who was behind me and to my right. She immediately shot of after it, this was her first encounter with a turtle in 14 years of diving and she was going to make sure she got a good view of it.I followed them both and managed to get a couple of pictures and a little bit of movie footage from the compact camera I had borrowed before we came out to Tenerife. It was superb to finally have the opportunity to swim with these graceful creatures and had this been the only encounter on the dive, we would have been content. But within a minute or two I heard a squeal from behind me. I turned to see Lisa bent backwards and a much larger Green turtle, about 1m in size almost lying on her chest. I quickly set the camera and took some pictures but this turtle was quite happy to nose around us. 
He spent a good few minutes with us, investigating us and on the prowl for food. After getting disinterested with us he swam off and we continued on our way, looking out for other species. During this time Rachel spotted an octopus squeezed into its hideaway, a quite amazing spot. Also we saw lots of puffer fish and more of the trumpet fish that we had seen on the Twin Wrecks that morning. This time there were a couple of larger specimens, laying motionless vertical in the water, really quite amazing. Unfortunately by the time I had set the camera they had moved to horizontal but nevertheless I still got a couple of pictures.
We made our way to the point of the bay and still had over 150bar left in our tanks. My SAC on this dive turned out to be around 10 l/min which I was very pleased with. but then there was absolutely no stress on this one. Our plan was when we reached the point we were going to turn the dive but just as we were about to, I peered out into the blue and saw the larger of the turtles heading straight back towards me. I steadied the camera and waited for him to come right up to my mask before I snapped the shot. It was fantastic. 
Again he stayed around and played with us and also with the other divers who had turned up from another dive boat. After those few more minutes we turned the dive and headed back. As we passed over the hideaway of the octopus we had seen earlier, we noticed he was a bit further out, so setting myself for the picture I positioned myself near the hole, when all of a sudden the turtle turned up again and nudged right in between us, to be greeted by being inked by the octopus. I managed to get a picture of the turtle covered in the octopus ink. It really was quite something to witness.
About 10 minutes before we reached the anchor line we were visited for the last time by the turtle who swam around us again and then glided off into the blue. It was a truly amazing 70 minutes in the water.
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Hi!
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Thx a lot and happy diving!