Island Life.....at Green Island

Lunch at Harmony Hall and a swim at Green Island. One of my favourite ways to spend the day

Snorkeling with Pilot Whales near Antigua

I meet a couple on friday while Turtle watching at Jumby Bay and the husband, Nick, shared his amazing experience snorkeling with pilot whales about 10 miles off antigua. Here is the footage.

IMAGES Antigua & Barbuda

These photographs are a selection from IMAGES Antigua & Barbuda, A limited edition coffee table photography book by Alexis Andrews. The book is available in giftshops and bookstores in Antigua or can be ordered on-line through IndianCreekBooks.com

movie showing floating debris as "ecosystems" that can also kill

Every year masses of garbage and other floating debris passes throught the Caribbean often getting caught up on our reefs and coasts. Much of it passes through while it flows in a huge circular atlantic current. Here is a little movie i made showing clips shot while out on a fishing trip 20 miles north east of antigua.

Sunset shot of Montserrat on a clear day

Since our previous post was about the volcano. Thought I would post this sunset shot of Montserrat in the distance, above her is an ash cloud from the volcano. The island is in clear view for the shot taken from Darkwood Beach, Antigua....Vanessa Hall

Big Action at the Volcano in Montserrat!

This is my first post as a guest on this site. I am a helicopter pilot employed by Caribbean Helicopters in Antigua, and we do sightseeing tours around Antigua and to the Soufriere Hills Volcano on the island of Montserrat, which is about 25 miles southwest of Antigua, or about 15 minutes flying time. We also do charter flights to other islands in the Leeward Islands and sometimes the Windward islands as well. Essentially I am a flying tour guide, and have been doing this for almost eleven years in Antigua.


As well, my company has held the contract to fly the scientists from the Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO) for the last three years. We fly directly from the pad at the MVO to observe the volcano and service many of the 22 or so monitoring sites around the volcano. Many of these sites are very close to the volcano and are in some very intersting locations! I take pride that I am doing something to help further the study of the volcano and maybe helping the people of Montserrat live safely on their ravaged island. This crisis has been on-going since 1995 and has destroyed what was once the capitol (Plymouth) and most of the villages and towns around the volcano. About 5,000 people still live (quite safely I might add) on the north end of the island away from the volcano.


I should add that this is a stratiform volcano (as are most of the volcanos in the eastern Caribbean arc), or Andesite volcano. What this means is that the lava emerges more as a red hot solid of about 700 C or more, so there is no lava flows. Instead the hot lava rock piles up on top and big pieces then break off and fall. These shatter into smaller and smaller fragments releasing hot gases and fine lava dust (otherwise known as ash), and can proceed down the slopes of the volcano as a minor rock fall or turn into a large avalanche of lava rock and hot ash and gas known as a Pyroclastic Flow (PF). They can move extremely fast and the ash clouds that are produced can rise thousands of feet in the air. This type of volcano in many ways can be much more dangerous than the generally wider known balsitic volcanos that people see on television.


This is my account of a large PF event I witnessed and sent in an email to my family on Oct.17, 2009:


I had an amazing tour yesterday around the volcano in Montserrat. As I was approaching the east coast of the island near the old airport I noticed that an ash cloud that appeared denser than normal was coming from the other side of the volcano. At first I thought it might be heavy venting but it had a couple of pulses so I thought it must be a pyroclastic flow. So I continued past the east side of the volcano where nothing was happening at all and then toward the gap between the volcano and the south soufriere hills (most southern hills on the island). Lately I have been going through that gap to get to Plymouth as the wind direction was blowing ash to the north of the old capital (Plymouth), so I was approaching the capital instead form the south on the west side of the island. Anyway, as I passed this gap I saw a huge ash cloud billowing up so I knew I couldn't go that way, lest I get caught in a huge ash cloud if something big were to happen. So all the way around the south I went and as I came out from behind the South Soufriere hills a huge ash cloud was coming out of the valley (White River) down from the volcano right into the sea, where it was rolling over the sea like it was on ball bearings.



The pyroclastic flows down White River.



The ash rolling across the sea, I am not sure how far out it went but it was a good demonstration of why there is a maritime exclusion zone of 2km around the volcano. The passengers were doing a lot of oohs and awws....loudly....so was I. This event was by far the biggest I have witnessed in over ten years flying around the volcano.



As you can see, I was quite far out to sea and at 3000 feet while all this was going on, that is Plymouth that is being blanketed by the ash cloud, which I believe went over twenty thousand feet ( I stand to be corrected on that). I was nervous that this could lead to a dome collapse and explosive behavior so I stayed quite far away.



Looking back towards the South Soufriere Hills and the gap that I often fly through is to the left of the hill and next to the ash cloud, that's why I avoided going through the gap. It was coming down in pulses, so I kept seeing fresh walls of ash racing down, you can see just below the gap that the cloud is very dense, a little bit of a new pyroclastic flow ash surge sticking above the dissipating ash as it rushes down to the sea. Steam coming off the water where the hot lava rock is boiling the water.



A better look at the steam coming off, and you can see the trees burning on the edge of the flow to the right. Wind is now blowing the loose ash off the top of the fresh PF.



This was taken on Tuesday by one of the scientists after another big pyroclastic flow but nowhere near the size of Friday's (yesterday, Oct.16). As I did on tuesday when this was taken, I went all the way back around to look towards Plymouth and it could not be seen due to the darkness that the ash cloud was causing, not to mention it was so thick over Plymouth that I couldn't see through it. So this shot is very similar to what it was like Friday when I did the same thing, passing the MVO where a huge crowd had gathered. I was not as close to the ash cloud as this appears, actually closer to the MVO. It was very dark and ominous looking compared to the bright sunshine on the other side of the ash cloud.

Absolutely the best day ever!!

The volcano has slowed down a little now, but who knows what may happen in the next few days and weeks. Check out the www.mvo.ms website for more info on what has been happening lately. As well you can stream live radio broadcasts at 4 pm Antigua time(3 pm eastern, 8 pm London I think) on-line from ZJB Radio Montserrat, 95.5 FM. Just Google it for the link. The MVO director Paul Cole does daily weekday updates at that time. You can also catch a friday evening interview weekly at 7:35 pm, replayed at 8:30 am Saturday.

spotted eagle ray off barbuda

A spotted eagle ray cruises past us while we are out snorkeling off a reef in Barbuda. Antigua and Barbuda has several species of rays. Snorkeling with them is great fun.

Wahoo season

This pic was taken last nov on our way back from barbuda, a 75lb wahoo catch.
It's wahoo season and if you're around this weekend join us at Doc's Dock for the Best in the West fishing tournament Sat Nov 7th. Fresh fish for sale.

Hells Gate Antigua

Hells Gate is a little island in the North Sound and is one of the stops made on the Eco Tour run by my company Adventure Antigua. Guests snorkel and check out the caves inside the island. It's always good fun checking it out.

barracuda taking a bite

This almost tame barracuda was feeding on scraps of wahoo as our friend allan cleaned it. It wasn't afraid of us at all and looked like it had done this kinda thing before. This is Spanish Point Barbuda. If you look carefully you may see some small parasites on top of it's nose. You often see these on larger fish.

A simple Video done for a Facebook "Fly Free to Antigua" competition

Yes the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism group on facebook (go join them) is offering a free trip to Antigua and Barbuda. All you have to do is make a little video no longer than two minutes saying that you love Antigua and want to be flown there for Free and presto you are on your way to being entered into the competition. On facebook twenty five people have to click the "like" button on your video to get you into the competition. Once that's done you have to try to get people commenting and "liking" your video. I can't remember how they pick the winner, but hey you can win a trip here for two so check it out!
Antiguans can enter like i did, but we will only be able to give the prize to someone coming in from abroad. I was the only entrant before the original deadline so they extended it to give others a chance. Anyway, now my video is at the bottom and not getting as many views as the ones at the top. Go have a look and enter a vid of your own. If not have a look at mine click the "like" button and comment on it too. Thanks! If that all sounds like too much you can always check it here too:

http://www.adventureantigua.com/

Two short dives

Hi all, I'm Roddy Grimes - Graeme. I'm a photographer and filmaker from Antigua. I just got a little waterproof camera, the GoPro hero. It shoots stills and video and is tiny enough to take anywhere. The video is low resolution but honestly its a relief to shoot without the burden of quality sometimes!!!! Haha.

Anyway here is a look at a couple of spots on our coast. Sunken rock is below Shirley's Heights - its the closest thing we have to a seamount here. It goes from 120 feet to about 8 feet and is home to lots of soft coral, jacks, mackerel, a huge octopus, some eels and more. On this dive Nico had a reef shark come and visit at about 60 feet. He just got a hero cam too so maybe he'll put his footage up one day. The water was very green and dark with plankton this day.

The reef outside of seatons is very old and massive. It has some of the biggest caves and channels in Antigua but has been in really poor shape since the Hurricanes in the '90s. It is heavily fished with spear, pots and old nets have washed all over it. The fish life is a fraction of what it was and I no longer see huge monsters in the holes there. I've seen big Cubera snappers, huge groupers, Jack crevalle, tarpon and African pompano here in the past. Just seeing live Staghorn coral nowadays is to be celebrated!

This dive shows the balance between live coral and algae. They compete for space on the shallow seabed. When algae eating species are held down by fishing pressure as parrotfish are in Antigua, it makes it that much harder for coral to reestablish in a storm damaged area. I saw no large parrotfish on this dive. They are one of the best algae cleaning species and they also make much of our sand by grinding bits of coral skeleton up and pooping it out. The algae bubbles at the end should be oxygen as that algae has been photosynthesising all day in the sun. I should take a sample and test it next time, back to the high school chem lab!

Phosphorescence in Jolly Harbour, Antigua

On our way into Jolly Harbour last week Friday the blue glow of phosphorescence ignited the wake. Here is a brief description from encyclopedia. October 13th 2006 i posted this shot on flickr.

baby hawksbill turtle photo

This tiny hawksbill was one of about 145 turtles that hatched out the night before the photo was taken. Unfortunately four of the little turtles didn't make it out of the nest and were stuck 18 inches below the sandy surface. This is fairly normal, and together with several spoiled eggs they usually perish inside the nest. Turtle moniters usually "Excavate" the nest a day after it hatches to see how many didn't make it. IF they find live ones they let them go during the next night. While in Barbuda recently doing a turtle nesting count we found a bunch of tiny tracks from the little ones who had made it into the sea the night before. Here is the strongest of the four that we found. We released them in the hope that they may have a second chance. One in one thousand reaches maturity.

Another Antigua Blog is born. AntiguaTV

Yup, we already have the http://www.antiguaisland.blogspot.com/ blog which has been going for years and has plenty of regular readers, but I think there are more people out there who want to see something different. There are people who don't like reading and would prefer to see videos photos and movies about Antigua and Barbuda. This blog is for them. I hope to attract several other bloggers to be part of this one. We'll see how it goes. Photos and video that you see on this blog will be seen on other blogs and websites as well. Here is our first very simple but fun video. It's a collection of clips that were taken while on a trip to Barbuda with http://www.adventureantigua.com/ Enjoy!