Tino's Paradise is a wicked muck dive in the sand spotting flying gurnards, pipefish and frogfish.
| Name Dive Site: | Tino's Paradise |
| Inserted/Added by: | scuba_junkie |
| Rated: | Rated not yet |
| Specifications: |   |
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We named this spot after Tino, one of the guys who runs Scuba Junkie. This site was at first overlooked, but as Tino kept coming back with photos of juvenile painted frogfish smaller than his fingernail and ornate ghost pipefish, we decided to add this site to the list of one's frequented daily.
This dive is carried out entirely in the sand, essentially swimming from buoy line to buoy line. People often give us a skeptical look on the dive briefing when we tell them they'll spent the entirety of the dive in sand, but usually at the end of the day it winds up being one of their favorite dives. Ornate ghost pipefish can be found--often in pairs--in the weedy patches of sand. Juvenile frogfish are commonly seen at the base of buoy lines. Flying gurnards, bobtail squid, blue-spotted stingrays, and blue-ringed octopus can be found seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Longnose stick pipefish, often mistaken as mere twigs, are seen as well.
A highlight of the dive is an old descent line, now broken off from the surface, in 16 meters of water. What started as a single piece of rope descending to the sand has turned into oasis of life in the center of the sand. The rope is now nearly 2 meters in diameter, as all sorts of soft corals and sponges have attached themselves to the rope. Stonefish can be found here in large numbers, as can painted frogfish and dwarf lionfish. At the base of the rope lives a colony of cleaner shrimp, which are always eager to clean the hands (or teeth!) of divers who stop by. Anemones dot the sand floor, where you can find anemone shrimp, mushroom coral pipefish, porcelain crabs, and more.
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