Flamingo tongue snail fully out of its shell

Let’s go diving! Woke up well rested after 9.5 hours in bed. Grabbed a quick breakfast and it was time for the first dive. It had been a year since I was last in the water and I felt like I was moving slowly remember the order of everything that had to be done before jumping in. Despite that, I was still the first person in the water. It turns out the water was not quite as warm or as clear as I’d hoped, but it was still just as inviting.

We stayed on reefs in about 30′ of water. There was no need to go much deeper and where we were, the only way to go any deeper would have involved digging. The first dive was at a site called Lobster No Lobster because this was the first site anyone had seen lobster migrate. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any lobster, migrating or not. We did see a barracuda, a lion fish and several Red Edge Goddess Nudibranchs. The best part was following a 2-3′ loggerhead turtle around the reef for a while. It was hard not to think of him speaking in the surfer accent from Finding Nemo.

Engine of the DC-3

Two more day dives, including one on a drug smugglers’ plane. There were six or seven sting rays hanging out around the sunken DC-3. It was fun to watch them travel across the reef. I’ve decided that fish swim, but rays fly. Watching them gracefully glide with only the slightest twist of a wing allowing them to change direction, was fascinating.

We ended the day with a full moon night dive. There was plenty of life to see on the reef, but it was equally fun to swim away from the reef and watch the divers. Their lights sweeping back and forth as they look for cool critters. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, either aliens arriving on Earth or people arriving on a foreign planet. They float above the surface and search with lights for the perfect landing site. It was also pretty cool to watch the moon light filter through the surface ripples or wave your hand to see the bioluminescence. There was enough to look at without turning my light on that it stayed off for half the dive.

Hawksbill sea turtle