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It's Turkey and Caicos for Thanksgiving This Year in the

Turks and Caicos Islands

2006

Linda, Johnny, Wally, Robin and I will be the Donkey Divers making this trip to Turks and Caicos. The last time we went, we stayed on a live-aboard dive boat. To see some pictures from that trip, check out this link:

Where is Turks and Caicos?

Turks and Caicos is a country made up of a group of islands south of the Bahamas.

In case you're worried about me going diving in this cold weather, the highs should be in the low 80s getting down to 78 at night. The water temperature should be in the mid 80s.

	If you want to learn more about the Turks and Caicos Islands, check out these sites:

This year we are doing a land based dive trip. We will be staying at a hotel on the island and going out on a boat every day to dive. We will be diving with Dive Provo. To see more about the dive operation, click on the picture of one of their dive boats below:
Here are a few pictures from our trip. More will follow soon. Click on the thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture and then click your browser's "Back" button to return to this page.

I made it down here just after noon n Thanksgiving day. No diving today. Just relaxing, registering with the hotel and dive shop and checking out the beautiful beach. 82 degrees and breezy today. No turkey for dinner. A nice grilled grouper at Calico Jack's was my Thanksgiving dinner.

Day 2 (First day of diving)

I met this nice girl on the island today. She seemed to really like me.

The coral is diverse in its color and shapes.

This is a large barrel and coral head on a sandy bottom.

This is a Caribbean spiny lobster peaking out at me.

This Nassau grouper was watching me closely.

A little surgeon fish.

More colorful coral.

This Barracuda was out prowling the reef.

Day 3

Can you say, "SHARK!!!!!" Well, this guy came around to check us out on our second dive of the day off West Caicos.

This big guy swam right between me and Johnny, one of my dive buddies.

This southern sting ray came gliding along. You have to be careful around them. One of these rays killed Steve Erwin, you know.

Here I am relaxing n the way out to West Caicos on the dive boat. Beautiful water. Wish you could be here, but you are not.

Well, apparently, they frown on you pulling sharks by the tail down here. I had to spend all night in the stocks in this public square when I got caught.

Day 4

Nice coral head.

Another colorful head of various types of coral.

Here is a flounder scooting along the sandy bottom.

This is a big gray angelfish feeding on some soft coral and algae.

Nurse shark moving along the coral.

This is a large yellow and black rock beauty.

This tan trumpet fish thinks I can see him. He thinks he is blending in well with the soft coral.

Here is Johnny trying to get a picture of a shark swimming by us.

Day 5

Here I am enjoying a great day in the sun on the dive boat. It must suck not to be me. I have now done 600 dives (not on this trip, in my life).

This is a queen trigger fish. They almost look painted. They are not very common and they are usually very timid and hard to photograph.

At first glance, these little creatures look like blades of grass waving with the surge of the ocean. When you get close enough to see them, they are actually small eels that live in the sandy bottom. They poke their heads up to feed. They are very shy and usually pop back into their hole when you get close.

This is a nurse shark swimming by.

This is a reef shark swimming directly below me.

This is a queen angel fish. It is known as a queen angel fish because it has a blue circular "crown" on top of its head.

This is a "Four Eyed Fish". It has a set of fake eyes near its tail to confuse predators.

On Monday we dove a site named "Spanish Anchor". It is so named because this anchor from an old Spanish ship hangs in a gulley in the coral wall. If you are having trouble seeing the anchor, click on the button below to see it outlined for you.

This is a Grouper at a "cleaning station" on the ocean floor.

We are having a great time here this year, but tonight we remembered how much fun we had on last year's Thanksgiving dive trip to Curacao with the same 5 Donkey Divers plus Anna and Donna (who were unable to join us this year) so we toasted them and wished they had been able to be here diving with us.

Day 6

Today was a great day to be a Donkey Diver in Turks and Caicos. Beautiful sunny weather, turtles, sharks, sting rays, eagle rays, and an abundance of colorful walls of coral and various coral fish.

Shark encounter:
These 4 pictures document one shark encounter. This shark came to check us out as soon as we got in the water.

I was able to catch up with him as he swam out into the blue off the wall. I was snapping pictures and getting some good video.

After a few minutes the sharks body language was telling me that he was getting pissed at me. Notice the arched back and lowered pectoral fins.

That is when I decided it would be best to slow up and let him swim off along the wall before things escalated.

This turtle was happy to swim along side me and let me video tape him and take his picture.

He was quite the poser.

Here is Johnny taking pictures of a grouper at a cleaning station.

A queen angel fish poses for me.

We saw a huge spotted eagle ray today but were not able to get close enough to get a picture. This sting ray, on the other hand, was very happy to let us get close enough to take pictures as he searched the sandy flats for food.

Robin and Wally are exploring the coral covered wall.

Johnny snapped this picture of me on the boat heading home from our dives.

Another one of me on the boat ride back to shore.

Johnny, Linda, myself, Robin and Wally made this Thanksgiving trip to Turks and Caicos.

Day 7

This is a very color formation of star coral. It is made up of thousands of small animals.

This is the first FRENCH angel fish that we saw on this trip. We saw lots of gray angel fish and a few queen angels but only one pair of French angel fish.

These two fish were hanging out on the reef today.

My dive buddy, Wally, from Chicago appears to be standing on this mound of coral. Of course, none of us would ever touch the coral. He is really several feet behind the coral.

This puffer fish was trying to hide under a ledge of coral.

This flamingo tongue snail was slowly creeping up this coral.

We saw sharks on almost every dive this week. This nurse shark appeared on our last dive.

You have to look close, but there is a little yellow headed jaw fish poking his head up out of his hole looking for a meal. These little fish are less than 3 inches long. They live in a hole in the sand and pop up to find something floating through the water to eat. They are very shy and it is hard to get close enough to get a good picture without a telephoto lens. Unfortunately, I am using a wide angle lens so this is the best I could do.

To see pictures from other dive trips, click on the button below to go to my SCUBA page. It has links to other pages of pictures and dive reports from many different dive trips over the years.