Turtle Hospital

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On the way up to the dive center we stopped to take a tour round the Turtle Hospital in Marathon. Here you can see some of their lifers, turtles who have "bubble butt", a syndrome caused by being hit by boats. Air becomes trapped under their shells creating wierd humps, and preventing them from diving for food. They seem healthy and happy, and some can even dive with the aid of weights glued to their shell, but they wouldn't make it in the wild so they are homed in an old motel swimming pool. Here you see them in a feeding frenzy as we throw them pellets of food!

We dived a wreck called the Thunderbolt today, which was the deepest dive of the trip by a long way at 33m (most of the other dives were less than 10m!). It was hard work as there was a lot of current flowing in the upper layers of the water so we were all hanging off the mooring line fluttering like washing in the breeze! Once we got down there we only had 15 minutes to explore, but there were some huge groupers, one of which the guide reckoned weighed in at 400lbs or more and was about 5ft from nose to tail. He was just hanging out in the wheelhouse staring out at us. There were also some pretty large barracuda around. Very cool. The reef dive afterwards was fantastic too.