Thursday, October 04, 2007

Snorkeling and diving


The opening of the surf competition season on the island means bigger waves are on the way and the days of diving and snorkeling outside the reef at Shacks are numbered for this year.

Right at the end of dive with Darryl outside the reef a week ago, down to my last 500 lbs of air and with dead batteries in my camera, I spotted a dolphin. Darryl had his own problems (a free-flowing emergency regulator dumping his air into the ocean) but he managed to get a few shots.

And there is still a lot to see inside the reef.

Elaine and I were snorkeling late one afternoon when we found this crab under a coral ridge, chowing on a sea urchin. He (she? we didn't think to look) pulled the spines off, nibbled what he wanted and then tossed the spine aside. There was a pile of spines behind him like rib bones at a bar-b-que. A bunch of other fish swam around the crab looking for scraps.

Another day we were swimming with about a hundred small bar jacks. A long slender silver shaft appeared right in the middle of the school of young jacks and we found ourselves swimming with a huge barracuda. I only got one shot of him (her? We didn't look.). You can see it on the Flickr site in the new set of snorkeling and diving pics.

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