Monkey Face Rock is a deep massive overhanging coral formation protruding from the reef wall on Roatan, Honduras.
In my previous posts about exploring the deep sides of Monkey Face Rock and Pillar Coral, I described how I first targeted this formation whilst diving nine years earlier. On other non-technical dives, I had only been able to approach near the top of the formation at 33m/110ft, and that was only when doing a deep run on EANx32 (32% oxygen / 68% nitrogen) from either Pillar Coral to the south or El Aguila shipwreck to the north. Neither of these dive profiles provided me with the depth nor time necessary to explore this fascinating outcropping.
A newer, more technical approach was required in order to safely dive Monkey Face Rock. I planned this dive along with other members of the Roatan Tec Team to give us 25 minutes at 45m/150ft -- plenty of bottom time and depth for exploration! We descended with four tanks: two 80cuft tanks of air for the bottom, one 40cuft tank of EANx50 (50% oxygen / 50% nitrogen) for accelerating our decompression from 21m/70ft up, and one 40cuft tank of 100% oxygen for rapid decompression above 6m/20ft.
This photo, snapped by the amazing Tec Goddess Alex Harper-Brown of Coconut Tree Divers, shows the side profile of Monkey Face Rock. If you squint one eye and blur the other, you can see the rough silhouette of a chimpanzees face. Just like a chimp, the underside of the overhangs "chin" was covered in "hairy" looking whip corals and black gorgonians. There were even some elephant ear sponges where the chimp's ears would be!
Read More of My Posts about Monkey Face Rock
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