Diving again!

The summer time found Tracy and I exploring Utah, Wyoming and Montana. We fly fished, hiked, climbed and took lots of pictures of beautiful scenery's and animals.

Back on island at the end of September we got back into the working schedules. As the weather was not cooperating, we only got to do just a couple of dives with our cameras. We did see Eagle Rays, big green moray, octopus and some nice size groupers.

The main attraction though were a group of Jawfish two of them with eggs in their mouth. We noticed on our pictures that you could see the "just about to be born fish" eyes through the egg casings. Pretty cool!

Some of those dives we shared with our visiting friends. Mariela & Martin (under water photographer for the Week End magazine from Argentina) and also Leslie & Albert both accomplished videographer and photographer from the Florida Keys.

We had a great time visiting Sting Ray City and the wreck of the Kittiwake with them.

Until next dive!

Goliath Grouper and Eel

Turtle Farm Reef and Devil's Grotto were, once again, fantastic. Highlights were two Yellow Spotted Eels and a Goliath Grouper that took shelter in one of the smaller caves. We ran into the Grouper that was covered by the Silver Sides. She even tried to nible one of Tracy's strobes!

Great creatures! Enjoy.

Photo Adventure!

Today we show Melina's first time trying her recently learnt photo skills. As part of her PADI Advanced Open Water Diver class, Melina chose a Photo Dive. With basic knowledge on hand and lot of enthusiasm, we set to dive the Casuarina Point Reef on a late afternoon. Here is some of her work.

Photographer: Melina

Camera: Olympus E 620

Housing: Olympus

Strobe: Olympus UF2

We have been doing a lot of shore diving and practicing photography skills (not much improvement to speak of...). The Devil's Grotto Caves are packed with Silver Sides, Tarpons, Jacks and Groupers. It only happens a couple of times a year for only a few weeks and it is a dive not to be missed!

Enjoy the Photos. Until next dive!

Great encounter with a Mantis Shrimp

The week end saw us diving twice the Turtle Farm Mini Wall and Don Foster's Dive Reef for a night dive. We found a Pipe Fish along the mini wall, several Scorpion Fish and a beautiful painted Blenny. But the most entertaining creature was a Dark Mantis Shrimp that we found on the sand, away from any obvious protection. We attempted to close in on him for macro pictures that in the end they don't do justice to how detailed this shrimp was. I can see through my camera's lens that he started swimming toward right up to me. After facing the lens port, he proceeded to walk around my housing and seemed very comfortable there. We took advantage of his comfort and took several pics.

During the night we dove the reef right in front of Don Foster's. We saw many interesting creatures and fish behaviour although our night photography skills were not up to par :(

More Decorator Crabs!

We visited the area north of Casuarina Point again in search for the crabs. Tracy found two more of them in a near by location for a total of four on the same coral head. Also a big Barracuda was mixing with the Horse Eye Jacks and allowed us to get real close.

We did a total of four dives in two days for more than five hours of bottom time and over 250 pictures taken!

Until next one

Sergio

Decorator Crab!

Very hard to see and difficult for our cameras to capture a good image. Tracy found two beautiful decorator crabs on an island of coral, north- west of Devils Grotto. We spent a long time watching these creatures do their thing.