Blowing Rock Dive, Corn Island

Blowing rock is a small rock pinnacle (probably formed by some volcanic activity several million years ago) jutting out of the ocean 27km from Big Corn Island. It's surrounded by coral reef and other large pelagics (eagle rays, reef sharks etc) and I have to say it's probably one of the most stunning places I've dived so far. 

It's a pretty bumpy and wet ride on one of these small pangas, so hold on tight and take your sea sickness pills!:

It's a shame the wind was high on the day we went. (it's been very windy for weeks now and the weather has only just broken) So with the seas being so rough it created a big current that at times made swimming difficult, so you just had to chill, not fight it, just drift where the current took you.(like in life!)

However, it wasn't that funny when we surfaced as it seemed like we had drifted so far from the boat, we couldn't see where it was over the waves! For about 5 minutes we were basically just hovering in the middle of the ocean, it felt like I was in that film "Open Water"! 

This isn't us but it's what it felt like (a still taken from the film Open Water where divers get stranded in the sea)

But the keen eye of the captain of the boat found us quickly.

Well anyway, apart from all that (and a slight affect on visibility, usually its 30-50m on a good day, I'd say it was 20m today) it was pretty spectacular. I could go on but I'll let the pictures do the talking:

A trigger fish poking its head around the coral stack (feel free to comment and correct the fish names!)

Healthy colorful coral, I'm so glad I invested in a flash, really brings out all the colours

The Eagle Ray attempting to escape is, these boys swim fast you never gonna catch them 

A beautiful funnel coral, you can see how clear the water is in this shot and this was a bad day

A landscape of coral...

A beautiful blue trigger fish (comment to correct me on species type!)

A type of parrot fish?(please comment to correct me on species!)

Reef shark swimming hastily away, apparently this one had followed us throughout the dive...one of the disadvantages of having a camera all the time is you spend a lot of time adjusting your camera and almost missing things like this...sometimes the eyes are the best camera