Water Cay under water

Tags: Bahamas, Ragged Islands, under water, Water Cay

Date: April 10, 2018

We spent six nights anchored at Water Cay in the Ragged Islands. It is a great place for diving and snorkeling with three very nice blue holes within dinghy distance on the shallow banks, lots of shallow reefs and a wall dropping from 20 meters to over 100 meters on the ocean side of the island.

Bjarne took some pictures in the closest of the blue holes. These places are basically large holes in the sea bottom of the shallow banks. The area around the holes is maybe around 6 meters deep. Then there is a straight drop to the bottom of a round hole. The one in these pictures is around 38 meters deep and probably around 75 meters in diameter. It does not really have any going cave in it, just a few short caverns.

It is hard to take good pictures of a blue hole. Here is one looking down from around 10 meters along the vertical wall towards the bottom:

Looking up from around 30 meters:

Along the wall:

A shark patrolling at the bottom:

There are lots of lobsters in the holes:

Sadly our visit to the Ragged Island Chain was after the lobster season closed so we had to make do with just looking at them.

A clam with long tentacles (probably a rough fileclam):

A queen angelfish with some spectacularly colored coral and sponges in the background:

A grey angelfish:

A longsnout butterflyfish:

A squirrelfish:

There are lots of sponges on the wall:

Probably a branching tube sponge:

Maybe a brighter one of the same species:

Some sort of barrel sponge:

Social feather dusters:

A white margate:

A blue chromis:

Another queen angelfish at shallower depth:

A honeycomb cowfish trying to get away from the camera:

There are many yellowtail snappers around Water Cay:

It is a good fish for eating. The same goes for queen triggerfish which are also very abundant here:

There always seems to be a barracuda lurking when snorkeling and diving:

A porkfish:

A big bar jack swam right in front of the camera while I was trying to take pictures of some queen triggerfish:

A Nassau grouper:

A picture from the shallow water just below the dinghy to finish off: